10:10 Lighter Later

There are just a few days left before the big vote in parliament. And before we dive into whatever last-minute chaos the next 48 hours brings, we just wanted to say thank to everyone who has supported us so far.

On Friday MPs will decide the fate of the Daylight Saving Bill. If they vote the right way, it’ll be the latest (and greatest) in a long line of victories powered by the Lighter Later community.

Their amazing lobbying efforts mean it’s all to play for, but we’re not there yet.

All around the country, the light-loving organisations of the coalition are beavering away, rallying their members and adding their unique expertise to local debates. In our offices in London and Edinburgh, meanwhile, we’re hammering the phones every day: wooing the waverers, talking to the media and charming MPs’ diary secretaries.

We’ve crunched the numbers and we’re very close to securing the 102 MPs that we need to win the crucial vote this Friday. It’s going to go right down to the wire.

One last push from you could get your MP in the chamber (they may well hav confirmed already!) for the all-important vote. Why not head over to our easy-peasy lobbying tool and check where your MP stands on this.

Or you can tweet your MP … lots of MPs are on twitter and it’s a great quick and direct way to get in touch.

Already contacted your MP in the last week? As long as you’re polite there’s nothing wrong with a friendly follow-up, even if it’s just to see which way your MP is currently leaning, and whether any specific issues are standing in the way of a ‘yes’ vote.

We know this approach works. Thanks to your efforts, scores of MPs have rescheduled appointments to be in parliament on the day, and are lobbying colleagues to do the same.

This is our moment. All those email, tweets, calls and column inches; all that energy and passion have been building up to this point.

Keeping everything crossed for Friday!

Sunset on the Northumberland coast

If you live in Northumberland, Cumbria or Yorkshire you may have heard Lighter Later on your radio this morning or seen us in your local press. A whole host of organisations form the north of england have come out on the side of clock change today – calling on their local MPs back the daylight saving bill and vote for a review.

Anne MacIntosh, a Yorkshire MP, recently claimed clock change would be bad for northern counties but she seems to be in a minority. There’s huge support all across the nation – political, public AND civic …

Mike Pratt, Chief Executive of the Northumberland Wildlife Trust, sees health and wellbeing benefits - “Daylight is a wonderful natural resource so why deprive ourselves of it un-necessarily? More daylight in the UK will give people the opportunity to spend more time enjoying the great outdoors and experiencing the joys of wildlife.”

Windermere Lake Cruises is England’s fourth most popular visitor attraction and employs 150 local people. Chief Executive Nigel Wilkinson sees huge economic benefits – “In these times of financial constraints, from our businesses perspective, no other zero-cost change would bring as much economic benefit as a change to daylight saving.”

Rt Hon Greg Knight, MP for East Yorkshire, believes we should all be embracing change - ”I am both a supporter and a sponsor of this excellent bill. Changing our clocks for lighter evenings would give a great boost to English tourist areas, like the East Riding. At a time of economic uncertainty, we should be embracing a change which will make the East coast more attractive to visitors.”

And Paul Blomfield, MP for Sheffield Central, is the latest northern MP to commit to voting on 20 January. “I’ll be voting for the Daylight Saving Bill on January 20 because making evenings lighter will improve road safety and save lives. More afternoon and evening journeys will take place in the light which will prevent accidents” said Paul.

Is your MP going to be there to vote the Daylight Saving Bill through? Head to our easy-peasy lobbying tool to find out…

The Daylight Saving Bill has cantered on since we posted our last update, making it through Committee Stage in under four hours on 7th December. Amendments tabled jointly by Rebecca Harris and Ed Davey, the minister who’s got time in his brief, now mean that all the devolved governments must reach a consensus before a trial can go ahead instead of the trial being automatic. If you want to find out more you can check out the Bill’s website.

The Bill goes into its Third Reading with huge support. When we launched it back in March 2010 we never imagined we’d be going into a Third Reading of a PMB with so much political backing! Top ministers on both sides of the house have praised the Bill, with Ed Davey emphasising Rebecca’s “indefatigable pursuit” of her Bill and its evidence-based approach and Ian Murray, Ed Davey’s Labour counterpart adding “she has been very helpful in allaying the fears of some colleagues on the Opposition Benches. The Opposition have no objections in principle to the production of the report”.

We are now rapidly approaching our biggest milestone yet! The 20th January will see MPs gather in the house once more – to pick over the detail of the Bill and to vote – if we lose the vote now the Bill dies. Simple as that. The Lighter Later campaign has become a hive of activity in preparation to avoid this; our coalition members have been out there lobbying Ministers, thousands of Lighter Later supporters been busy writing to their MPs to persuade them to come along and at Lighter Later HQ we’ve been beavering away on the phones to be sure that MPs know the date and will definitely be there on the day to support the Bill.

It’s a numbers game – we need at least 102 MPs in the House (because of the crazy rules of Private Members Bills!), it’s looking good but we’re not there yet – it will go right down to the wire, we’re in no doubt of that. So please keep up all your brilliant work, emailing and phoning your MPs to get them onboard. This is the last big push now …well, actually, the lords are next… but let’s get past this vote first hey !

Late last night, parliament approved the ‘money resolution’, passing the bill to a committee of MPs to thrash out the fine details over the next few weeks. You can watch last night’s debate in full here.

That means the next big vote is just around the corner, and we need to ramp things up in a big way to make sure MPs show up on the day and vote for lighter evenings.

We’ve done this before and we can do it again, but we need to raise £5,000 to make it happen. Can you help by making a donation?

http://www.lighterlater.org/donate.html

Your contribution to the £5,000 target will help us:

• Win the argument right across the UK by funding coalition meetings in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
• Feed and water volunteers that’ll be glued to the phones in the run-up to the big vote, making sure MPs know the arguments and show up to vote.
• Power up our online lobbying tools, allowing supporters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to get in touch with their representatives in the devolved parliaments.

Lighter Later makes a big difference on a tiny budget, much of which has come from the generosity of supporters like you. This time last year, your donations helped us build what one political insider called “the best private member’s bill campaign I’ve ever seen”, and the second reading went our way against all the odds.

Now it’s time to take the campaign to the next level, and anything you can give will go a long way.

Click here to help us raise £5,000 for the next big push

Thanks for all your amazing work so far. Here’s to our next victory!

Lots of debate around today about support for the Daylight Saving Bill in Scotland.

Concerns over the safety of Scottish road users have long been the stumbling block in debates but today road safety body RoSPA Scotland has backed the Lighter Later campaign, stating that:

All the evidence tells us that Scottish road users are much more vulnerable in the afternoon when they are tired and more likely to take longer, more digressive journeys.

We’re confident that such an experiment would place beyond doubt the proposition that an extra hour of evening daylight would prevent a significant number of deaths and injuries on Scottish roads each year.

The suggestion that changing the way we set our clocks would be a killer on Scottish roads is a myth. Based on 2009 road casualty figures, conservative estimates suggest shifting our clocks forward an hour could in fact prevent 20 deaths on Scottish roads every year. Many cite the danger of children travelling to school in the dark as a basis for objecting to any change, but it’s the trip home from school that’s more dangerous and where we most need that precious light. A study by the Policy Studies Institute found that in the four darkest months from November to February, fatal and serious injuries among children are nearly three times as high on the way home from school than in the morning. 

The other objection often raised is that darker mornings would make things difficult for farmers. But today the Scottish NFU have reiterated their support for the bill saying …

The effect on agriculture of changing the clocks by an hour has reduced over the years but it is important to bear in mind that regardless of what the actual time is on the clock, there are only a set number of daylight hours available to farmers in any one day, during which they still have to carry out the bulk of their daily work and enjoy some social life.

The impact of any change to daylight saving time will not be uniform across the UK, so we need to analyse the particular Scottish impacts of such a change and the success of the planned private member’s bill may provide that platform.

Check out the full new story here …

So it seems, if you listen closely, that the call for a review of the way we set our clocks might well be developing a bit of an accent…