British Summer Time and the Daylight Saving Bill 2010-11 - Commons Library Standard Note

This Standard Note provides an overview of the pros and cons of British Summer Time and the altering of clocks, as well as details of attempts to change clock times in the UK.

In short, much of the evidence suggests that changing UK time to give an extra hour of daylight in the evening, rather than the morning, may provide a range of benefits across the whole UK.

A recent legislative proposal on this issue was The Daylight Saving Bill 2010-11, Rebecca Harris MP’s Private Member’s Bill. It would have required the production of a cost-benefit report on advancing time by one hour throughout the year for the whole UK, and permit a trial clock change to take place. The Bill ran out of Parliamentary time.

The Government subsequently commissioned a review of the available evidence on changes to clocks in order “to inform debate”. The review was published in summer 2012. It concluded that it would be possible to produce a formal cost-benefit analysis of a clock change. However it said that more research would be needed “to inform it”.

In July 2012 the Government said that it had “no current plans” to make changes to clock times.

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