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Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
It is a privilege to be called first to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) and to be surrounded by so many hon. and right hon. Friends who have already made contributions and no doubt will make excellent ones after me.
Before I make my wider arguments, I want to make it clear, for the benefit of local residents in my constituency in rural Worcestershire who I have had the pleasure of meeting at the site itself, that I strongly oppose the solar farm development proposals for 287 acres of beautiful rural farmland in my constituency, in the area around Stock Green and Inkberrow, at the Roundhill Wood site. I have been vocal on the subject and I have lodged my objections with the planning authority, on the public record and in the press—and I do so again.
When I met the Roundhill Wood Solar Farm Opposition Group and its lead spokesman, the indefatigable Phil Coathup, I was completely persuaded by their reasoning. Phil is unable to be with us today, but I am 100% sure he is watching, so I say hello to Phil, and hello to Tigger, who is a horse. I thank them for all they have done, as I thank my hon. Friend for calling the debate and for giving us all this opportunity to air our concerns and those of our constituents.
I will slightly curtail some of the points I intended to make because my hon. Friend has made them so well, but I echo many of them. Residents in my seat have told me that, like me, they are wholly supportive of renewable energy from solar power and the ambition of tackling climate change, but they have a number of concerns. One such concern is the loss of prime agricultural land at a time of war. Residents argue, and I could not agree more, that farming subsidies should not be used to encourage more solar farms. What we really need are more wheat and dairy farms so that we can be sustainable as a population.
There is also the impact on green space—mine is a beautiful area—along with the risk of fire and hazard, as we have seen in many other similar developments. Residents fear fires, electrical storms and many other issues that could have a dangerous impact on the area. In our particular case, there is also the issue of the distance from the grid. The two planning applications submitted for the project will cause massive intrusion into communities. The primary site is located in Inkberrow, while the National Grid substation is located in Feckenham, meaning there will have to be extensive cabling between the two sites.
There is a further aspect to this particular proposal, which is the loss of the literary landscape. In our Worcestershire countryside we are proud of our connection to J. R. R. Tolkien, who is known to have lived and worked there when escaping from Birmingham. Indeed, he is thought to have taken significant inspiration for his work from our beautiful fields and areas, and Andrew Morton recently came to my constituency to discuss the importance of the area in inspiring the Shire. According to Andrew Morton, Tolkien’s visits to his aunt’s farm in Dormston, called Bag End, directly inspired the name of the house of the fictional character Bilbo Baggins. If the application were to pass, the landscape would become a construction site and the views that inspired great works of literature would be lost forever.
Residents also suggest, as did my hon. Friend, that we should put solar panels on rooftops, including warehouse roofs, which are ample elsewhere in my constituency because it is a logistics hub. However, it is clear that that cannot meet the whole of the UK’s solar power needs.
Richard Fuller
I am intrigued by the literary references from both my hon. Friends the Members for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) and for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson). However, I want to draw my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch’s attention to the economics. She will be aware that the strike price for solar power was £47 per megawatt hour and at the last auction was going to go to £61 per megawatt hour. Underpinning farmers’ decision that they should perhaps give up their land is that the economics of farming are finding it difficult to compete with the economics of the pricing at those auctions. Does she agree that if it is the case, which I believe to be true, that the Government now have four times the amount of solar production capacity on offer compared with what they actually require, there needs to be an economic answer to both the pricing of solar power and support for our farmers?
Rachel Maclean
My hon. Friend has made some excellent points. He is right that commercial pressures and the legislation we signed up for—I was happy to vote for that to reach net zero—are driving this between them. We have a lot of unintended outcomes from the policy; it was introduced for laudable aims, but it is time to pause things and look at the matter again.
People have talked about nimbys. It is a really interesting issue, because people will ask, “Where would you put the solar panels instead? Where would you put the additional ones required to fulfil our solar capacity targets?” Our British energy strategy includes ambitions to have 70 GW of solar capacity by 2035, and we are at something like 15.7 GW as of January this year. I believe that if we oppose something and do not like what is in front of us, we should suggest what should be done instead. We should be constructive. We should not just oppose things and not come up with a solution; that is what Labour does, and that is not my style.
