HL Deb 19 June 1967 vol 283 cc1249-62

6.53 p.m.

LORD RAGLAN rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are yet in a position to announce a decision on the adoption of Summer Time throughout the year. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name, and I very much hope that by the time I sit down your Lordships will not think that I have been too long about it. I apologise for the wording of the Question—one cannot, of course, have Summer Time all the year round—but it was a short way of describing the permanent advance of the clock by one hour on Greenwich Mean Time, and I hope that your Lordships, especially the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, will forgive me. I put this down as an Unstarred Question because in addition to giving good reasons, as I think, for a permanent change, I thought it would be useful and relevant if I gave those of your Lordships who do not already know it some history of how Summer Time came to be instituted.

It was first thought of by Mr. William Willett, who was a builder in London and Brighton. He was a man of energy and ability who, with his father, was responsible for some of the best housing developments of his day, including the layout, design and construction of much of the Cadogan Estate round Sloane Square. The idea of Summer Time apparently came to him first on one of his early morning rides when he noticed how many of the blinds were still down in the houses which he passed. If, he said to himself, the occupants thought it was eight o'clock and not seven o'clock, they would be up and about and enjoying the early morning with him. But he knew them to be so obedient to the clock that the only way to get them up was not to exhort them to rise earlier but simply to alter the clock.

So full of enthusiasm did he become about the idea that he set about canvassing all the influential people he knew, and in 1908 a Bill called the Daylight Saving Bill was laid before the House of Commons and found its way to a Select Committee. It is interesting, I think, that although the idea was originally to get people up earlier in the morning, the sponsors and supporters of the Bill were concerned mainly with the extra hour of daylight to be gained at the end of the day. The Select Committee took evidence from more than forty witnesses, including industrialists, trade unionists, chambers of commerce, the Post Office, the railways, the Astronomer Royal of the Cape of Good Hope, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sir Arthur, I am glad to inform your Lordships, was in favour of the Bill. So were the trade unions and the chambers of commerce. The railways did not mind, except those which had connections with France; and the Post Office were rather against it for the same reason, that it made things awkward with the French mail. The Horological Institute, even in those days, were in favour of a permanent change because it was bad for the clocks to keep adjusting them.

Schemes were considered for altering the clock on three successive Sundays at twenty-minute intervals or on two Sundays at thirty-minute intervals; and there was evidence about all sorts of times, such as mean time, sidereal time, apparent solar time, navigation and so on. To any of your Lordships interested in the subject, I greatly recommend a look at that Committee's proceedings. I found much to instruct and amuse, including the fact that the chairman was at one time under the impression that altering the clock by one hour might deprive us altogether of one hour of daylight. Eventually, they reported to the House in favour of a change of one hour between April and September, giving five cogent reasons, as they thought; but the Bill was slung out.

It was promoted again in 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913 and 1914. No one can say that Mr. Willett and the promoters did not try, but they were always vehemently opposed. The Bill was called foolish, vexatious, uncalled for and a stupid joke, and there was talk about the disruption of national life. One Member said that it was being smuggled through Parliament by a rich and influential faction with a hobby, and the vast majority of people will turn to that other place and say, 'Thank God there is a House of Lords, who will again rescue us from the foolish legislation of the House of Commons'". Another said: Never in my wildest dreams when I came into this House did I imagine that its time would be wasted considering a Bill of this description.

However, while our Parliament were arguing about it Mr. Willett had the satisfaction of seeing his idea adopted by France, Germany, Holland and Austria-Hungary. He died in 1915, a year before the Government, when the late Lord Samuel was Home Secretary, put it through Parliament as a war measure for the saving of fuel; and I am glad to say that there were no objections from your Lordships. It was not promoted as the Daylight Saving Bill but as the Summer Time Bill, and the name has remained. As your Lordships will know, a further measure was introduced in the last war, for the same reasons as in the first, and we had the clock advanced by one hour on Greenwich Mean Time through the winter and Double Summer Time through the summer.

