Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I hesitate to intervene in the debate because I hope that my noble friend the Duke of Montrose will remain my noble friend after I have spoken. I have a very dim and distant, though none the less real, memory of a wartime experience in the days when we had double summertime, which the noble Viscount has been talking about. The experience was actual. Good little boys in those days were sent to bed at about 6.30 pm. On the other hand, work on the farm, which was where I lived, went on. It went on while daylight went on. Daylight hours had been altered to give the maximum hours for work for the whole country, which in those days included Scotland—if my noble friend will accept that description. So, I was sent to bed at something like 6.30 pm, and like a good little boy I went to bed and I went to sleep. About two hours later, the men came in from work—my bedroom overlooked the farmyard—and they woke me up. It was broad daylight and I thought, ““My gosh! I’ve overslept””. I jumped up, got dressed and went downstairs, at which, my appalled parents were astonished and said, ““What are you doing here, dear?””. I said, ““Well, I thought it was early morning. The chaps are coming in down the yard””. I thought that they were going out to work, but they were not, they were finishing their day’s work. Behind that silly little tale is a very serious issue, which the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, has raised with her amendment. Although my noble friend the Duke of Montrose has chosen to disagree with her, I am bound to say that this matter, in the present circumstances, needs serious consideration. This is not a national emergency on the scale of World War II, for which I am immensely grateful, but it is an emergency on a global scale that we need to think about seriously. We need to think about everything that can be done to reduce our need for and dependence on artificial energy sources. If we can reduce our energy demand by altering our daylight pattern, it needs serious consideration at the highest level. I hope that that will happen.