Business of the House

Alex Davies-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because she gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to the House authorities, obviously to you, Mr Speaker, and to Marianne Cwynarski. Between you, you have done amazing work to ensure that the House’s proceedings are carried on in a covid-secure way and that the staff of the House and of Members are kept safe in the House of Commons while we have been following Public Health England’s guidelines. My hon. Friend is right to say that we provide an essential service and we must be here, and that the restrictions must be lifted as soon as they can be. They are all temporary. I look forward to this Chamber being full and bustling once again, but that will have to come when it is safe to do so. I look forward to not having to wear a face mask, but again that must be done when it is safe to do so. We must lead by example to the country at large, both in our dutifulness and in our adherence to the rules.

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

This Sunday, our clocks will go back one hour as part of daylight saving time. According to a recent Government report, 59% of the British population would rather remain on summer time, and I think we can all agree that the last thing our country needs is another hour of 2020. With that in mind, will the Leader of the House agree to a debate in Government time to discuss the practice of moving clocks backwards, so that we can follow the EU in scrapping this outdated and unnecessary practice?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Until the hon. Lady said, “follow the EU”, I might have been tempted, but I am afraid that I always enjoy the extra hour in bed. It is such a luxury to find that one gets the clocks going back to Greenwich mean time and has that extra hour’s sleep. More importantly, people in Scotland in particular would have very late mornings if we did not change the clocks. This was debated in 2010 and 2011, and it has been considered recently. When it was last tried, it was then unwound in both the UK and Portugal, so I am not sure that the appetite for change—and certainly not the appetite to follow the EU—is all that great.