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Daylight Saving Bill

As always, my hon. Friend makes a wise and pertinent intervention. There has been one occasion in history on which daylight was extended. Those hon. Members who are up on their Bible will remember their studies from their student days. They will recall the book of Joshua, chapter 10, verse 13:"““And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and hastened not to go down about a whole day.””" That is really what amendment 59 is all about. It is about accepting what verse 14 goes on to say, which is that that happened only once; it was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. God allowed the sun to stand still in the heavens on that day only, and never again. There is absolutely nothing that we can do about that. No great Act of Parliament or—dare I say it—regulation from the European Union can create more daylight. We are therefore faced with a simple choice in the winter. Do we get up in the dark and have teatime when it is a bit brighter, or do we have murky, dank, dark mornings—I am sorry, I meant that the other way round. Do we instead get up with a spring in our step and go to work with enthusiasm, full of beans and ready to face the world, and sacrifice a little bit of daylight at teatime? In seeking to leave us on summer time, my hon. Friend's amendment would allow all the supposed advantages to be investigated, including having an extra hour of daylight in the evenings so that people could have their barbecues and all that sort of thing, but it would not upset the mornings. That is particularly important for our friends in Scotland, which is why I want to mention amendment 23.