On the subject of Labour, by the way, it is unclear to me and local residents what Labour’s position locally is on the solar power project. It should not really surprise anyone that locally Labour is sitting on the fence—or on the solar panel, if I may stretch the metaphor—on the issue. That is what Labour does on every issue: says one thing and does another, or changes its mind every five minutes. It is certainly doing that locally.
People will probably say to me, “Aren’t you just a nimby?” Maybe I should ask myself that as well. As some Members may know, I had the great privilege of serving as the Housing and Planning Minister, and I am familiar with these debates. However, I say to my hon. and right hon. Friends that that is the wrong question and the wrong way of looking at the problem. I will briefly explain why. Deciding where to put infrastructure, whether it is housing, roads or solar farms, will always be controversial. We need to build these things. Nobody wants them next to them and, certainly to my knowledge, nobody has ever campaigned for more development next to them, be it housing or infrastructure.
It is therefore often said that those people must be nimbys and their views should be pushed aside in the interests of progress. There is no easy way around this, even if we prioritise the views of local communities, because the idea that there is anywhere else in the country where somebody will not object to something being built is a fantasy. It is idiotic to divide people into two camps of nimby and not nimby—unless they are Liberal Democrats, of course, who are bananas. That stands for “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone”—that is their policy.
I have the greatest respect for the yimby movement— I really do; it is doing some good things. However, I suspect that were those people to move to a different area, out of the city and into the countryside, next to a development site or into the green belt that was about to be built over, they might change their view. I speak as someone who has a little understanding of the area; I think all of us MPs do. We understand human nature, and we know that people will deceive themselves and others. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but the evidence in front of me strongly suggests that I am right. It is pointless and wrong to attack nimbys when everyone essentially feels the same about our landscape and our area.
Sir John Hayes
That is indeed right. If a Member of Parliament does not defend their own area, surely they are not really doing their job, are they? My backyard is South Holland and the Deepings, and I will certainly defend it to the death from the kind of menace represented by this kind of large-scale solar.
Rachel Maclean
I really enjoy hearing my right hon. Friend speak about the matter, because more than anyone else he has brought the concept of beauty and its impact on our wellbeing into public policy. I thank him for that.
I will deliberately move away from the concept of blaming people for being nimbys, because unless we understand how human psychology works, we will not be able to solve the problem of where to put things that nobody wants. There is another way to think about this. It is much easier and cheaper to install infrastructure on a virgin field, rather than to engineer it somewhere else in the built environment or on brownfield. That is more favourable, but it will take cash.
If anyone tells us that we can simply complete a project on brownfield for the same cost as on greenfield, they have no idea what they are talking about. Yes, I am looking at Labour, because that is essentially Labour’s plan for reforming the planning system. Why? Brownfield is brown for a reason: something else was there before. That something else needs to be removed and the site put back to a clean condition, which involves removing toxic materials and engineering problems.
That costs money, and that is why we have Government agencies and grants funded to the tune of £10.5 billion, in the case of Homes England, to do exactly that. However, that money is our money; it is taxpayers’ money. If we want more of it, we must spend more money on it, which means less money to spend on all the other things that voters want and the Opposition have promised, such as the NHS and so on.
By the way, Labour has repeatedly said that it wants to build on the green belt, or the grey belt, whatever that is. I will be honest: there is some merit in that argument, but that is because we are already doing that. It is Government policy, when it is done sensibly and in consultation with local communities and backed by Government funding. It is happening all over the country. Where it is not happening is in—surprise, surprise—Labour-run planning authorities, most notably London. Sadiq Khan is woefully behind on all his housing targets, even though he has been generously subsidised to the tune of 4 billion quid by taxpayers from around the country who are not lucky enough to live in London but are subsidising his frankly useless delivery record.
