Tobias Ellwood
Main Page: Tobias Ellwood (Conservative - Bournemouth East)Daylight Saving Bill
Tobias Ellwood Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Rebecca Harris
I think that my hon. Friend will find that the figures for Scotland show that there was a higher reduction in road deaths as a proportion of the population of the whole of Scotland. The vast majority of Scots live in the central belt of Scotland. The research found that it was beneficial for Scotland overall and that there was a net gain.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
The issue of Scotland is critical to the debate. Had the experiment of 1968 to 1971 continued until today, more than 3,500 people who have been killed in Scotland would be alive today.
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.
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.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) on being successful in the ballot. I wish she had chosen something else but, nevertheless, she has perhaps chosen her specialist subject. As a result, some of us are here fielding or batting in the opposite direction.
I am happy once again to be debating the subject of changing the time when the clocks go back in the United Kingdom. I think this is the third time I have participated in such a debate since being elected in 2005. The matter seems to return to the House fairly regularly. As hon. Members may assume, I will not argue in favour of the change, which will have a disproportionate effect on my part of the world. That is not to say that I am resistant to change. I am happy for there to be a compromise. I would like the period of winter time to be changed from 21 weeks to perhaps 10 weeks. Rather than seven weeks before mid-winter and 14 weeks after mid-winter, there should be five weeks either side of mid-winter. That might be a compromise that we could live with.
Moving to central European time would be a mistake given our longitude. That fact is exacerbated by the latitude differences within the United Kingdom, which mean that the further north we travel, the shorter is the day in winter. There is a great argument for symmetry either side of the mid-winter day. I hope that we will try to change that. However, European directive 2000/84/EC seems to tie our hands to a time change on the last Sunday in October and the last Sunday in March. That directive seems to enshrine the asymmetry.
However, it is only a directive. Given the strength of feeling in this place about matters European, one would think that some Government Members, who are no longer in opposition, as they were when I last spoke about this, would realise that it is not a commandment, but a directive, and perhaps do something about it.
The Bill does not seek to move the daylight, as some would have us believe: in fact, it wants to move us, the people, into the night. I ask anybody watching, wherever in the UK they may be—I am sure that, as the hon. Member for Castle Point said, people will be riveted to the parliamentary channel—to imagine getting up an hour earlier today.
Mr Ellwood
The hon. Gentleman and I have sparred over this issue for a number of years. I think that he inadvertently misleads the House, because in Glasgow, for example, sunset today takes place just six minutes after it does here in London. The statistics for his own constituency suggest that schoolchildren are going to school in the dark and returning home in the dark. The clock change would allow at least one of those journeys to be made in the light. Were this Bill to go through, his adult constituents would benefit from 160 more hours a year after work and children would benefit from 84 hours of daylight after school. That is a useful statistic for his constituents to be aware of.
Mr MacNeil
If the hon. Gentleman’s argument is for one hour, why does he not extend that logic to two, three, four or eight hours? Perhaps we could have our daylight at 4 o’clock in the afternoon when we have all finished work so that we had more leisure time at the end of day. That would be the logical conclusion of his argument.
The crux of the matter is that people getting up an hour earlier face the darkness of the morning for another hour. As I make this argument for the third time, I sometimes feel that we are doing battle with the forces of darkness—I am looking directly across the Chamber at the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). Some Members will imagine that I am participating in this debate merely to indulge in what is claimed to be the perennial Scottish ritual of opposing any changes to the clocks, but that is not true.
A similar idea was defeated in this House in 1970—this may help the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale) —when the then Member for the Western Isles, the late Donald Stewart, started his Commons speaking career by opposing this very argument 40 years and a day ago, on 2 December 1970, when I was a mere babe in arms of five months. I was reminded of it by one of the Doorkeepers, Mr Robin Fell from the Serjeant at Arms office. He was working in the Commons at the time, and such is his impressive institutional memory that he remembered the debate. Donald Stewart said:
“Public opinion polls would indicate that there is a case for abolishing British Standard Time.”
