THE government’s most senior transport adviser has provoked anger in Scotland by calling for Britain to end the practice of putting the clocks back for winter.

David Begg, the Scots chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport, believes that adopting Central European Time would prevent 100 deaths and 350 serious injuries each year.

It would put Britain one hour ahead of GMT in the winter and two hours ahead in the summer, giving lighter evenings throughout the year.

“Clocks going back an hour this morning spell the start of an unnecessary annual carnage on our roads,” he said.

“Last year, during the summer time month of October, 60 pedestrians were killed. A month later, under winter time, the figure leapt to 95.”

Begg, a former Edinburgh councillor, points to claims by safety campaigners that children’s lives would be saved if they could return home from school in daylight.

“Many victims are children, cyclists, pedestrians and the elderly who are most at risk from dark evenings and have to come home at a time of day when visibility is poorer for the motorists who run them down,” he said.

However, the call has been condemned in Scotland where there is deeply entrenched opposition to change. Farmers, builders and other outdoor workers claim the change would force them to spend most of their time labouring in darkness.

Darker mornings would have an adverse effect on businesses in the north of Scotland, they believe, because the sun would not rise until nearly 11am.

Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, said the proposed changes were being driven by the needs of southeast England.

“David Begg’s London- centric comments put him in an elite club along with such luminaries as Jeffrey Archer, who called for these changes nine years ago,” he complained. “It is a London-centric idea from a London-based bureaucrat.”

Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland, accused Begg of ignoring the views of people living in the north of the country.

“It’s unfortunate that David Begg seems to be saying the opinion of a few thousand people who live to the north of Scotland does not matter,” he said. “As one of those few thousand people myself I beg to differ.”

He added that it was ironic that Begg — an outspoken supporter of congestion charging — was suggesting a change that would put more cars on the road during morning rush hour.

“You’re going to have, even in the southeast, children going to school in the dark. The natural reaction to that is to say ‘Come on Johnny, jump in the car and I’ll take you to school.’ This will put more cars on the busiest roads in the busiest parts of the country at the busiest times of the day.

“We should learn from the last time we tried such a switch in 1970. Kids were going to school in the dark and teachers said at the time that children were not beginning to function properly until the late part of the morning, because it was dark and they weren’t properly waking up.”

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents backs Begg’s call. A spokesman for the organisation said it will be calling on the Department of Trade and Industry to conduct a three-year trial.

A spokesman for the Scottish executive said the issue was a reserved matter.

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