What is sad and shameful about this is that the need for housing and the cost of it is acute in London. The so-called housing crisis, which is just as much an immigration crisis as a housing crisis, is worse in London. In fact, if the Labour Mayor of London built enough houses in the capital, we could meet the annual national quota with room to spare and prevent speculative green belt development in the home counties and around the country, such as in the areas we represent. If we want a planning system that works with local people, we need to take a step back, look at our policy landscape and ask ourselves about the incentives that are driving these unfavourable outcomes.
Taking all the politics out of this, we are talking about human nature and behaviour. It is an illustration of the tragedy of the commons. Projects such as solar farms are needed to meet communal goals such as net zero, and most people agree that renewable energy is a good idea.
James Gray
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about a strategic review. Does she agree that we need a national policy on solar farms? Do the Government want them to be on a large scale and out in the middle of the countryside, or do they want them to be on smaller sites? At the moment there is no national policy for the matter. Should one not be brought in with no further delay?
Rachel Maclean
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend; he is completely right. I think most of us will make the same point, and I am sure the Minister will update us.
I want to briefly touch on environmental issues. We need to talk about the environmental agencies and the proliferating plethora of reasons for objecting to development on environmental grounds. We have a number of agencies, most notably Natural England and the Environment Agency, but we have not seen them do anything useful such as protecting farm land, our green space, our precious environment and nature or tackling projects that we are all concerned about in our local areas. What they are actually doing is inventing and coming up with ridiculous ideas like “nutrient neutrality”, which is holding up 100,000 much-needed houses across the country in areas where people are desperately screaming out for them. Guess who voted against the proposals we brought forward to tackle that? Of course, it was Labour. If they were serious about unblocking development and house building, they could have acted on that.
I accept that there is a need for regulation and enforcement, but we should direct our attention to the huge number of quangos and agencies indulging in mission creep, way outside what was originally envisaged. We have woken up and found that the European convention on human rights is now regulating on climate change for some people in Switzerland who have said that it is violating their human rights.
We believe in conserving; that is what the Conservatives do. But we should focus on conserving plants, trees, nature, wildlife, landscapes and the green belt. We should not ever be increasing highly paid bureaucratic jobs. These are people who just want to conserve their own organisation and its multitude of rules and regulations. We need to go back to our core Conservative values and ask why we have allowed the state to create so many of these laws. We cannot really blame people for using the protections we have given them. It is human nature. That is why we need to go back to the drawing board on how we are using our land.
I conclude by thanking the House for holding this debate. It is a complex and lengthy subject, but for the avoidance of doubt, I oppose the proposals in my constituency. I recognise that there are no easy, sound-bite answers, but my constituents deserve to be listened to, and I will be a voice for them. They cannot be denigrated for standing up for their local area and caring about it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) made the point eloquently that that is why they moved to the area. These people worked very hard, saved up to buy a house and moved to a desirable area. We are their voice and we will fight for them.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Andrew Bowie)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Henderson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) on securing this incredibly important and timely debate on large-scale solar and the impact of the plans on rural England.
It has been fantastic to hear the passionate and well-informed speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), for Buckingham (Greg Smith)—he talked about the benefits of small modular reactors, which was music to my ears—and for North Wiltshire (James Gray).
My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) talked about the positive benefits of further investment in nuclear power, which is why we unveiled the civil nuclear road map earlier this year—the biggest investment in nuclear in 70 years. He would struggle to find a bigger advocate of the benefits of our domestic oil and gas industry than me. I assure him that, despite my Scottish Presbyterian upbringing, I associate myself much more with the cavaliers than the roundheads. We also heard from my right hon. Friends the Members for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) and for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). I think I have engaged with just about every one of them individually on various energy infrastructure projects, not least recently on solar.
It was also good to hear the concerns of communities raised in the interventions of many other Conservative Members, including my right hon. Friends the Members for Newark (Robert Jenrick), for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) and for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) and my hon. Friends the Members for Devizes (Danny Kruger), for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers).