He went on to say:
“Central European Time is really what we are discussing. It has little relevance to England and none at all to Scotland. It is pleasant to know that several hon. Members from English constituencies, some of them in the south, have indicated to me that they intend to vote for the abolition of British Standard Time.”—[Official Report, 2 December 1970; Vol. 807, c. 1346.]
Mr MacNeil
The trial period is the dangerous part. A trial period of three years is quite a large percentage of somebody’s life. I would be happier if something could be done about the EU directive. Rather than plunge people in Scotland into misery, we could turn the other way, look south-east towards Belgium—towards Brussels and the EU—and move forward with greater security, but instead we will be shoehorned into this by interests in the south of England aligning with interests in the EU and plunging Scotland into darkness.
Mr Ellwood
The hon. Gentleman says that he is representing his seat and Scotland by claiming that we are going to plunge them into misery. How does he square that with the three recent polls in Scotland in which people said they favoured this move, and with the fact that the farmers, who were the big opponents of this change, have now decided to embrace it because in many cases they have moved into the world of tourism?
Mr MacNeil
I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to an Ipsos MORI poll on changing the clocks, which showed that 19% of people in Scotland were in favour and 28% of people in London were in favour. The average throughout the UK was 25%, so the polling evidence is not as conclusive as he suggests.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), and I will address some of the points that he made later.
The principal argument for considering changing the clocks is simple: it is about how we can best align our lives to maximise the benefits of daylight. The idea is not new, of course, but the circumstances in which we are debating the matter are new. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) on selecting this subject for her private Member’s Bill and on outlining how the pace of change in our modern busy world makes things different from when the subject was last considered. The second key point is that there is new evidence to support the clock change. Thirdly, the public are more educated in their views than ever before, and that is the case across the country, from Bournemouth all the way up to the constituency that the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken represents. That is reflected in the diverse range of constituencies represented by the Members who are attending this debate. The hon. Gentleman said there were an awful lot of voices against this move in Scotland. I am sorry his hon. Friends were not able to find the time to join him and present themselves and their arguments today.
I first came across this issue when I was shadow tourism Minister. I looked at it without prejudice or passion, and it became clear that it is very important for the tourism industry—I say that just as the hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) departs. The Tourism Alliance has done a lot of work on this. However, I stepped away from the specific issue of tourism and thought about how it might benefit or damage the whole of the country.
It is clear that there would be huge benefits in many corners of our lives. I studied the change’s potential impacts on British society as a whole and why the last experiment was unsuccessful. It is clear that Britain is in a different place today. Our lifestyles, technologies, industries and priorities have fundamentally changed since the last experiment. Most people rise after sunrise and stay awake long after sunset, wasting one of the few things in life that are free: daylight. Essentially, this subject is about how we align our lives with the movement of the sun across the heavens.
Mr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
I believe my hon. Friend’s constituency contains a community of orthodox Jewish people, as does mine in Hendon. Would he like to speak about how the proposed changes would affect them, particularly in the winter, but also in the summer when their days of prayer are dictated and determined by sunrise and sunset?
Mr Ellwood
My hon. Friend raises an important point. There are many groups, such as the one he has just mentioned, who have concerns in respect of various aspects of life, and those matters need to be weighed up in deciding on the bigger picture of whether this change is worth making. The whole purpose of having this debate and allowing the discussion to progress and the Government to take an interest, is to balance out the various arguments and see whether the change is in the interests of Britain as a whole.
The idea is not new. It is not only various hon. Members of the past who have brought it forward. The Romans adapted their way of life to when the sun was in the sky, using water clocks with various weights to make sure they were up when the sun rose and went to bed when it set. When Benjamin Franklin was ambassador to Paris, he commented on the fact that most Parisians did not get up until midday. He then realised—this is a capitalist viewpoint—that more revenue could be made by putting extra taxes on candles, because they were needed in the evening. He was also encouraging people to take advantage of the free sunlight, however, and he came up with the saying, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
The advent of our railway system moved us on from local timings in towns and villages, as we now had to synchronise time across the entire country. This was measured at the Greenwich observatory, and gave rise to the now familiar Greenwich mean time. Greenwich was referenced as zero degrees longitude and 24 time zones were created around the globe, each covering exactly 50 degrees longitude, but as has been pointed out, not everybody adheres to that. Spain is in alignment with the UK, but it chooses to operate on continental time.
Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)
I hope my hon. Friend will pay tribute in his brief history of the daylight savings movement to Mr William Willett of my constituency of Orpington, who was among the very first to bring this idea to the centre of national debate. Back in 1907, the sight of drawn blinds in the homes of Petts Wood, a ward in my constituency, where he saw residents sleeping as the town basked in sunlight, persuaded him to write his highly influential pamphlet, “The Waste of Daylight”, in which he argued forcefully for the changes that were introduced just a few weeks after his death in 1915, during the first world war. I hope my hon. Friend will commend his hard work in bringing this debate into our national life.
Mr Ellwood
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for paying tribute to his former constituent. It is also worth mentioning Robert Pearce, MP, who was a friend of Mr Willett, and who then took this idea on. Mr Willett was a keen golfer and he was horrified that the golf courses he used closed down when it got dark. He wanted them to stay open. That was the initial thought that put the idea into his head of taking advantage, from a leisure perspective, of the evening sunlight. So we should thank Robert Pearce for first bringing this matter to the attention of the House.
I wish to bury some of the myths and some of the headlines that we see in some of the press. We are not putting anywhere into the dark; we are not getting rid of any sunshine in any form. We are transferring light from one part of the day to another—from the morning to the evening. We are saying that, on balance, it is more useful to have that light in the evening than in the morning. Some extreme cases have been mentioned, but for much of the year—nine months of the year—we sleep through this asset. When we awake the sun has been out for an hour or more. If we suppose that an average working day ends at 5.30 pm, a clock change would result in about 300 extra hours of daylight a year in London. The figure for Glasgow would be 175 hours and the one for Shetland, at the very north of the UK, would be 160 hours. That change would be life-changing and would have an impact on everybody. It is useful to have that extra daylight at the end of the evening to do whatever one wants to do.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
The crucial thing is: will we save lives by changing the hours at which daylight starts and daylight ends? We should check that and the only way we can do so is to give this a trial, 40 years on from the previous one. If we save one life by changing our clocks, it is worth it.
Mr Ellwood
My hon. Friend makes one of the most powerful points for this argument, and it cannot be refuted by any Member or any person in any part of the country. Lives will be saved, as they have been proven to have been saved, through the clock change. Let me further the argument on how our lives will change. Schoolchildren would also benefit if we transferred that hour of light from the morning to the afternoon. In London, they would benefit from 233 hours of available extra daylight between 4.30 pm and either sunset or bedtime taken at 8.30 pm. That is 233 hours when activity could take place, after-school events could happen and, as my hon. Friend just mentioned, people could travel far more safely than they are able to do when it is dark.
Those arguments are also why Help the Aged says that it wants this change. At the moment, darkness acts as a guillotine on when the elderly are out; as soon as it gets dark, they lock the doors and close up shop. They are denied the opportunity to spend time in the town centre doing recreational activities or working in the garden—darkness comes and that is it.
Mr Reid
We had an experiment in the 1960s and there was no clear outcome in the studies of the road accident statistics. The Home Secretary of the day, Reginald Maudling, said:
“The figures are not clear enough to base a decision upon.” —[Official Report, 2 December 1970; Vol. 807, c. 1335.]
So we have had the experiment and no clear figures emerged, because of other factors, such as breathalysers, seat belts and so on. Another experiment would simply result in the same unclear figure.
Mr Ellwood
Let us just focus on that debate for a moment. Reginald Maudling did make those comments, but he also read out some statistics that showed that the number of deaths and injuries decreased during the period of the trial. What actually happened, as has been confirmed by colleagues who are now in another place, is that the farming industry—that powerful lobby—pressurised many Conservative MPs by saying, “If you want those precious poster sites in our fields for the general election, you must vote against this.” That is one of the reasons why many chose to follow their heart rather than their head and said, “ We should oppose this motion.” The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, which is why we are calling for more information. We are encouraging the Government to examine the matter more closely, leading up to a trial.
