Greg Knight
Main Page: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)Department Debates - View all Greg Knight's debates with the Leader of the House
(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
I remind the House that the SNP Government have decided to take a different route. They do not believe in trusting people to make decisions for themselves. They believe in constant perpetual lockdown which, as I understand it, the leader of the SNP has accepted did not go as well as anticipated, which sounds slightly like the comments of the Japanese Emperor at the end of the last war. What they have done in Scotland has not been a success. What we have done in the rest of the United Kingdom, in England, has worked better by trusting people. We should trust people and we should continue to trust people. People such as the hon. Gentleman should not be afraid to do the work that they have to do.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Can we have a Government review, followed by a statement, of the desirability of ending the ridiculous ritual of putting our clocks back every autumn, thereby plunging the nation into darkness and misery by mid-afternoon for a period of several months? Is there not a good case for keeping summertime in winter? It would cut the number of road accidents, cut energy use and boost tourism.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I invariably agree with my right hon. Friend, but not on this issue. As we all know, time was unified across the United Kingdom with the coming of the railways, otherwise my county of Somerset would be 10 minutes behind London. The way of doing things was to have midday when the sun is at its highest point, which always seemed to me to be a sensible principle.
I think that if we were to change, as we did in the late ’60s, we would simply change back again, because we cannot make the days any longer in the winter. They simply get dark. They are either dark in the morning or dark in the early afternoon, and whichever way it is, people will want it the other way round. Unless God is to give us more daylight, however, I think it is a problem beyond the competence of Her Majesty’s Government.