I represent a vast rural constituency that encompasses some of the best farmland north of the border, which is itself looking at significant energy infrastructure build over the next few years, so I completely understand those concerns and have heard them myself from local communities worried about what that build will mean for the countryside in which they live and of which they are so fond.
Three years ago, the Government adopted our sixth carbon budget with the world’s most ambitious climate change goal—to reduce emissions by 77% by 2035, compared with 1990 levels. We also committed to fully decarbonising the electricity system by 2035, subject to security of supply. Renewables such as solar and wind, alongside other low-carbon technologies such as nuclear, will underpin the UK’s transition from a reliance on fossil fuels to a new, secure, clean energy system. Solar is an important part of the energy mix, and its deployment is a key part of the Government’s strategy for energy independence and clean growth.
As set out in the British energy security strategy and the energy security plan, we are aiming for up to 70 GW of solar capacity by 2035. To achieve that, we need to deploy both rooftop and ground-mounted technology. Ground-mounted technology is one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation and is readily deployable at scale. As such, the Government consider that there is a strong need for increased ground-mounted solar deployment, as reflected in the recently published energy national policy statements.
However, the Department and I recognise that, as with any new development, solar projects may impact on communities and, indeed, the environment. The planning system must allow all views to be taken into account when decision makers balance local impacts with the national need.
Because of the quasi-judicial role of Ministers in determining planning applications, I hope that Members will appreciate that it would not be appropriate for me to comment on any specific matters in relation to specific projects in the planning system. Nor can I comment on the merits or harms of any particular proposals, as that could be perceived as prejudging the subsequent outcome. However, the Government recognise that solar projects can impact on land use, and I can speak to that. It is important that the Government strike the right balance between those considerations and securing a clean energy system for the future. Again, the planning system must take those issues into account.
As the recently published national policy statement for renewable energy infrastructure sets out, solar developers
“should, where possible, utilise suitable previously developed land, brownfield land, contaminated land and industrial land. Where the proposed use of any agricultural land has been shown to be necessary, poorer quality land should be preferred to higher quality land avoiding the use of ‘Best and Most Versatile’ agricultural land where possible.”
If it is proposed to use any land falling under Natural England’s best and most versatile agricultural land classification—grades 1, 2 and 3a—developers are required to justify using such land and to design their projects to avoid, mitigate and where necessary compensate for any impacts.
It is clear to me and to the Government that concerns remain about the scale and volume of projects that are being applied for on BMV land in specific areas of the country, particularly in areas with historic and established grid connections. We have concerns that not all developers are properly considering those requirements. That is something that needs to be rectified. We want to see that, following the new EN-3 publication. Although I can say little of detail in this Chamber, I want to assure hon. Members that we are listening and that work is ongoing to see what can be done to ensure that balance is met.
Reference has been made to the fact that there are no Liberal Democrat Members in the Chamber this afternoon. My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch described their policy as “bananas”, which means, “Build absolutely nothing anywhere ever.”
Andrew Bowie
Near anybody—sorry. However, that is not actually the case. The Lib Dems’ proposal, which was voted on at their conference last year, is to remove restrictions on new solar and wind to accelerate deployment of renewable power. It is quite clear why there are no Liberal Democrats in the Chamber today; they would ride roughshod over the views of rural communities around the country to increase the deployment at pace and scale of solar and other technologies.
The reason why there are not many Labour Members in the Chamber is, as the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) suggested, that not many of them represent rural communities, and they are not seeing the impact of the applications. I am now of the opinion, however, that they are just as confused about the Labour party policy on this issue as we all are, following what was a very interesting speech from the Opposition spokesperson.
Solar and farming can be complementary, supporting each other financially, environmentally and through shared use of land. Analysis shows that even in the unlikely scenario that all additional solar needed to meet the British energy security strategy ambition of 70 GW were to come forward as ground-mounted solar, which is not going to be the case, it would be less than 1% of all types of UK utilised agricultural land that was needed to accommodate it. However, as I have referred to, the concentration of so many of those projects in specific areas is concerning, and UK-wide analysis cannot take that into account. Again, although I am unable to say anything specific at this time, I can assure colleagues that we are listening.