Mr MacNeil
I am intrigued by that last contribution. Has the hon. Gentleman uncovered corruption in the Conservative party 40 years ago?
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.
Naomi Long
I wrote to Translink, the main public transport provider in Northern Ireland, in relation to this debate and it took the contrary view. Translink said that if it were darker in the mornings, when the rush hour is much more concentrated in Northern Ireland, that could lead to more accidents than if it were darker in the afternoon, when the rush hour is more staggered. The hon. Gentleman can talk about his evidence, but other professionals in the field see things slightly differently.
Mr Ellwood
I looked carefully at the statistics for Northern Ireland, because it is important to include all parts of the United Kingdom, but I am afraid that I did not recognise those statistics that the hon. Lady cited. I would be happy to speak to her about them after this debate. It is important that we get these issues right. A lot of statistics have been thrown around today and were the Government to push this proposal forward, it would be important for them to carry out their own study and present that to Parliament.
A reduction in crime has also been mentioned in relation to this proposal. The Home Office British crime survey has indicated that a clock change would lead to a 3% reduction in vandalism and petty theft. The right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) raised the health and well-being issue, and people are happier and more energetic in the longer and brighter days. Conversely, our mood and spirit declines, and sickness rates increase, during the shorter, duller days. On average, we enjoy about four hours’ spare time a day—that is time when we are not working, travelling to work or sleeping—yet three of those hours are experienced after sunset. That suggests that we are not aligning our lives properly. There is also a 60% increase in the level of television watching when it gets dark, so there is strong evidence to support a clock change. I can see that you are looking at me, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I just wish to touch on some other issues.
Mr Ellwood
I will not give way for now and I shall make some more progress, because Mr Deputy Speaker is giving me that look. Obesity—this has nothing to do with looking back at Mr Deputy Speaker—is an issue with which we need to be concerned in the UK. About 25% of the nation are now clinically obese, which is costing the NHS about £2.3 billion a year. Some 50% of the population in Scotland are predicted to be obese by 2050 unless something changes, such as our providing a greater period in which outdoor activities can take place after school and after work.
The tourism argument has been well made, but I just put on the record the fact that I support the call by the Tourism Alliance for a clock change. The arguments about CO2 emissions have also been put forward; in those terms, the clock change would result in the equivalent of more than 200,000 cars being taken off our roads. That is a major issue and I am pleased that the concept behind the Bill is receiving the support of the Chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee.
Mr Ellwood
My right hon. Friend makes an important point, which is is worth expanding on. All fuel bills would go down by about 5%, and as fuel poverty is a concern, that is a relevant issue. We need to recognise that we are an importer of electricity. When there is a spike in demand, either we have to buy it in from places such as France or our easy-to-start-up coal-fired power stations come on line. They are dirty and they increase our carbon dioxide emissions. By reducing our net requirement by about 2.2%, we would remove the need to resort to those nasty, dirty coal-fired power stations.
Malcolm Bruce
The hon. Gentleman is quoting evidence very convincingly, so I shall quote some evidence:
“National Grid has also recognised that if the UK is on the same time as France, a loss of capacity or severe weather”
would push up energy prices here because we would be competing with France for our needs at the same time.
Mr Ellwood
The right hon. Gentleman’s point is now on the record.
We need to ensure that we do not resort to using coal-fired power stations, and that aim can be achieved through the clock change.
Ben Gummer
The right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) has just raised an important point about capacity, but that is entirely to do with generating capacity—an inheritance from the previous Government, I am afraid—and nothing to do with daylight saving time.
Mr Ellwood
I am grateful for that clarification.
