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Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, made a perfectly valid geographical argument. It has been argued before and is of course quite right. That is not the issue. The fact is that the further north you go, the darker it becomes in winter, whether you like it or not. Of course, during the summer, you have the advantage of longer days altogether, both morning and evening. The issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, has put before us is a very good one. I am only too happy to have my name attached to the amendment, as it was before. She has argued the case before extremely cogently and has done so even more this evening. All that we are asking for is that this is considered as a matter of energy saving. I am glad to hear that the Conservative Party considers that there are enough powers in the Bill for that to happen; it will be interesting to hear whether the Minister can confirm that. If that is the case, that helps the cause enormously. It is only a matter for consideration, because any achievement of daylight saving would have to be the subject of another, completely separate Bill. My argument is in connection with energy saving. Most of the Bill has been about other methods of achieving that—carbon sinks and other things—whereas we are talking about saving quite considerable quantities of energy. In the two world wars, such measures were introduced for the obvious reason that we were extremely short of energy at the time and drastic measures had to be introduced. You could say that climate change, as a worldwide issue, is of a similarly disastrous and catastrophic nature. Therefore, I have no hesitation in supporting what the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, is trying to do. Like her, I would like to think that the Minister will be able to give us some words of comfort about this measure being introduced at some stage in the future.