Daylight Saving Bill

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gale]

I am not necessarily saying that it is desirable; I am saying that it is practicably possible, if that is what the Scots want.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

If separate time zones were operating across the UK, would the hon. Gentleman be in favour of retaining the BBC news on Greenwich mean time or on summer time?

[Mr Gale]

I think that the BBC will do what it has continued to do for a very long time, and live in the past.

I was saying to the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton) that it is practicably possible to have different time zones, and that if the Scots, who have their own Parliament, genuinely choose, having consulted the people who elect them, to adopt a different time zone, there is practicably no reason why they should not do so. It works right across the United States and across Europe, and we have already established that Gibraltar is in a different time zone from the United Kingdom although it proudly flies the Union flag.

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[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I do not intend to say a great deal, but I want to address a couple of the issues from the perspective of someone who represents one of the most northerly constituencies in the UK. I must confess that I approached this issue with a very open mind. After 40 years, it is always worth looking at an issue again with fresh eyes in the light of changing times, and I have therefore listened very carefully to the lobbyists, spoken to the stakeholders and looked at the evidence. I live in the far north of Scotland and I represent people who will be disproportionately impacted by the proposed change, however, and I have to say that I remain decidedly ambivalent about the potential benefits and unpersuaded by some of the evidence that I have seen.

I have also been approached by numerous constituents —just ordinary citizens who are not part of any lobby group—who are worried about the impact of the proposals on their quality of life. They tell me how the measure could compromise their safety. One of my main concerns with the evidence that I have seen and heard is that an awful lot of it is simulated, as the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) pointed out. It is speculative, and it is not based on empirical data. It does not take into account other relevant attendant factors that can influence this process, such as the weather. I have been slightly bemused this week to observe how a light dusting of snow in central London seems to have brought the metropolis to a standstill. However, many parts of the country are experiencing very severe weather at present, and I think it brings home to many of us just how dangerous it can be to travel in icy conditions.

The local authority in the area that I represent grits the roads during seven months of the year. Driving before dawn is dangerous, not because it is dark but because the roads are icy. In the dead of winter, there are many days on which the mercury is never going to rise above zero, but on most winter days, the temperature will rise after sunrise, and as the sun gets up, the roads become less hazardous. I have to confess that the thought of having to drive on icy roads does not fill me with relish. That concern is shared by many people who live and work in northern climates. It is not just road safety issues that are of concern. Hon. Members have mentioned the problem of kids standing around waiting for school buses in the cold and the dark. We have bitter, dreich, nasty winter mornings that are already bad. Taking the time back an hour further would make that even more unpleasant.

The other factor that has not been considered is that, when the experiment took place in the 1960s, road fatalities in the north of Scotland did, indeed, increase. That happened despite the fact that, during the same period, speed limits, drink-driving legislation and seat belts were introduced. Unless we believe that none of those measures had any impact on road safety, we have to take some of the evidence on road safety with a big pinch of salt. Early mornings are a hazardous time to be on the roads. We cannot just isolate the one issue of darkness and extrapolate from that without considering the wider context.

[Malcolm Bruce]

Does the hon. Lady agree that hon. Members who represent southern constituencies should realise that what she is describing are the conditions we currently experience, and that they will experience them if we have this experiment?

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[Dr Whiteford]

I could not agree more with the right hon. Gentleman. He has experience, as I do, of getting up in the dark, going to work and school in the dark and coming home in the dark. The ontological reality that we live with is that there is a limited amount of daylight. As small child, I was very fond of a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson that begins:

“In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candle-light.

In summer, quite the other way,

I have to go to bed by day.”

I empathised with the child in the poem, who had to be carted off to bed when it was still time to be playing outside. As I get older, it is becoming very clear to me that getting up in what feels like the middle of the night in the far north is not pleasant and it is not good for our well-being, health or happiness. Such a measure will lead to danger and misery for people who live in the north.

