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Energy Bill

My Lords, I take the opportunity to speak for the first time from the Cross Benches to say that I support fully what the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, has said. For many years at the CBI, businesspeople got increasingly frustrated with so many billions of pounds being put into the infrastructure of the nation, both in airports and the Channel Tunnel, to enable the productivity of the economy to integrate fully and increase by full integration with that of our European rivals and markets, only to find that they had to get over to Paris, Frankfurt and Brussels on the night before meetings, for one reason only—because we have to put our watches forward by one hour before we can start work over there. That increases inefficiency and costs enormously and means that so much of the benefit that would come from investment in our infrastructure is not realised in the economy. At the same time, we have the appalling statistic that 420 people die every year on our roads purely because it is dark, which would be to a great extent avoided if we adopted Central European Time. Furthermore, right now, the British economy needs all the help it can get. We have to work even harder and government has to adopt as many measures as possible to increase our efficiency and success to pull our nation out of recession as quickly as possible. This is not the Bill in which to do that, but, if Her Majesty's Government could include some measures in the Queen’s Speech at last to get this nation on to a level playing field with Europe as regards time, that would be so much the better. I declare one interest—and a reason why I should be arguing against the amendment. Today is my birthday.