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Daylight Saving Bill

My hon. Friend makes an extraordinarily good and wise point. People sometimes see things happen and figures change, and then claim that A led to B. Somerset county council switched off all its speed cameras and the number of accidents fell dramatically, but, much as I dislike speed cameras, it seems unlikely that in that instance A led directly to B. We should be enormously careful about advancing arguments based on theoretical statistics relating to what might happen when there is a strong general trend. The key issue—I now return to the subject of amendment 59—is that of what people like. Why do we not learn the lessons of history? We have tried this before. We tried it during the war, but people did not like it, and as soon as the war ended we got rid of it. If it had been such a fantabulous idea, we would have retained it in the later 1940s, and in the 1970s. Let us consider Portugal, our oldest ally and our ally since the treaty of Windsor in 1386. Portugal made this mistake. The Portuguese erred: they decided to abandon the proper time, as set by the sun, and get closer to Europe. That failed, and they reversed their decision.