Orders of the Day — British Standard Time

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 2 December 1970.

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Photo of Mr David James Mr David James , North Dorset 12:00, 2 December 1970

I entirely agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Manchester, Openshaw (Mr. Charles R. Morris) that we should consider the people who work dark and dangerous hours before we consider the sporting aspect.

Having said that, I should like to thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to catch your eye after an absence of two Parliaments, particularly as it is 11 years almost to the day when I made my first maiden speech and you were good enough to congratulate me—misguidedly, no doubt—upon it. I have taken advice on this matter and I understand that in Parliament, as in life, one cannot lose one's maidenhood twice. So I am not seeking any privileges as a result of my comeback.

I do not want to rehearse arguments which have already been covered, but I cannot agree with the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) when he suggests that this is a Scottish plot or something concerning only the countryside, because I listened with interest and pleasure to the maiden speeches, from both sides of the House, by the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Gray), the hon. Member for the Western Isles (Mr. Donald Stewart) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Money), all of whose speeches I enjoyed, and I can assure hon. Members that the inhabitants of North Dorset take exactly the same view.

I have had a very large number of letters and I have canvassed a very large number of opinions. Unlike some hon. Members who have found one or two dissentient voices, I have found no dissentient voices whatever. Everyone in my rural constituency wishes to revert to the G.M.T. arrangement.

I will not go into details about agricultural workers, building workers and others—that has all been done before—but I should like to make two particular points. My horticulturists tell me that, as a result of British Standard Time, they cannot, in winter, cut their lettuces and get them to market on the day on which they are cut. For about four months, they are deprived of their fresh market because their produce cannot arrive in time.

My second point is one which was made to me by a businessman this afternoon and rather tends to demolish the business argument. The business argument is that we will possibly join Europe and that it is convenient to have the same time system when telephoning one's opposite number in Paris or Bonn. As my friend pointed out to me, however, it is no earthly use arriving at one's office at 9 o'clock in the morning with a view to ringing up one's opposite number in Paris or in Bonn if the girl who operates the switchboard does not arrive until 9.45. There is, I think, a marked tendency on the part of junior staff not to observe B.S.T. but unilaterally, as it were, to revert to G.M.T. This, therefore, is not working in practice.

I agree with the hon. Member for Openshaw that those of us—and I am one of them—who are dedicated Europeans should utterly reject the European argument, because, in so far as we may or may not be going into Europe, what we have to learn to do is to think continental, in the same way as the Australians and the Americans think continental. One does not have to be in either of those countries for 48 hours before one becomes perfectly accustomed to dealing with time zones.

If I might be frivolous for a moment, I would say that one has to get one's answers right. The first time I went to America, I was taken at 5 p.m. to the then fashionable new Bunny Club in Chicago for a drink. I thought that it would be rather amusing to telephone my wife in Sussex from those surroundings. Unpardonably for a sailor, I applied the G.M.T. correction the wrong way and got my wife out of bed at 1 o'clock in the morning when I imagined that I was telephoning her at 11 o'clock at night. As a result, I was not popular. I mention that cautionary tale because one has only to be in a continent dealing with zonal times for even a matter of hours to realise that there is no argument against time zones.

None of us would wish to leave this debate without paying tribute to the kindly shadow, which to me is very present here, of Sir Alan Herbert and all the work that he has done concerning this matter. I hope that everyone read his letter in The Times yesterday. He pointed out that this country was given the great privilege of Greenwich as the standard meridian but that the obviously convenient arrangement was a 15-degree limit of longitude for the zone; that owing to the fact that we have adopted Central European Time we now have a fantastic 33 degree distorted time zone; that Warsaw and Cork keep the same time even though the sun rises 2¼ hours earlier in Warsaw; and that this arrangement simply does not make sense, and never has done.

I know that I would be out of order if I spoke to the two Amendments, neither of which has been called. Among others, however, I detect from both sides of the House—I gather this from conversations outside as well as inside the Chamber—some sensitive points of view put forward by, for example, the former Minister for Sport, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell), and others, that consideration should be given to the recreational impact of the Order, although it must take second place to the working impact. I believe that the way in which we can do this best is by cutting down the period to an absolute minimum.

As I said in an intervention—in case I was not fortunate enough to be called—all that one has to do is to consult the Nautical Almanac. If one is firmly based in London, one looks at the 52 degrees south column. Those who, like me, happen to be half-Sassenach, look at the 56 degrees south column, which takes in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and one reaches a bracket where one makes good the hour. It is not, as one or two hon. Members have said, 10 weeks. It is not, as it used to be in the old days, 20 weeks. It is a mere matter of 13 weeks. As has been pointed out, the 13 weeks involved are those which are least useful to gardeners, golfers and others because, generally speaking, through late November, December, January and the first fortnight in February the weather tends to be lousy.

I hope that the Home Office will look at this suggestion, which has come from hon. Members on both sides, with a considerable degree of seriousness because I am almost certain that, as a result of the vote tonight, new arrangements will have to be laid before the House. I hope that attention will be paid to the proposition of reverting to G.M.T., but for a very much shorter period.