The Government consider that improving our energy security is urgent and of critical importance to the country. I do not think that there is any disagreement on that, but it must be achieved together with maintaining food security for our United Kingdom. Solar projects and agricultural practice can co-exist. For example, the science of agrivoltaics is developing, in which solar is integrated with arable farming in innovative ways. That is coming on in leaps and bounds. Solar energy can also be an important way for farmers to increase their revenue from land less suited to higher-value crop production. Again, on that there is very little disagreement.
What we ultimately want to achieve is protecting our environment, backing British farmers and delivering long-term energy security with more low-carbon energy. I guarantee that this Government and this Department will not countenance the industrialisation of our green and pleasant land. It is possible to maintain and increase our food production in a more sustainable way in some areas and to see land use changes in others.
I turn briefly to the issue of cumulative impacts, which has been brought up multiple times. The planning system sets out how applicants and decision makers should consider cumulative impacts. When preparing an application for a development consent order, applicants for solar deployments and developments under the NSIP regime
“should consider the cumulative impacts of situating a solar farm in proximity to other energy generating stations and infrastructure.”
It is then a matter for the examining authority to consider cumulative in-combination effects with the other solar farm proposals and other developments in a locality when conducting an examination of a particular NSIP solar project. During the examination, the views of interested parties, which will include advisory bodies and local planning authorities, will be taken into account in the examining authority’s recommendations. Again, I assure colleagues that we are looking at that issue.
The Department and I appreciate the concerns raised about the clustering of projects around grid connections in some areas. As we bring more new energy infrastructure online to meet the demand for clean, secure electricity, so too must we increase grid capacity. As set out in the spring Budget, the Government are working with Ofgem and network companies to release more network capacity and prevent speculative projects from obtaining and retaining network capacity. That should result in more capacity across the country and help to reduce the clustering of projects.
Community engagement has also been raised. It is vital—this is where Conservative and Labour party policies differ dramatically—that communities have a voice in decisions about their local areas. There are established routes in the planning system to consider the impact of solar projects and to enable communities to raise concerns about developments. I know that there are concerns about how effective those routes are, but I will set out the policy as it stands.
The national planning policy framework, which underlies the planning system for projects below 50 MW, encourages developers, including those proposing solar projects, to engage with local communities before submitting an application. Local authorities will consider a range of factors when assessing applications, including visual and environmental impacts. Members of the public can submit their views to the planning authorities, and significant concerns will be taken into account as part of the local decision-making process. Developers taking larger projects through the NSIP regime must complete considerable community engagement before any approval is granted, giving communities ample opportunity to feed in their views. The level and quality of community engagement, among other factors, will be taken into account by decision makers.
James Gray
We had an extensive consultation in Wiltshire, and I went along to all the meetings with the PR people who have to do such things. I said to each of them, “Will you take account of the fact that most people here do not want this thing to happen at all? We want to stop it. We want to keep the green fields.” They said, “No, we can’t consider that. All we can consider is the design of the solar farm.” The consultation process is bogus.
Andrew Bowie
My hon. Friend makes a specific point about his constituency, on which I cannot comment, but I am sure that his concerns have been heard. They are certainly not new concerns; they have been raised with me in the past. As I said, we are genuinely and clearly listening to those concerns in the entire process.
Dr Coffey
The Minister is right to talk about how NPS EN-3 refers to the planning application process. One of the points that I made was about the connection process. Connections are being offered left, right and centre. Communities then see that as happening automatically in future, and indeed National Grid is building its infrastructure around the connections it is giving out, regardless of future planning applications. I appreciate that the Minister might not be able to reply today, but he and the Department need to look at the connection process. That is why I called for a moratorium on anything further.
Andrew Bowie
My right hon. Friend knows that I am no longer the Minister responsible for the network or the national grid, but I will ensure that her concerns are passed on to the relevant Minister. Ofgem and the electricity system operator are engaged in a considerable review of how connections are offered across the country, because there is a problem with that system. That is recognised and is being addressed.