My Lords, the usual arguments against a permanent advance of the clock—and some of them were given by Sir Alan Herbert in an article in The Times of May 6—are that G.M.T. is a sacrosanct relic of our imperial past; that the genuine twelve o'clock midday, about which there is some magic, should not be tampered with; and that if people want an earlier morning or more daylight in the evening they should get up earlier. However, noon Greenwich Mean Time is not necessarily the time that the sun is at its highest over Greenwich. Because of the way the earth wobbles about, noon by the sundial may come as much as a quarter of an hour either side of noon G.M.T. If you add that to the fact that, by the way the sun flies, London is twenty minutes from Penzance, real noon at Penzance may come, as I understand it, thirty-five minutes after mean time noon over Greenwich. So we time ourselves by a compromise time measured from an observatory whose location was, anyway, accidental; and we accept this arbitrariness and inaccuracy for the sake of a uniform time throughout the country for the convenience of starting factories, catching trains, measuring working hours and a host of other things. It used not to be so. Different cities kept different times—and very awkward it was.

My Lords, it should be obvious—I am sure it is to your Lordships—that timekeeping is useful only so long as everybody knows what time it is and can keep in step. It is, I think your Lordships will agree, a very useful invention. It is now a convention which we have all grown accustomed to observe. As Sir Herbert Samuel said when he moved the Summer Time Bill, by altering the clock you are not changing what you are actually doing but the name of the hour at which you are doing it. Nobody, so far as I know, suggests doing away with G.M.T.; the real suggestion is that we regulate our lives differently in relation to G.M.T.

This brings me almost to my last point. It has been said that it is our national morning lethargy which makes people want the change; but I do not think that that is so. Our office hours, I believe, have not changed much this last fifty years; although factory workers, I am glad to say, work fewer hours than they used to. It is simply that the time for getting up and starting work came to be fixed at a time at which it is light all the year round, and this is possibly—although I do not know this—a left-over from our mainly agricultural past. On the darkest morning in London, which is around December 30—not the winter solstice, but at December 30—it starts to get light at round about 7.30 a.m. to 7.45 a.m. or at about 8.30 a.m. in Glasgow.

Advancing the clock one hour through the winter would mean that, taking the darkest mornings, which are about a fortnight either side of December 30, it would not get light on a dull morning until about 8.30 o'clock in London and about 9.15 o'clock in Glasgow. But it would be for only a month that we should have to bear that rather dismal state of affairs. For October, November, February and March, I think, the great majority of the working population would not notice much difference in the mornings than hitherto, and all the time they would have the tremendous gain of that extra hour of light in the evenings. To put that one hour of daylight where, for most of the year, it would be of most use, I think would be worth that inconvenient month when one would have to get up and leave home in the dark.

I understand that there would be a useful saving in light and fuel costs, and it has been suggested that the change would reduce accidents and crime—although we should have to see whether it would. It would abolish that tiresome and irritating twice-yearly clock change to which so many people find it difficult to adjust themselves. It is a lot easier to adjust clocks than people. Finally, my Lords, there is the matter of "going Continental" and keeping up with the French. I am not sure myself how important this is; although one of the original objections to Summer Time was that it would upset trade with the Continent. But as we are trying to join the Common Market, keeping our clocks to mid-European time—and they themselves have no intention of changing their clocks to suit us—would be a friendly gesture as well as a practical one. Business friends tell me that it is tedious doing business with France in the winter. Postal services and train connections would be simpler to co-ordinate.

In the end, however desirable it may be that our clocks should co-ordinate with the Continent, it is the effect on our national life which I think should be considered first. If the change made life more difficult or the hours of daylight ridiculous in relation to our hours of work, then the move ought not to be made. As it is, I think the effect will be quite the contrary and, far from making life more difficult, would make it more pleasant. Therefore it is to be thoroughly recommended. I hope that the Government will have some encouraging news about it this evening. Public opinion in the last few years has moved a long way in favour of this change.

7.5 p.m.

LORD MOYNIHAN

My Lords, it is basically Lord Raglan's last point which has led me to speak this evening in support of his Question. It is the question of going into Europe. The change which has been suggested may be a small and an insignificant one; but it does eliminate one more seemingly totally unnecessary difference between us and what we on these Benches hope (and, I believe, what generally everybody in the House now hopes) will be our future relationship with Europe. We are getting decimal currency and doing away, I hope, with our avoirdupois and, possibly, even our driving on the left. These are all steps towards getting into the Common Market, and I am sure they will be received in the right spirit in Europe.

