Daylight Saving Bill — Clause 1 — Report To Consider Advancing Summer Time Only — 20 Jan 2012 at 11:44

The majority of MPs voted against restricting consideration of changes to time in the UK to "advancing the period of summer time in the UK by an hour", as opposed to advancing time by an hour throughout the year. The debate showed there was lack of clarity as to what the effect of the rejected amendment would have been.

MPs were considering the Daylight Saving Bill^[1]. The amendment rejected in this vote was:

• Amendment 59, page 1, line 3, leave out
• ‘the time for general purposes’
• and insert
• ‘the period of summer time (within the meaning of the Summer Time Act 1972)’.

Had it not been rejected this would have taken effect on Clause 1 of the Bill^[2] which at the time of the vote stated:

• Report to be prepared on advancing time
• (1) The Secretary of State must prepare a report on the potential costs and benefits of advancing the time for general purposes in the United Kingdom by one hour.
• (2) In preparing the report the Secretary of State must have regard to the different interests of persons in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
• (3) In this Act “the report" means the report required to be prepared under this section.

If the amendment had been accepted subclause (1) would have become:

• (1) The Secretary of State must prepare a report on the potential costs and benefits of advancing the period of summer time (within the meaning of the Summer Time Act 1972) in the United Kingdom by one hour.

The Summer Time Act 1972 states summer time is one hour in advance of Greenwich mean time. The period of summer time is defined in that act as the period beginning at one o’clock, Greenwich mean time, in the morning of the last Sunday in March and ending at one o’clock, Greenwich mean time, in the morning of the last Sunday in October.^[3]

Advancing the "period" of summer time by one hour as the amendment literally refers to would mean considering delaying the onset of summer time by an hour and continuing it for an hour after it would otherwise have ceased. Such an advance in the "period" would have relatively little consequence and was probably not what was intended to be referred to.

During the debate Christopher Chope MP (Christchurch, Conservative), who moved the amendment, stated:^[4]

My amendment 59, which would confine the experiment to extending British summer time by 1 hour rather than interfering with Greenwich meantime in the winter, would address the area that has the greatest potential benefit and which is most likely to increase the number of jobs.

It appears from that his intention was actually to limit the scope of the report to making British summer time two hours ahead of GMT, rather than the current one, and not to consider also advancing GMT by an hour.

Edward Davey MP (Kingston and Surbiton, Liberal Democrat) interpreted the amendment in a different way, he thought it related to extending the period of the year over which summer time applies stating^[5]:

• I should like to speak to the lead amendment in this group, amendment 59, which seeks to turn the Bill into a summer time extension Bill by changing the dates on which summer time ends

The mover of the motion sought to respond but Edward Davey would not allow him to^[6].

==

• [1] Parliament's webpage on the Daylight Saving Bill
• [2] Clause 1 of the Daylight Saving Bill as at the time of the vote
• [3] Clause 1 of the Summer Time Act 1972
• [4] Christopher Chope MP (Christchurch, Conservative), House of Commons, 20 January 2012
• [5] Edward Davey MP (Kingston and Surbiton, Liberal Democrat), House of Commons, 20 January 2012
• [6] Christopher Chope MP (Christchurch, Conservative), House of Commons, 20 January 2012

Debate in Parliament | Source |