Making the most of daylight hours: the costs and benefits of moving an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening Policy Studies Institute, 1988

Time for change: setting clocks forward by one hour throughout the year Policy Studies Institute, 1993

This comprehensive and wide-ranging study and its follow-up five years later (in order to update the evidence) conclude that the advantages of putting clocks forward by an additional hour in the UK in both summer and winter would far outweigh the disadvantages. The change would represent a rare instance of a means of vastly improving the quality of life of nearly everyone in the population, while costing no more than the majority of MPs voting in its support.

The proposition almost reached the statute book following publication of the Home Office’s Consultation Paper Summer Time in December 1989. The electoral fears of both the Conservative party and Labour party about the impact on the Scottish vote were widely acknowledged to be the stumbling block. SDST - Single Double Summer Time, as it was termed - was also the subject of an unsuccessful Private Member’s Bill of John Butterfill in 1996.

• In 2006, Tim Yeo MP put forward the Energy Saving Daylight Bill (Bill 18 of 2006-7), which would result in advance time in England throughout the year by one extra hour for an experimental period of three years from October 2008 to October 2011. Although this bill was not successful, the Conservatives have pledged to make the policy part of their manifesto for the next election. 

Summertime in the European Community European Commission, 1989

This European Community-wide study of the actual effects on the then 12 Member States was aimed at determining the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining a summertime clock each year. The issues examined covered industrial working practices, leisure activity, health considerations, air pollution, road and other outdoor casualties, energy consumption, and national policies and public attitudes. It too concluded that the benefits of the summertime clock regime in all Member States of the European Union far outweighed the disbenefits. 

• In spite of a challenge from some European lobbies, the summertime clock regime across all Member States of the European Community, and indeed of all other European countries, has been maintained and there appears to be no likelihood of it being abandoned in the foreseeable future.