Devolution (Time) Bill [HL]

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Friday 1st July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

I commence by immediately congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, on the tenacity with which he has pursued for so long the cause that is at the heart of this Bill, although it is not directly covered by it. I fully understand that this Bill is a more sophisticated sub-clause of his main case. I do not share his pride in being Scottish. I am a quarter Scottish, a quarter Cornish and half Welsh, and I am proud of that, but I would not attempt to translate the case into Welsh for him. I will leave it on one side.

I wish to address primarily the cause that has been in the forefront of his campaign for daylight saving compatible with our joining the central European time zone. I am a little uneasy about how that prevailing central cause can be presented alongside the devolution case that he is making today. That cause is daylight saving allowing us to enjoy what we enjoyed for a brief period during World War II, namely sharing with our continental neighbours summer summer time and summer winter time. I confess that I can do that perhaps a little more easily than he can because we Welsh are more tolerant than the Scots of any inconvenience that might arise from having to share an English time zone. More seriously, I think there is a very strong case for avoiding the avoidable hazard of too much diversity within a community, not just on time but—I must be forgiven for making this point—on units of measurement as well.

The campaign that I seek to put forward with as much enthusiasm as the noble Lord puts forward daylight saving is the campaign for completing the metrication system in this country. I do that with a particular sense of guilt because I was the Minister for Metrication in the Heath Government, and we carried it forward successfully. When the Thatcher Government arrived in 1979, we predictably set out for a bonfire of quangos, and the Metrication Board had the unwisdom to say that it had almost completed its cause, so I gladly swept it on to my bonfire pile, and I have regretted it ever since.

I shall say a word more about that because it seems to me that there is an intrinsic absurdity in Britain almost alone insisting on having a set of units of measurement incompatible with almost the whole of the rest of the world, excluding perhaps the United States and Myanmar. It is damaging in itself to go on doing that. We live in a country in which we measure petrol consumption in miles per gallon, but buy the petrol in litres. We drive along motorways that have road signs set in miles, but have mysterious posts set at 100-metre intervals, therefore measuring them in kilometres. I am not at all clear why that has been allowed to persist. I look with admiration at the way in which Ireland has undertaken metrication alongside the continent, and I admire Canada, which has undertaken metrication.

That is a digression. My main concern is to reassert the noble Lord’s fundamental case for uniformity as widely as possible and in time zones as well. A very extensive time zone with different degrees of convenience for different parts of that zone that has existed for a long time is in the People’s Republic of China. It may seem curious when one is there. I remember being up in the north-west province of Xinjiang. I think I was with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, on that occasion. We were taken to an evening cinema show and emerged at just short of midnight to find the sun shining brightly. That did not cause the people of China any concern. It is perfectly possible to live in a large time zone with the same time in different parts of it as long as people get accustomed to it that way. That is a pretty extreme example of large-scale integration, but for Britain to be aligned alongside our central European neighbours in the central European time zone, enjoying that pattern of summer sunlight above all and safety from winter hazards to children, is by no means second to that.

I therefore speak with a rather reserved attitude towards this Bill. I hesitate to seem so unenthusiastic when speaking alongside such an enthusiastic champion as the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw. I would be prepared to concede his case if I were confident that by so doing it won his central case. I could not find much happiness in having to change my time zone every time I crossed the Severn Bridge. It simply is not as easy as all that, so with great regret I welcome enthusiastically the noble Lord’s tenacity in seeking to achieve the central case for a central European time zone embracing the United Kingdom, and I understand the case that he has put so clearly—that it is necessary in the context of our rather less than wholly United Kingdom—but if he feels that in order to achieve that it is essential to qualify it along the lines suggested by this Bill, I should not wish to stand in his way. Whether he secures success or failure in this case, I hope he does not falter on the crucial case for a much wider time zone, with Britain belonging to it. It is unnecessary, but if he feels that that qualification is the price to be paid for helping us to move towards continental sanity, I welcome his Bill, just as I welcome his presentation of it today.