Let me briefly touch on community benefits, which have also been raised. It is important that communities can participate in and benefit from the deployment of new low-carbon energy technologies in their local area. However, the Government do not have a formal role with regard to community benefits for solar and other large-scale renewable energy projects. We believe that those are best agreed at a local level, between the renewable operator and the local communities, so that they can be tailored to each community’s individual needs. They cannot be taken into account and, I am afraid, are not relevant to the planning decisions. A number of solar developers already provide community benefits on a voluntary basis. We are working with Solar Energy UK, the industry body, to provide further guidance and advice on community benefits for solar developers and communities and to develop a more consistent approach across the country that is fair to all parties.
Dr Whitehead
Does the Minister accept that under the present trading arrangements for energy, a developer cannot provide a trading benefit for a local area only and has to treat it as though it were a national benefit? Is the Minister interested in changing that so that benefits can come to local areas, rather than simply being spread across the national grid, as hon. Members have said?
Andrew Bowie
As I said, we are working with the solar industry now to develop proposals and give guidance and advice on how best to support local communities and deliver community benefits, so that communities that host these projects on behalf of the wider nation see a benefit. We are not closing our minds to any suggestions that might benefit such communities moving forward. This is a wholesale change in how we deliver energy across the UK, so we should be open to thinking about how we do that in the most appropriate fashion.
I assure right hon. and hon. Members that we are deploying rooftop solar. It remains a key priority for the Government, and continues to be one of the most popular and easily deployed renewable energy sources. We want to see more rooftop solar on industrial and commercial properties, such as warehouses, factories and buildings, to make maximum usage of the available surfaces for business as well as for the environmental and climate benefits. There will be more on that in the solar road map, which will be published in the next few months.
The issue of forced labour was raised. I addressed that in the Chamber just the other evening in response to a debate that was secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns). However, as it has been brought up again, I reassure Members that the Government are committed to tackling the issue of Uyghur forced labour in supply chains, including in the mining used for the manufacture of solar panels, and are taking robust action. Over the past two years, we have introduced new guidance on the risks of doing business in Xinjiang, introduced enhanced export controls and announced the introduction of financial penalties for those who fail to report as required under the Modern Slavery Act 2015. That followed our announcement in September 2020 of the package of changes to section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act. These changes will require large businesses and public bodies to report on specific areas within their modern slavery statements, including their due diligence processes in relation to modern slavery. There will be yet more on that within the solar road map on what the industry is doing to ensure that it is not reliant on forced labour anywhere in the world, but particularly in China.
We need an increase in ground-mounted solar alongside rooftop solar over the next decade to meet our energy security and net zero goals and to reduce the cost to consumers. But it is clear to me, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero and His Majesty’s Government in general that this growth must be sustainable and enabled by a robust planning system that balances the wider benefits with the local impacts, that local communities are listened to and that food security concerns are addressed. That is what we are committing to do. I look forward to the publication of the solar road map, which is the result of the solar taskforce’s work. The document will set out deployment scenarios as well as key actions needed to address challenges in several priority areas, including the grid, rooftop supply chains and skills.
Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham for bringing forward this debate—
Rachel Maclean
Will the Minister enlighten us on when this solar road map will be published?
Andrew Bowie
I assure my hon. Friend that it is imminent. We will see the publication within the next few weeks.
Andrew Bowie
Spring. I close by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham for bringing forward this important debate. The contributions have been enlightening and well informed, and show the passion with which Members, who I am proud to serve with, have for the local communities that they are honoured to represent in this place.
Dr Caroline Johnson
I thank all my right hon. and hon. Friends for coming along to contribute either interventions or magnificent speeches. I started the debate with an agreement and I will finish it with one. We agree on so many things on the Government side of the House. Currently, my constituents feel under siege as they wait for the results of a planning process that could ruin many aspects of their life. Let us imagine: you own a house in a rural village, such as Scopwick, and when you walk your dog in the morning, you enjoy the beautiful countryside and the sunshine. However, under this plan you will be walking through field after field, for miles around, of 4-metre-high solar panels. That will spoil much of your enjoyment of the countryside and your house. We also know that it will have an effect on my constituents’ mental health and wellbeing.
