Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether she has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of keeping the UK on British Summer Time.

The Government believes the current daylight-saving arrangements represent the optimal use of the available daylight across the UK.

While there is the potential for some benefits from a change in the current arrangements, there is also a real risk of negative impacts. A change to permanent summertime or double summertime may also have significant impacts on certain sectors and businesses.

Given the potential scale of impacts involved, an exceptionally wide-ranging cost benefit analysis would need to be performed to inform a decision on changing the current system.