Liberal Democrat John Lee said moving to Paris time would help reduce household bills as it would maximize daylight in the evenings. Lord Lee said the government should seriously consider the “double summer time” as inflation reaches its highest level in 30 years and energy bills continue to soar. “It is a serious, long-term issue for a significant percentage of the population and I think the government needs to look at it very seriously,” he said. “Double daylight saving time would be relatively cheap, it would not really cost the government anything significant as far as I know.” Lee, president of the Top Visitors Association and a former tourism minister, said he would ask the government about its position on double daylight saving time when the House of Lords returns from vacation later this month. Such a move would set British clocks two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time in the summer months and one hour ahead in the winter, as on continental nations such as France, Spain and Italy. The last time clocks were changed to save energy was during World War II, but times returned to normal after the war. The concept of British daylight saving time was introduced in the United Kingdom in 1916 following a campaign by William Willett, Coldplay’s great-grandfather Chris Martin. Willett had observed with frustration during a horse ride before dawn in London how many Britons slept most of the summer day. Campaigners estimate that extending daylight hours would save 152 hours of electricity for each household each year, as most people wake up after sunrise most of the year and use artificial light in their homes at night. Proponents say people would enjoy an extra hour of light for an additional 11 months a year, while an extra hour of dark morning should only last through the winter months. There have been several attempts by MPs to support a change in daylight saving time in recent decades, most recently in 2010 with the 10:10 campaign. A 1993 study by the Institute for Political Studies estimated that the change would save more than 26 260 million in electricity bills even then. However, the government told members of the Energy and Climate Change Committee in 2010 that the effects were “likely to be small in size and may even be uncertain in direction”. The biggest opposition has historically been from farmers in Scotland, who have had to work in the dark for much of the morning. However, their opposition seems to have softened thanks to modern developments in agriculture. The National Farmers Union of Scotland said it was “open to further independent analysis”. The idea of adopting the same era as France, Spain and Italy may, however, raise some eyebrows among some Eurosceptic conservative supporters now that the UK has left the European Union. Lee, a former Tory MP, said: “I think it would be honestly very foolish to put it in touch purely because it is something that happens more in mainland Europe. “I can not believe they would be so selfish or narrow-minded in adopting this approach.”