[Rebecca Harris]

I am very sympathetic to the concerns of the hon. Lady and her constituents. As she will see, I have drafted my Bill carefully to ensure to that exactly those factors are taken into account, so that there will be no danger of any change taking place to the disbenefit of any part of the United Kingdom. I hope that she will look at the science of the road safety experts, who say that even in the shortest mid-winter days in the north of the country, there will be a saving. In parts of Scotland, children go to school in the dark already. At least this measure would mean that they came home in the light, during the lighter period of the day.

[Dr Whiteford]

I am afraid the reality is that there is a limited amount of daylight. Children are already dealing with the fact that there is half-light. The measure will not make any difference to that. The only difference is that we will have to get up even earlier. We can debate whether the prospect of separate time zones across the UK is realistic or not.

[Mr Ellwood]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Whiteford]

Not just now because I am winding up.

We have to think very seriously about the logistics of having separate time zones. The reality is that we could all get up a bit later, and start schools and work at 10 o’clock. However, that would be very difficult for those people who work for UK-wide organisations and who have difficulty in changing the time of day when they do things. The benefits of the measure are rather untested, and are outweighed by the dangers of driving in hazardous conditions, which have not been properly considered. Some of the evidence we have heard demonstrates that the methodology is rather flawed and the evidence is incomplete. I ask hon. Members to think carefully before imposing the measure across the UK.

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[Mr Ellwood]

I think I will gloss over that and move straight on to some of the other areas that have been mentioned.

The roads issue is important. There were 1,120 fewer deaths and injuries during that trial period. That is an important piece of evidence. I say to the hon. Gentleman that it is also important to Scotland, because there is a 27% higher risk of an accident in Scotland; more people walk than use cars and so on, so there is a greater likelihood of people being in danger, particularly children. As I said in an intervention, the Cambridge study said that had the experiment continued, more than 3,500 people who died during that period would be alive today.

[Dr Whiteford]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that he is simply displacing the problem from one end of the day to the other? Children are affected not only by light and dark, but by hot and cold. We have to examine the whole aspect of the climate, not just one isolated bit of it.

[Mr Ellwood]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on the method and the style with which she is putting her arguments forward. It is very important that we have a full debate on these matters. When children go to school in the morning the people using the roads are normally going to a destination with which they are familiar; they are either going to work or to school, and they have used these roads before. So even when they are doing so in the dark, they are making a safer journey than those they make in the afternoons and evenings, when our world gets far busier and far more complex. That is when the accidents happen. The hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) shakes her head, but she cannot refute the current statistics, which show that three times as many accidents happen in the evening rush hour as in the morning rush hour. That is a powerful argument.

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[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be obsessed with Indiana. There may well be other reasons why the results in Indiana were shown to be what they were. As many people have said, we need to look at what the results would be in the United Kingdom. There is one way to find that out, which is to allow the Bill to progress to the next stage so we can establish that.

[Dr Whiteford]

I share the hon. Lady’s concerns about carbon emissions. It is important that we take that into account. I also share the concerns about fuel poverty. However, my fundamental concern is that pre-dawn temperatures are so much lower than temperatures towards the daylight hours that people will spend much more on fossil fuel heating for their homes, rather than going out at a slightly less cold time of day. They will have to use heating and lighting in far greater quantities in the middle of the night.

[Caroline Lucas]

We can trade statistics across the Floor of the House for a great many hours and not become very much the wiser. The points that the hon. Lady makes are serious ones, but the way to explore the matter further is precisely to allow the passage of the Bill and to have the cost-benefit analysis that it proposes.

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[Angie Bray]

General polling suggests that the public feel rather differently from that particularly small sample. At the time, Sir John Butterfill was ably supported by two Scottish Labour MPs, George Foulkes—now Lord Foulkes—and Brian Wilson, who made it clear that the measure would be good for a large part of Scotland. As we have heard today, the move can only be a good thing for the vast majority of the population in Scotland, as well as in England and Wales.

