Health, Safety and Environment

Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill

17 July 2006

The Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill, currently being read in the Lords, attempts to alter the way Britain's clocks are set to create lighter evenings and darker mornings.

The bill promoted by crossbencher Lord Tanlaw in the House of Lords proposes a three-year trial of "double summertime", claiming it would mean lighter evenings and he claims would be of huge benefit to road safety.

It cleared its passage through the Lords having been Read a third time in May and passed by the Lordships. It was then sent to the House of Commons where it will eventually go before MPs in the Commons if reached on the order paper. Originally timetabled on 14 July 2006 with a number of other bills, it was not reached and has been deferred to the 20 October 2006 when it will be listed again and is being sponsored in the Commons by Labour MP David Kidney.

Presently the Summer Time Act 1972 means that the UK is one hour ahead of GMT during the period of summer. The proposal in this new Bill would if adopted advance time in England one hour ahead of GMT during winter and two hours ahead of GMT during summer starting on 29 October 2006 for a three year trial ending on 25 October 2009.

The CWU opposes the Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill on grounds of health and safety and acceptable working conditions for our postal members and telephone engineers, especially those in the North of England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Dave Joyce the CWU's National Health and Safety Officer said "The first problem is that the Scottish Parliament could opt out in respect of Scotland, as could the Welsh National Assembly and so could the Northern Ireland Assembly! If that were to happen in all or in part then we could have the barmy situation of different times zones across the UK."

"The claim is from the Bill's supporters is that we could benefit from a reduction in road accidents on winter afternoons when the rush hour coincides with fading light, but it fails to consider the obvious increased risk of accidents caused by the darker mornings; that's the time people are rushing to work."

Dave Joyce said "The Bill could seriously affect BT external engineers who climb telegraph poles and could change the whole concept of how their job is done. Work at Height is hazardous as it is and we don't want our people climbing in the dark. Most of our Engineers start work between 7am and 9am and it's a very productive period. Pushing back the time it becomes light therefore has the potential to present additional safety and work organisation problems to consider."

• The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said that in 2003/04 falls from height accounted for 67 fatal accidents at work and 4000 major injuries. It remains the single biggest cause of workplace deaths and one of the main causes of major injury.
• Between 1968 and 1971 Britain experimented with GMT plus one hour throughout the year. There was an increase in morning casualties but the reduction in evening casualties.
• Portugal tried changing it's time in the same way as this Bill proposes and eventually ditched the idea. The fundamental fact is that there is only so much daylight and that won't change by moving it around forwards, backwards or sideways.
• A move to ‘double daylight saving’ would mean over 1.5 million people spending an additional 10% of their working day in darkness, suffering more accidents and having a reduced quality of working life.

The CWU has a longstanding commitment to campaign to maintain the present system whereby the clocks go forward by one hour in the spring and go back by one hour in the autumn.

One of the most powerful arguments for changing the clocks is that it could lead to accident reductions in winter, but there may be more road accident casualties, deaths and injuries on winter mornings; this concerns the CWU greatly because that's when the bulk of our members are on the streets.