Is it time to lighten our darkness?
When David Cameron led his shadow cabinet out of London last week in pursuit of support in northern England and Scotland, did he tell voters there that one of his MPs will this week seek to deprive them of their daylight on these dark winter mornings?
On Friday, Tim Yeo, the MP for Suffolk South, will introduce a private member's Bill proposing a three-year experiment in moving the clocks forward by an hour so that the UK is on the same time as most of continental Europe. In winter we would be one hour ahead of GMT and in the summer two hours ahead.
Over the past 15 years or so, we have had umpteen attempts in both the Commons and the Lords to effect this change, or something like it, to wit: the Lighter Evenings Experiment Bill; The Lighter Evenings Bill; Extension to Summer Time Bill; Time Zone and Summer Time Devolution Bill; British Time (Extra Daylight) Bill; Western European Time Bill; Central European Time Bill; and Summertime (Amendment) Bill. They all failed. I like, in particular, the "extra daylight" measure. We do not get extra daylight by passing a law; we make different use of the existing daylight.
Why should Mr Yeo's Energy Saving (Daylight) Bill escape the same fate as its predecessors? It probably won't, but it has two things going for it: its opponents can be accused of not doing enough to save the planet from global warming, and it is second on the annual list of balloted backbench measures.
This gives it a greater than usual chance of becoming law. Although it does not have Government support – which is crucial to the success of private members' Bills, because of timetabling constraints – ministers could always think again if the tide of public opinion ran strongly with its sponsors.
A recent YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph indicated a clear majority for the idea. Only in Scotland – which would suffer most from the dark winter mornings – was there wholesale opposition. But with the Union such a live issue, should the Scottish tail continue to wag the English dog?
I was at school during the last such experiment, known as British Standard Time, which operated between 1968 and 1971. It involved keeping the clocks one hour ahead of GMT throughout the year and, even living as far south as Kent, the mornings were miserably dark and long during the winter.
Children were issued with fluorescent armbands to make sure we weren't mowed down crossing the roads. Funnily enough, I cannot recall being grateful for having an extra hour of daylight at the end of the day, presumably because it was dark by 5.30pm anyway in winter and made no difference in summer.
The experiment was scrapped by the Commons at the first opportunity on a free vote by 361 to 81. It had proved hugely unpopular, not just in Scotland but in northern England, north Wales and Northern Ireland, too. Between November 26 and February 1, the sun did not rise until after 9am anywhere north of Manchester. In the 35 years since, nothing has changed. Britain has not sunk further south or moved further east. There is no more light to be used than there was then, so why does almost every year bring another attempt in Parliament to make this change?
The arguments and counter-arguments have been well rehearsed.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents claims that the adoption of single-double summer time would result in 100 fewer road deaths; yet my recollection of the last experiment is that it resulted in more fatalities among children going to school.
Farmers and builders are said to prefer lighter evenings, though not in the north, and proponents say we would have more time for leisure and sport, yet this mostly takes place in the summer when we already have plenty of daylight, unlike continental countries further south.
Of course, the European Commission wants to eradicate differences within the EU, though why Warsaw should be on the same time as London when the sun rises in Poland more than an hour earlier I don't understand. Ireland and Portugal are on the same time as us because they are as far west. The Portuguese, in fact, moved on to Central European Time (CET) in the 1990s and moved back again within three years because they all felt so miserable.
It is often said that businesses are inconvenienced by the time difference, but it does not stop them working with companies in New York or Tokyo. Oddly, Mr Yeo's Bill would allow a separate vote by the Scottish Parliament, opening up the prospect of a different time zone north of the border and introducing precisely the problem between England and Scotland that the measure seeks to eradicate between the UK and the Continent.
The fact is that for every argument in favour of the move there is a counter-argument just as powerful. However, is Mr Yeo on to something by linking his proposals to "energy saving"? He says it could reduce UK carbon emissions by three per cent and cites a study by Cambridge University that compared energy use in the week before and after the change of clocks in the spring.
However, a study by the Building Research Establishment, admittedly 15 years old but often quoted by ministers, found that a move to CET would increase UK lighting energy consumption by one per cent. The reason for this is human nature: if the mornings were darker for longer, people in offices would turn on lights and leave them on.
Perhaps things have improved, with more lights programmed to switch off automatically and people more aware of the consequences of not turning them off. But even on the question of saving energy there are disagreements. You can be sure that if we did move to CET, every year some MP or peer would introduce a private member's Bill trying to move us back again.
Given the history of this issue, Mr Yeo's is unlikely to be the last attempt to change our clocks. The question then arises: is there any carbon offsetting to be had from flogging a dead horse?