There has been a substantial swing in public opinion on this point since 1960, as there has been a swing in public opinion about going into Europe altogether. I feel that public opinion is now ready for this measure. There have been many social changes in this country, all of them I think desirable, and in the working habits of our countrymen. There is more leisure these days than there used to be and people tend to rise later and go to bed later than they used to do. The possible exception to this state of affairs is, of course, those who do shift work; but since shift work virtually kills the clock altogether I do not think there is any argument to be brought on that score.

I come now to the great importance of telephone communications between this country and Europe. It is wonderful that now on the new S.T.D. system we can dial Germany and France and various other places. This is to be applauded. However, there is still the most disastrous system of telephone communications between this country and Southern Europe. I am speaking in particular of Spain. I do quite a lot of business with Spain. It is not unusual for me to get into my office at 10 o'clock and try to place a telephone call to Madrid; and by the time I get through to Madrid they have gone to lunch—where they stay, as your Lordships know, for some four hours. I place the call again; but by the time it comes through they have gone home. I can assure your Lordships that this has happened to me on occasions, as I am sure it has happened to many other people in this country when they have been trying to do business with Southern Europe. This has nothing to do with the question; but a serious look ought to be taken at our telephone communications with Southern Europe which surely could be improved.

I will not linger on the obvious complexities (on which the noble Lord, Lord Raglan, touched) of the bi-annual change, the change in routine for the farmers and, indeed, for all of us which really seems to be totally unnecessary and a very great nuisance. It is not necessary—because it is not sufficiently important—to do more than touch on the question of the production of diaries, which has been dealt with so often when this subject has been raised before both in this House and in the other place. It is obviously extremely difficult to produce diaries on a year-to-year basis when nobody knows when Summer Time will come in and when it will go out.

I should like briefly to talk about the time when I was in Saudi Arabia, because I think this point has a bearing on the question of differences in time generally. In Jeddah there are four major, different times running simultaneously in the same city. There is what is known as "Palace time", the time by which the palace and the staff of the monarch operate; there is a different time (some two hours different from the Palace time) known as "British Embassy time", which is in some rather obscure way connected with Greenwich Mean Time, although I am not entirely sure how; there is religious time, at which all the Mohammedan mullahs operate and read their prayers, and there is Army time, which the military observe. There is a maximum of five hours difference between these four times at any one moment. For example, it may be one o'clock in the afternoon Palace time and six o'clock at night religious time, and the people in Saudi Arabia really do not know whether they are coming or going—I mean, of course, so far as time is concerned.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, obviously this was before the war.

LORD MOYNIHAN

Nowadays, at least until the war, a fifth time was observed in Saudi Arabia—Pan-American Airways time, which seems to be a compromise, at least by all English-speaking people staying in the country.

Your Lordships may think this a flippant diversion from the point, but it illustrates, surely, the importance of everybody in the same country or in the same area working on the same time. I know that no Member of your Lordships' House would say that we are in the same country as Continental Europe, yet; but we are in the same area, in the same group, and we do a great deal of business with Europe every day. We are not in a different longitude. The difference in time from one longtitude to another obviously must be observed, but we are on the same longitude as Europe and it is only a left-over, possibly, as was suggested by the noble Lord, from our colonial past that keeps us on Greenwich Mean Time when the rest of Europe is not.

I would conclude by saying that we have all—at least, I speak for myself—been very sad to see a 10 per cent. increase in the electricity bills recently, and there is no doubt that this proposal would save perhaps 5 per cent. of the electricity consumed by ordinary families. We on these Benches are always happy to support anything which would bring us more into line with Continental Europe, and I feel that, however insignificant this step may be, even so it is one step, even if a short one, in the right direction.

7.14 p.m.

LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD

My Lords, I agree with the points which the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, has made about the benefit with regard to our relationships with Europe if we could have the same uniform time system as they have in Europe; and of course it is true to say that time is our own invention. It is there to serve us as human beings, and it is up to us to adjust the system in the way that will suit us best. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Raglan, for introducing the subject in such an interesting way and for giving us the history, with which I am bound to say I was not familiar, though I can vaguely remember the original Daylight Saving Bill being introduced in 1915 or 1916. My old friend Sir Alan Herbert indoctrinates me regularly on this subject and tells me how monstrous it is that any change should be even contemplated. When I am with him I find him very convincing, but I cannot afterwards remember his arguments—which may be as well because they might keep us here for a long time.

