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Mr. David Marshall: My hon. Friend has described graphically what we all think will happen. Does he agree that one of the worrying trends in modern-day life is the number of people suffering from depression? There is nothing more depressing than getting up in darkness every day. Does he share my concern that, if the Bill were to become law, there could be a substantial increase in the number of people suffering from depression? It is a serious point that should concern us all.
Mr. Macdonald: I agree with my hon. Friend, and I am grateful to him. To get up in darkness is depressing, because it is profoundly unnatural. Our ancestors did not do it, but we have to because we must work in an industrial time scale. I have asked colleagues to imagine what it is like because most of us do not experience it, but we who live in the north and west already experience it. We do not have to imagine what it is like, because we live it during our winters.
Dawn in Stornoway today was almost exactly one hour after dawn in London. If the Bill is enacted, the impact upon places north and west in the United Kingdom will be profound. Stornoway will not become light until after 10 am. That is why I have received a vast number of representations from head teachers, schools, chambers of commerce, the tourist board, crofters and community councils in my constituency. They are all violently opposed to the proposed change.
I suggest to right hon. and hon. Members, especially those who admit, as I think the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) has, that--although they are in favour of the change--the argument is finely balanced. If it is considered that the benefits that might come about are marginal, they should weigh seriously the impact upon the communities that will be profoundly and adversely affected by the change; even though those communities may be small and remote. I do not think that Stornoway will be the worst-affected community. Probably the worst affected will be communities in the west of Northern Ireland. They should be considered as well.
The proposed change was voted out in 1970 because it will affect not only the north and west. We are talking not only about Scottish communities, farmers or people living in the north of the country. If the Bill becomes law, it will have an effect on the whole country. If it is enacted, London will henceforth experience, every winter, the same mid-morning darkness that we in the Hebrides presently experience. London will move to Stornoway time.
I suggest to colleagues from the south and the east who are tempted to vote for the Bill and who plead with us to experiment a little that we do not need to experiment. All they need to do is come to the north and the west and try
things out for a winter before inflicting what we experience on their constituents. I warn those colleagues that I do not think that their constituents who live in the south and east will thank them for putting them on Stornoway time. They will not find it a pleasure or a relief; they will find it instead a dark, depressing and miserable experience.
Mr. Duncan Smith:
We have heard the arguments for the change--about the forecasts and the prospects--but does the hon. Gentleman agree that, when one looks at the arguments against, it comes down to the simple fact that we did it once and it did not work? If it ain't broke, why fix it?
Mr. Macdonald:
The hon. Gentleman sums it up well and aptly. In the north of Scotland, we have to live with dark midwinter mornings. That is a geographical fact that we simply have to accept, but I cannot understand why those who live in the south and east of the United Kingdom should want to join us in that gloom. It would be touching, but completely barmy.
There has been much argument about the statistics, and hon. Members who find it difficult to argue the case on its sheer merits are falling back on statistics about accidents and road safety, but I believe that, when one looks at those statistics, one will see that they just do not stand up. We heard much about the accident rate for road users, but what about other groups--children, for example? The Government's White Paper, produced in 1989, examined all the arguments at that time, and I have had the benefit of seeing the report from the Transport Research Laboratory as well.
The White Paper warned specifically that the change could lead to more--not fewer--accidents involving children. On page 13, paragraph 41, the White Paper says:
That warning is repeated in its conclusion. Proponents of the change must seriously consider the impact that it will have on children, not simply because children are an emotive group but because they are not responsible for their own safety. We are responsible for their safety.
The change will affect other groups as well. Farmers and crofters will be more at risk, as will construction workers and postal workers. I find it astonishing that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, which supports the Bill, has not evaluated the impact on those other groups. When I asked it why it was supporting the Bill, it simply came back with data about road safety. It had made no study of the impact of the change on other groups in the community.
Mr. McWilliam:
I recall that, many years ago, there was a break in the Meteorological Office telephone line to RAF Turnhouse, outside Edinburgh, which also served Edinburgh civil airport. It was an emergency. It had to be fixed. The wind was coming in at about 50 miles an hour and it was full of sleet. It took two of us, anchored to each other, to get up there and get that line repaired. If the Bill had been in force, it would have been pitch black at that time in the morning. As it happened, mercifully there was still some light, but it was an extremely dangerous thing to have to do.
Mr. Macdonald:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point.
If one disregards the impact that the change will have on children--which we should not do--and other groups in the community, in terms of the great likelihood of accidents, we are left with the core of the argument for making the change: the claim that it will reduce the number of road accidents and the fatalities that result each year. I find it a deeply unimpressive argument. I do not want to go into the other reports that have been produced to show how unimpressive the argument is, as other colleagues have mentioned them already. I shall simply accept on its merits the case that has been made by the proponents of the change, and weigh up what they are claiming.
The proponents claim that, based on a 25-year-old experiment projected into a hypothetical future, the net reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured on the roads would be 1.18 per cent. That figure is contained in table 7 of the Transport Research Laboratory's report. The overall reduction in casualties is predicted to be only 0.67 per cent.
We should look at those figures in perspective properly to understand the claims that have been made for the enormous change that the Bill would introduce. For example, the latest projection for road fatality reduction is 110 each year, as the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill) said at the beginning of his speech. If we compare that to the actual reduction in 1991, based on the statistics provided by the Department of Transport press office, we find that road casualties declined by 649--not 110--in 1991, by 339 in 1992 and by 415 in 1993.
I acknowledge that every life is important. However, set against those year-on-year real reductions, a one-off hypothetical reduction of 110 is comparatively a drop in the ocean of the campaign to make roads safer.
Mrs. Gorman:
I was a young schoolteacher at that time, and I recall the number of children who came to school on icy pavements, who slipped over and who had very bad accidents, including broken wrists and ankles. Those statistics have not been taken into account in the debate, let alone the number of old people going to work at that time in the morning.
Mr. Macdonald:
That is a good point, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making it.
I have compared the claimed reductions with the real reductions that are achieved each year because of road safety improvements. Another way in which to examine the merits of the case made by the proponents of change is to compare the schemes that have been specifically designed to reduce accidents. The Transport Research Laboratory, which produced the much-cited report on improvements in road safety achieved by the changes in time, has produced other reports that examine specific traffic-calming schemes and their impact on road safety. I have received copies of those reports as well.
Specific road safety schemes, such as traffic-calming schemes and road humps, have reduced accidents not by the 0.67 per cent. which it is claimed the time change will achieve, but by 71 per cent. across the areas in which they were introduced. That is what I would call statistically significant, and a real and credible effort to improve road safety. I believe that it puts the projected reductions from the proposed time change in their proper perspective.
"More school children would go to school in the dark in winter and would therefore be more exposed to danger."
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