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Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have listened to various speakers, but do not think that anyone has grabbed hold of the fundamental fact that there is only so much daylight. We are therefore talking simply about the management of daylight and patterns of behaviour—how we want to use what is available and what changes we are prepared to make to get benefits from it. Nor has anyone hit on the fact that the further north you go in the winter, the fewer hours of daylight there are, and that Aberdeen, where I spent several years, will not have the benefits enjoyed in London. The fact is that there is not as much light there, whether one plays around with the hours forwards, backwards or sideways. The same is also true the other way round. I suggest to the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, that having floodlights on a tennis court in the north-east of Scotland is a waste of time because one could probably play tennis there by natural light at 10   o’clock at night anyway. The light there is very good. So there are winners and losers as we play around with the system. One of the problems with the Bill is that it suggests that there would be different time zones north and south of the Scottish border and east and west of the Welsh border, which would create an immense amount of trouble for small groups of people who cross those borders every day. That is probably the greatest flaw in the Bill. Moreover, let us face it; the noble Lord is trying to square a circle. There are pros and cons. Which bits will benefit the greatest number of people? Is the inconvenience to small numbers of people minor?