Ministers are facing calls to put British clocks forward by an extra hour to Central European Time to help ease the cost of living crisis.
The Liberal Democrat peer John Lee said moving to Paris time would help reduce household bills as it would maximise daylight in the evenings.
Lord Lee said the government should look seriously at “double summer time” as inflation reaches the highest level in 30 years and energy bills continue to soar.
“It’s a serious, long-term issue for a sizeable proportion of the population and I think the government should look very seriously at it,” he said. “Double summer time would be relatively cheap, it wouldn’t really cost the government anything of significance as far as I’m aware.”
Lee, the president of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions and a former tourism minister, said he would question the government about its position on double summer time when the House of Lords returns from recess later this month.
Such a move would set British clocks two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time during the summer months and one hour ahead in winter, as in continental nations including France, Spain and Italy.
The last time the clocks were changed to save on energy was during the second world war, but times went back to normal after the war.
The concept of British summer time was established in the UK in 1916 after campaigning by William Willett, a great-great-grandfather of Coldplay’s Chris Martin.
Willett had observed with dismay during pre-dawn horse rides through London how many Britons slept through a large portion of a summer’s day.
Campaigners have estimated that extending daylight hours further would save each household 152 hours’ worth of electricity each year, as most people wake up after sunrise for most of the year and use artificial light in their homes in the evenings.
Supporters say people would enjoy an extra hour of light for an additional 11 months of the year, whereas an extra hour of morning darkness would have to be endured only during the winter months.
There have been several attempts by MPs to advocate a change in daylight saving time in recent decades, most recently in 2010 with the 10:10 campaign.
A 1993 study by the Policy Studies Institute estimated that the change would save more than £260m in electricity bills even then. However, the government told MPs on the energy and climate change committee in 2010 that the effects were “likely to be small in magnitude, and may even be uncertain in direction”.
The greatest opposition has historically come from farmers in Scotland, who would have to work in darkness for much of the morning.
However, their opposition appears to have softened thanks to modern advances in farming. The National Farmers Union of Scotland said it was “open to further independent analysis”.
The idea of adopting the same time as France, Spain and Italy may, however, raise eyebrows among some Eurosceptic Conservative backbenchers now the UK has left the EU.
Lee, a former Tory MP, said: “I think it would be frankly very silly if they kicked it into touch purely because it’s something that happens more in continental Europe. I can’t believe they would be that selfish or narrow to adopt that approach.”