At the time, we were deluged by letters from Scottish farmers saying that the arguments were a bit patronising because they did have electricity in their barns. Some Scottish builders also wrote to us to say that they would prefer to drive to their job of work in the dark if they could have an extra hour of light towards the end of the day, because they would be able to do a longer day’s work.

[Dr Whiteford]

One reason why farmers in parts of Scotland are less opposed to the measure than they were 40 years ago is that they now have heating and lighting in their steadings. That rather undermines the carbon saving argument. The farmers to whom I have spoken are less than enthusiastic; at best they are neutral. Clearly, they are not diametrically opposed, as they once were, but that is because they are now able to heat and light the buildings that they use in the early morning.

[Angie Bray]

In a sense, that makes the point that we are moving forward. All those arguments can be put on the table when we have the scrutiny.

I went to a Scottish university, St Andrews, and one of my flatmates never saw any daylight. Admittedly, he chose his own hours, but he used to go to bed in the early hours of the morning and rise at about 2.30 or 3 o’clock in the afternoon. By the time he had scrubbed his teeth and stepped outside, it was pitch dark again. A little light might have done him some good—he never looked a very healthy colour.

The number of organisations that support the Bill speaks for itself: ROSPA, the police, sports bodies—including my local group, the Old Actonians, which contacted me—the hospitality industry, the tourist industry, the CBI, environmentalists and many more groups say that we should have a serious think about how we set our clocks.

Call me a bit lazy, but I have to admit that were I to be involved in the scrutiny, I would not plump for Churchill’s time exactly, because I think that would have been two hours forward in the summer. I am more of a compromise girl, and my view is that if we have a chance we should go on to permanent British summer time, not least because I get sick to death of changing my clocks twice a year. Having a settled time would be very handy, and it would be a compromise that would give us a bit of extra light in the afternoon when it would be used most effectively.

I am not sure that I want to move as far as keeping it light until midnight. When I was at St Andrews university it was light until about 11 o’clock at night at certain times, and that seemed a little bit too long for me. I am a British summer time girl and I am for sticking with it right through the year, but that is another argument that will be tested if we have scrutiny and a trial. That is the only way that we can move out of the revolving door of private Members’ Bills. Let us have proper scrutiny, so that the matter can be decided once and for all for the benefit of our constituents and the country as a whole.

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[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who is no longer in his place, made a telling intervention in which he pointed out that nothing in the Bill—and, indeed, nothing that Parliament can do—will increase the amount of daylight in any particular location in this country. The Bill seeks to find the most effective way of using daylight for the benefit of our constituents, whether they be in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or England.

I was delighted to hear the speech by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long). Her contribution was one of the finest that we have heard. She clearly fully understood the purpose of the Bill. She rightly expressed concern that there had not been much debate on this issue in Northern Ireland, and pointed out that limited research had been carried out there. She also said that she had a number of concerns about what might happen if we adopted the proposals. She went on to say, crucially, that because of the lack of evidence, and because many people believe that there will be real benefits from the proposals, the Bill should be given a fair wind so that the appropriate research, and the appropriate analysis of that research, can be carried out, and decisions could then be made on whether any further action should be taken. It has to be said that her speech was in marked contrast to those made by representatives of the Scottish National party.

The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) made a valuable contribution. She began by saying that she was agnostic about the issue. She admitted that she had approached it with an open mind and that, having reviewed the evidence, she was not particularly impressed by it and was now ambivalent about the matter. That is fine, and at least she did not deny that there might be merit in the proposals, and in continuing with the research. That was in stark contrast to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil).

[Dr Whiteford]

If the Bill dealt with no more than the research phase, I would be very happy to support it. It does not, however; it proposes a trial and, in the light of all the evidence that I have seen so far, I do not believe that the case has been made for such a trial.

[Mr Foster]

The hon. Lady condemns herself out of her own mouth. She says that the evidence to date does not persuade or convince her. Fine. Then let us carry out the research, and the independent analysis of that research, and bring back a proposal to the House through an order so that we can decide whether to go on with a trial.