A time change would bring huge benefits for business and overseas trade. As part of my work as the shadow Tourism Minister I spent some time in Scotland and it was interesting to meet Scottish business people, who were very keen to have an alignment of timing. Currently, 62% of our exports and 50% of imports are within Europe. When we go to work, the Europeans have already been at work for an hour, we break for lunch at different times so two hours are lost there and then we lose another hour in the evening. Four hours a day are lost because of the failure to align our times.
One might say that that is where the idea of Berlin time came from. Let me say a word about Mr Peter Hitchens.
Mr Nuttall
This might already have been mentioned, but is it not more accurate to refer to it as Gibraltar time?
Mr Ellwood
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. He has been a passionate supporter of a clock change for some time.
But let us get back to Peter Hitchens. He is one of the few voices that are against the daylight saving, but I believe that he now acts as a drag anchor against that great British newspaper the Sunday mail—[Interruption.] —I am sorry; The Mail on Sunday. He is anti-change; he is anti-technology, so he abhors the idea of moving the clocks. That is slightly odd. Because he does not like inventions and technology, one would have thought that using the light bulb less might appeal to him, but he does not put that argument forward. He would rather put forward a wartime rhetoric with references to Berlin time to foster prejudice against the Bill.
“Why Berlin time?” it has been asked. “Why not Gibraltar time, Madrid time, Paris time or Rome time?” Clearly, those descriptions would not conjure up the same worrying image as the UK crumbling to the mighty powers of Berlin after the sacrifices that we made in two world wars. I say to him, “Peter, you are potty. Clearly, you are a very, very angry man and stuck in the past. You are a cross between Alf Garnett and Victor Meldrew but without the jokes.” He is a restless regressive: the King Canute of politics, fighting the tide of change. He will never lose sight of the past because he has chosen to walk backwards into the future. This is nothing to do with Berlin or wartime images. The only connection with the war is the fact that we first adopted a time change during the war because it was useful. [Hon. Members: “Churchill time!”] Yes, that is what we will call it—not Berlin time but Churchill time!
To summarise, moving the clocks forward would provide the entire country with about 200 hours of extra daylight in the evenings—after a normal working day for adults and after the end of school for children. That would change our lives. It is hard to imagine a more simple, cost-effective piece of legislation that would more dramatically change our way of life for the better. Sunshine brightens our day, our lives and our spirits; it makes our world happier. We should utilise this valuable resource to coincide with the period of the day in which our modern world is at its busiest and most dangerous. Carpe diem, Mr Deputy Speaker; let us seize the day.
Mr Ellwood
We went to some lengths to ensure that the Bill benefits not constituencies but the whole of the UK, and paid attention to Scotland specifically. Let me take the hon. Gentleman back to the debate that Scottish Members had last week. I think it was the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) who commented that the previous Prime Minister, who is from Scotland, had said that this would be good for Britain and for Scotland.
Gordon Banks
I do not want to argue or disagree with the hon. Gentleman. If he bears with me, my position will become a little clearer.
Gordon Banks
I think it is important for the Opposition to identify some of the problems that a number of people outside the House, as well as a number of Members, have with the Bill. However, I believe that there is a solution to those problems, and I believe that that solution is in the Bill.
Let me now make our position a little less fuzzy, for the benefit of the hon. Member for Bournemouth East. Although we have some unanswered questions, it is fair to say that there is a strong argument in favour of analysis and more detailed scrutiny. I shall say more shortly about the problems that are envisaged. However, as we believe that scrutiny of the Bill and its objectives would be carried out most effectively in Committee, we will not oppose its Second Reading today.
The Bill’s approach broadly mirrors that of the National Farmers Union of Scotland and Visit Scotland. They, like us, welcome the debate on the issues, but have yet to develop a firm viewpoint on the potential viability of the changes. We reserve our judgment on the Bill until there has been a thorough and detailed assessment of its effects. Indeed, I believe that that is the Bill’s objective.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris), who said in the recent Adjournment debate that the benefits to Scotland were “unquantifiable in advance.” Let me take that a step further, and say that at this stage the risks may also be unquantifiable. That is why we will not oppose the Bill’s progress to Committee, where those risks and benefits can be explored more fully.