My Lords, there are two points on which I should like some information. I do not know what are the intentions of the Government, but there are two traditional objections to a change to which I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will address himself in any comments he may make on the subject. The first is the problem of electricity generation. In the past the electricity boards have produced a substantial objection against a longer lighting period in the mornings which would exacerbate the problem of the morning peak load and cause intolerable difficulties in a cold snap in the middle of winter. Has the capacity of our generating stations, and indeed the distribution system, so improved that this objection may now be overcome? The second and I suppose the most substantial objection to making a change has been the objection by the farmers. The arguments which have been put in such an interesting manner and so convincingly to us have been the arguments of townsmen. The farmers do not like to have the day start an hour later, or, let us say, an hour earlier, so far as darkness is concerned. The noble Lord, Lord Raglan, said that in the middle of December it is usually getting light in London by 7.30, but it is much nearer 8 o'clock, and on an overcast morning it would be pretty well 8 o'clock before you began to get much light. On the farm the work has to be done outside, and it is about then that men can start working.

LORD RAGLAN

My Lords may I correct the noble Lord? I am not a townsman, I am a farmer, and my men would far prefer to have the change.

LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD

I know that the noble Lord, Lord Raglan, has extensive estates in South Wales, and I am aware of the strong farming interest he has always had; but the arguments he put were townsmen's arguments. In the town it makes very little difference whether you start an hour later—that is to say, if we were to have Summer Time right through the year—because modern lighting systems are so good. The streets are all illuminated; public transport is lighted, and the change would make little difference. But it would still make a difference in the country. It is true that on the farms most stock-keeping is now intensive; it is carried on in buildings which are lit by electricity, so that a number of farmworkers can start work straight away at 7 o'clock—or indeed at 6 o'clock if they wish. But there are still a certain number of men who have to work outside, especially on the smaller farms. There is no doubt that they would be seriously inconvenienced by an extra hour of darkness in the morning.

The problem does not stop with the farmers and the farmworkers: there is the question of children going to school. If we have Summer Time all through the year it will mean that in the winter it will not be light until about a quarter to nine in the morning, so the children will have to start off for school in darkness. There are no street lights in the villages, and the children will not like that; which will mean that their "mums" will have to take them; and they will not like that either. These are quite serious practical problems in the villages. The extension of Summer Time may be a case of pro bono publico and something that we ought to do. Certainly the arguments about Europe appeal to me very strongly, and I think they matter very much indeed. I hope to see us going into Europe, and I feel that we should clear away these technical problems as fast as we can. Nevertheless, we should make the point that a change would cause inconvenience in the villages and on the farms. These are the traditional arguments which in the past have always been regarded as so substantial that the change has not been made. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will at least acknowledge that there is still great force in the arguments which have to be weighed against the very strong arguments for making a change.

7.20 p.m.

THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM)

My Lords, I expect your Lordships will share my joy in the fact that we have emerged from the darkness of the debate on tunnels to the light which has been introduced by my noble friend Lord Raglan, and also my pleasure in my noble friend's exposition of his case and the fact that, although his experience is all agricultural, he could be accused of presenting a case for the townsman.

I regret that the Government are not yet in a position to make an announcement, although we hope shortly to do so in the light of inquiries that we are making and which have just been completed. My noble friend Lord Raglan gave us an interesting account of the long history of the struggle of William Willett, and of the regrettable fact that he did not live to see his life's ambition achieved in this country, though it did come in other countries of Europe.

I will not pursue the history of it, but will begin by saying that the present position is governed by the Summer Time Order, 1964, which fixed the period for the three years up to 1967 and provided for an extension of four weeks in the spring and three weeks in the autumn, so that this year the period runs from March 19 to October 29—that is, nearly two-thirds of the entire year. This Order was made in the light of extensive inquiries made in 1960 by the then Government. The inquiries showed that of the organisations consulted, there was an almost even division between those who wanted permanent Summer Time and those who did not. The latter included a number of special interests—those of agriculture, electricity, coal and the schools, to three of which the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, has referred.

