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Dept of Trade and Industry

Answer

Mr. Dhanda: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what assessment she has made of the (a) economic and (b) safety impact of the biannual time change. [201794] Mr. Sutcliffe: A European Directive harmonises the dates when summer time begins and ends across EC member states as the last Sundays in March and October respectively, and each member state is obliged to move their clocks by one hour at 1.00 am GMT on that date. The purpose of the Directive is to assist planning by ensuring uniformity in summer time dates across the community, thus removing uncertainty for industry and the public in general about Summer Time dates across EC member states. Given these arrangements, the Government have not undertaken any research specifically addressing the economic or safety impacts of the biannual time change, other than as part of the consultation document published in June 1989 ("Summer Time--A Consultation Document" (Cm 722), which set out the more important arguments and facts about existing summer time arrangements and proposals for change in terms of their economic and social effects, and which concluded that the issues revolved around the basis of opinion and judgment rather than any balance sheet of gains and losses. In addition, the Department for Transport has previously commissioned the Transport Research Laboratory to update and refine earlier research on the possible impact of the adoption of Central European time on the number of road accident casualties. The results were published on 14 October 1998.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

201794; 428 c584W

Session

2004-05

Subjects

EU law Summertime

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk