Health, Safety and Environment

Energy Saving (Daylight) Bill

13 March 2007

Less than nine months after seeing off the last attempt to alter the clocks in the UK, Tory MP Tim Yeo has launched another private members bill in the House of Commons. The "Energy Saving (Daylight) Bill" proposes exactly the same as the previous "Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill" that failed last May. The bill proposes to change the law to advance time in England one hour ahead of GMT during winter and by two hours ahead of GMT during summer. This so called "double summertime" is aimed at creating lighter evenings and darker mornings.

CWU National Health and Safety Officer Dave Joyce has once again been busy lobbying Ministers to maintain the Governments continued backing of the Communication Workers Union's total opposition to "double summertime" and to block the Energy Saving (Daylight) Bill from becoming law.

Dave told government Ministers that the CWU strongly opposes the Energy Saving (Daylight) Bill on the basis of the sort of difficulties that a change to the way Britain's clocks are set would cause to Postal Delivery Workers and BT Telecommunications Engineers who are out on the streets in the early mornings.

Setting out the Union's case against the bill Dave Joyce said "The claim from the Bill's supporters is that we could all benefit from a reduction in road accidents on winter afternoons when the rush hour coincides with fading light. However, it fails to consider the obvious increased risk of accidents caused by the darker mornings to Postal Workers, BT Workers and others because that's the time people are rushing to work and road conditions in winter are poorer due to lower temperatures, rain sleet, snow and ice etc. Our members would be disadvantaged in a number of ways as a result of working on darker mornings including the increased risk of more road accident casualties, assaults, slips and trips, thefts and attacks."

Dave is also concerned about:

• The 30,000 people delivering on cycles every day as the Bill will increase the risk of an accident.
• The steady increase in assaults, thefts and attacks on postal delivery workers, working longer in the dark will not make that increasing risk any better.
• Telecomm engineers, particularly in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North of England, who climb telegraph poles, working overhead or working underground down manholes and underground structures in adverse conditions due to poor, inadequate lighting, would face greater risks.

Another major flaw with this Bill is the prospect of having different time zones within the United Kingdom. Dave told Ministers "if the Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland parliaments decide as may be likely not to adopt the clock change it would be bedlam."

"The last substantial vote in the House of Commons on this issue was in 1971. There was a free vote and it resulted in a majority of 285 in favour of abandoning the "double summertime" experiment that had been taking place."

• After a four year experiment Portugal abandoned "double summertime" and the evidence from the experiment in Portugal was that the number of road traffic accidents rose when summer time changed between 1992 and 1996.

"The fundamental fact is that there is only so much daylight and that won't change by moving it forwards, backwards or sideways. This bill is just as flawed as previous bills of the same nature; it is trying to square a circle and we don't see why our members should be disadvantaged by the proposed "double summertime", an experiment of which the results are very predictable."