I should think that I was one of the youngest and earliest adherents of Mr. Willett's cause. As a small boy, I spent many months on a farm. There my hero was the cowman. We did not have Summer Time then, and whatever the time of the year, the cowman rose at five o'clock by the light of a small piece of candle. I also used to rise with him, and he would send me to fetch up the cows—a very interesting task in winter. I went out with a little piece of candle in a lantern down to the field, and I only knew that the cows were coming up by the sound of the squelching of their hocks coming out of the mud and by the warmth of their bodies in the cold of the morning. I conducted them to the cow shed, where in due course they were milked. Of course, for months in the year they were milked before it began to be light. It struck me then, even as a small boy, that this was extraordinary. The farmer did not sell the milk, but made it into butter, and it did not matter at all what time the cows were milked.

The noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, put forward the case for agriculture. I member these objections when Summer Time was started. We had real time and Summer Time in the country, and the farmers went by their own time. But we do not hear about that now, though there remains a real objection. The noble Lord also spoke about electricity. The electricity generating industry hope to have sufficient power to meet an enhanced morning peak by the winter of next year, 1968. With regard to the schools, it is true that in some areas there has been a real difficulty, but it is one which will not be insurmountable. We had Double Summer Time in 1947 and had to adjust times to meet the situation, and no doubt adjustments can be made.

In general, it seems that not all the difficulties foreseen by these interests in 1960 have necessarily persisted. The 1964 Order, which extends Summer Time to virtually the whole of the spring and the autumn, was therefore regarded partly as a holding operation and partly as an experiment, since it gave an opportunity to judge public reaction to a more than ordinary extension of this kind. There is little doubt that the extension itself has been well received. There has been no suggestion from any quarter that it is not. Very few people would now wish us to revert to the limited statutory period of Summer Time laid down in the Acts of 1922 and 1925. But the question remains whether we ought now to go further, or indeed the whole way, by adopting Summer Time throughout the year, so as to conform with the time observed by our Continental neighbours, with whom our contacts both commercially and socially are all the time becoming closer.

My noble friend Lord Raglan, in reference to the Common Market, said that this would be a friendly and practical suggestion. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said that it would eliminate one more seemingly totally unnecessary difference. He ventured other suggestions, though I felt that when he got as far as Saudi Arabia that was a little off the Question we are considering, though his remarks were very interesting. Nobody would pretend that this is an easy question. The position of this country on the North-Western seaboard of Europe means that winter days tend to be shorter here than in most Continental countries, and that even where they are not dawn comes later. In a recent article in the Financial Times, it was pointed out that with an all-the-year-round Summer Time, on New Year's day Glasgow would see daylight two hours later than Rome.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

My Lords, I do not think that it would matter on New Year's day.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, the noble Viscount is far too quick on the uptake. He has spoiled my point. I was going to say that nobody ever sees the dawn in Glasgow on New Year's day. Seriously, for geographical reasons alone, the circumstances in London and the South-East are not identical with those of other areas further to the North or West. Again, the needs of the urban and rural communities are not necessarily the same—yet most of us now are town dwellers, and the time system we live under was fixed when Britain was still largely a rural community. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that this is an important matter, which affects every individual in some degree, at work, in the home, or at leisure, and individual circumstances and preferences are bound to differ very widely. It is certain that whatever decision the Government reach, it will he unpopular in many quarters. The matter has to be examined both from the economic and from the social standpoints in an endeavour to see what course is in the best interests, and likely to prove most acceptable, to the country as a whole.

This is what we have been trying to do. We have not attempted in our recent inquiries to cover all the ground pre- viously traversed in 1960, but to bring the findings up-to-date, to assess the effects of new developments since then, and to see how far representative opinion—in both the social and economic fields—may have shifted in one direction or another. And having done this, the decision has now to be taken. I think I may promise your Lordships that you will not be kept long in suspense. But having explained the background of our inquiries, and their nature, it would he premature for me to enter into any further details at this time. One assurance that I can give your Lordships is that if the decision were to introduce permanent Summer Time this would require legislation. It could not, therefore, be done precipitately, and there would be the fullest opportunity for the issue to be debated in both Houses. In the meanwhile, I can only ask your Lordships to remain patient for just a little longer.