We have heard about how inefficient solar farms and solar panels are as a form of energy compared with other forms of green energy, and how, as the technology becomes better over time, these large solar farms put in in the countryside will become obsolete long before their 40 years are up. We have also heard that they are not as green as they are said to be and they are certainly not as morally clean as we would wish them to be.
We have also heard about the importance of protecting the countryside, particularly productive farmland, and about food security. We have heard that it is important that everybody has the right to defend their area, not because they are a nimby, but because they care about where they live.
We have also heard about farmers. I should mention that my husband is a farmer so I understand, perhaps as well as most, the challenges of farming at the moment and the financial difficulties posed by some of the weather issues that we have had this year. I also heard today that there is no real objection among Conservative Members to small-scale development of solar for farmers, which will help to de-risk some of the farming challenges without having a huge impact on the community. We heard about the particular difficulties for tenant farmers, who may be chucked off land that they have farmed for generations simply so that solar farms can be put on it instead.
We heard about Government measures to incentivise the use of brownfield land and rooftops. I am very pleased that a solar plan is imminent and I am really looking forward to it. One thing the Minister said was that, where possible, we should use brownfield or poor-quality land and that a developer would have to justify themselves if they are not using that. In practice, however, in a county such as Lincolnshire, which has very little such land, developers can therefore claim that there is no rubbish land locally, because it is all good. That is therefore not tight enough for me; that loophole needs closing.
The Minister also talked about the cumulative effect. I want to draw his attention to something that he might not be aware of because it sits outside his brief: the reservoir that developers also propose to build in my constituency. That is yet another NSIP project that will take up many thousands of acres—5 sq km, indeed—of currently productive and in some cases organic farmland. So on the cumulative effect of development, when, as he puts it, we are hosting infrastructure for the whole country, it is important not just to consider the energy infrastructure that an area is being asked to host, but the wider infrastructure that an area or a community is being asked to bear for the greater good.
There have been lots of mentions today of a land use plan. Will the Minister tell me when he expects that to be published, or could he go back to DEFRA to find out when?
Dr Caroline Johnson
I see that the Minister is nodding. I also want to draw his attention to the widespread nature of this debate by listing some of the counties that we have heard from today: Suffolk; Yorkshire; Nottinghamshire; Wiltshire; Bedfordshire; Rutland; Shropshire; Worcestershire; Derbyshire; North Lincolnshire; Oxfordshire; Durham; Staffordshire; and Lincolnshire, which has the greatest concentration of them all. [Interruption.] And Buckinghamshire; I knew that I had missed one out. That should demonstrate to him the scale and the widespread nature of the problems that we face.
I was quite disappointed to hear what the Labour spokesperson, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), had to say. He talked about solar being an important part of the solution to net zero and said that it is important to consider planning—well, yes, of course. He also talked about supporting onshore wind, which I know my constituents, by and large, do not support—they do not support the idea of covering their beautiful farmland with windmills instead of solar panels. He talked about spreading this out evenly, but what does that mean? Does it mean that every district council must have so many? How would that work in the centre of London? He did not really have a policy, and for a party who think that they might be in Government in less than six months’ time, that is really quite remarkable.
I was also pretty disgusted to see that there were no Back Benchers here from the Opposition at all—nobody from the SNP, the Liberal Democrats or Labour. Do they have no interest in the countryside? I have always thought that to be the case and this shows it to be true.
Finally, I met the Prime Minister just before Easter on a one-to-one basis, and I am certain both of his understanding of the importance of dealing with this issue and of his commitment to doing so. I am also very clear that we have a Minister here who is most capable and committed to achieving what his boss has asked him to do and of delivering for my constituents, but I ask him to do so as quickly as possible.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered large-scale solar farms.