Daylight Saving Bill

No, I do not accept and I do not think that that is what the evidence suggests. One of the points that the right hon. Gentleman is making has more to do with the way in which we generate energy now and our spare capacity, rather than being a fundamental point to do with changing to daylight saving hours. In all of the three areas that I have discussed—reducing demand for lighting, efficient management of peaks in demand, and reduced demand for heating—the greatest potential savings lie in household energy use. For this reason, I believe the Bill offers an easy and inexpensive means of combating fuel poverty. Many of us have constituents, often elderly ones, who struggle to pay their electricity bills and their heating bills. In Brighton and Hove, for example, more than 20,000 households, many of whom are my constituents, have been identified as fuel-poor—in other words, forced to spend over 10% of their income on energy bills. I am not suggesting for a moment that the Bill will allow any of us to relax our efforts to eradicate fuel poverty, or to ignore our duty to take meaningful action on cutting carbon emissions. But the beauty of the Bill is that the action that it requires is simple, while the benefits that it will bring are profound.