Daylight Saving Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Tom Harris

Friday 20th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely, Mr Speaker, and of course the other amendments in this group.

I believe that the original proposals in the Bill were contentious, divisive and essentially selfish. The rewriting of the Bill in Committee, at the behest of the Government, has made it clear that we can have only one time zone in the United Kingdom, which I think is a welcome measure of support for the Union. However, the Bill’s Achilles heel is that it has been redrafted in such a way that it would enable the United Kingdom Government to change the time zone in Scotland without the consent of the Scottish Parliament. We know that the Scottish Parliament, and MPs representing Scottish constituencies, do not support a change that would make winter mornings in Scotland even colder and darker than they are already.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

For the record, I am here this morning to support the hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), and I spoke in a general debate in favour of the change the year before last.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting his support for the Bill on the record, but I am sure he is not suggesting that his view is shared by all his colleagues from Scotland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tom Harris]

The hon. Gentleman is making the point that evidence should be discarded and the personal opinions of individual Members should be set on a higher level. Is he not in favour of evidence-based policy making? The Bill would allow the evidence for or against a change to be seen after a trial period. If the result of the trial was that my constituents were going to be put in greater danger, of course I would oppose a permanent change at the end of the trial. Is he not in the same position?

[Mr Chope]

My difficulty is that there is nothing to prevent the Government from commissioning an inquiry and getting the evidence that would enable the hon. Gentleman to reach a decision on this contentious issue. I cannot understand why, if the Government support the Bill, they have not already embarked on getting a body of evidence together. That evidence could then be presented to the House and we could decide whether we thought, in the light of that evidence, that we should make any changes to the clocks. I will refer to that in a bit more detail later.