Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 89 in the name of my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger, Amendment 92 in the name of my noble friend Lord Fuller, Amendment 94A in the name of my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Amendment 94B in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey. These amendments focus on a matter of strategic and national importance: the protection of prime agricultural land in the face of increasing pressure from non-agricultural development, particularly the expansion of renewable energy infrastructure. The arguments have been well made already in this short debate, so I can be brief.

In bringing these amendments, my noble friends rightly highlight the wider context in which we debate this issue. The agricultural sector has been under immense pressure from market volatility, environmental challenges and, regrettably, punitive tax measures such as the family farms tax raid. Against that backdrop, it is more important than ever that we protect our best and most versatile land, not just for farmers but for the long-term food security of our nation. The Government must support an approach that balances the need to scale up renewable energy with the critical need to maintain our ability to feed ourselves.

These amendments make a strong case for preventing the unnecessary loss of high-quality agricultural land. As I and other noble Lords have previously highlighted Committee, some of the largest solar developments are being approved without proper regard for the grade or quality of the land being sacrificed. Every one of the large-scale solar farms approved under NSIP that I have looked at has been materially located on best and most versatile land. That is not just a matter for the farming community; it is a matter of national food security. We cannot create a future in which we can switch on our lights and heat our homes but are unable to feed ourselves. We must not let the pursuit of energy security come at the expense of food security.

As others have highlighted, a disproportionate percentage of our best and most versatile land is going to solar. This is madness when 58% of our farmed land is not in the BMV category and there is also a significant amount of unclassified and unfarmed land that could be used for renewable development. With the Government’s ambition to triple solar capacity by 2030, the pressure on land is only going to intensify. Unless active steps are taken now to guide that development sensibly and strategically, we will continue to see the erosion of our agricultural capacity and, with it, increased dependence on imported food.

These amendments are both timely and necessary. They would ensure that solar and other non-agricultural developments are directed towards less productive land or even non-productive land, leaving our best farmland for the essential job of feeding our population. I urge the Minister to take these amendments seriously and offer clear assurances that under no circumstances will the Secretary of State approve developments that compromise the UK’s food security.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendments 89, 92, 94A and 94B relate to Clause 28 and the protection of agricultural land. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Hodgson and Lady Coffey, and the noble Lords, Lord Fuller and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, for tabling these amendments. Is that the right pronunciation of Drumlean? I am glad he is not here, because I know he would shout at me if I got it wrong.

Amendment 89, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, seeks to prohibit the construction of ground-mounted solar farms on land of grades 1, 2 and 3A. The Government view food security as national security and champion British farming and environmental protection. All solar projects undergo a rigorous planning process, considering environmental impacts, local community views and any impact on food production. The Government believe that solar generation does not threaten food security. As of the end of September 2024, ground-mounted solar PV panels covered an estimated 21,200 hectares, which is only around 0.1%—not 1%—of the total land area of the UK. Even in the most ambitious scenarios, only up to 0.4% of UK land will be devoted to solar in 2030.

The Government are in total agreement with the noble Baroness in that we want to get the balance right between protecting fertile agricultural land and facilitating renewable energy. The Government agree that protecting food security should always be a priority. That is why land use and food production are already material considerations in planning. Planning guidance makes it clear that, wherever possible, developers should utilise brownfield, industrial, contaminated or previously developed land. Where the development of agricultural land is shown to be necessary, lower-quality land should be preferred to higher-quality land. However, we do not believe the accelerated rollout of solar power under present planning arrangements poses a threat to food security.

The government consultation on the land use framework sought feedback on what improvements are needed to the agricultural land classification system to support effective land use decisions. The land use framework, to be published later this year, will set out the evidence, data and tools needed to help safeguard our most productive agricultural land. It will also lay out how government intends to align the different incentives on land; ensure that joined-up decisions are made at national and local levels; and make accessible and high-quality data available.

As such, we believe that this amendment is not necessary to protect agricultural land. Moreover, a total ban on the use of higher-quality land may have several deleterious consequences. Quite often, a site suitable for solar development will contain soil of varying quality. At the moment, the amount of high-quality land proposed to be developed is examined by planning officers. This is a consideration in planning decisions. Were this amendment to be incorporated into the Bill, large projects could be rejected for the sake of a small area of higher-quality soil that constitutes a small fraction of the overall site.

This amendment would reduce the number of economically viable sites for solar generation, which would increase costs for developers. They may seek to recoup these by placing higher bids in the contracts for difference scheme. That cost is ultimately borne by bill payers. In short, banning all solar development on higher-quality land may endanger the Government’s mission to achieve clean power by 2030, increasing the exposure of British consumers to volatile imported fossil fuels.

I shall touch on the noble Baroness’s point about solar on domestic and non-domestic buildings. Deploying rooftop solar remains a key priority for the Government and we will publish the future homes standard this autumn. The new standard will ensure that solar panels are installed on the vast majority of new-build homes once it comes into force, saving households hundreds of pounds a year on their energy bills. That will support our ambition that the 1.5 million homes we will build over the course of this Parliament will be high-quality, well designed and sustainable.

Additionally, the recently published Solar Roadmap contained several actions for both government and industry to support the deployment of solar PV in the commercial sector. These included unpicking the complex landlord/tenant considerations in the sector by developing and distributing a toolkit for owners and occupiers. The Government set out that rooftop solar on new non-domestic buildings will, where appropriate, play an important role in the future buildings standard, due to be introduced later this year.

The Government have also announced £180 million of funding for Great British Energy to help around 200 schools and 200 NHS sites to install rooftop solar. We expect the first of these installations to be complete by the end of the summer—summer being a flexible concept, so whenever that comes. The Government are assessing the potential to drive the construction of solar canopies on outdoor car parks over a certain size through a call for evidence, which closed on 18 June. We will publish the government response to that consultation. I trust that the noble Baroness will be satisfied with that response and I kindly ask her not to press her amendment.

Amendment 92, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, seeks to remove solar projects on high-quality land from the nationally significant infrastructure project regime. I thank the noble Lord for his engagement on this subject. I know that he has spent many years serving in local government and has considerable expertise. However, I hope that he recognises the contradiction in his argument. At the same time as he argues about the very difficult conditions that farmers face in growing food, these are brought about by climate change, but he is using them as arguments not to tackle it by moving to clean energy—so there is a bit of a contradiction in the argument there.

It is vitally important that every project is submitted to the planning process that best suits its impact, scale, and complexity.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

The point is that the difficulty that farmers are under may be aggravated by poor weather, either too wet or too cold, but the real problem is that this Government are engaged in a war on the countryside by undermining the finances of every family farm and damaging food production, even with the stuff on bioethanol, taking 1 million tonnes of wheat out of the market. That is the reason why farms are doing so badly—it is not to do with climate change.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Lord was referring specifically to climate impacts on food growing, which I felt was a bit ironic as we are trying to tackle the climate change that is bringing them about with exactly these measures to use clean energy.

The Government recognise the benefit of returning control over decisions to local planning authorities. As of 31 December 2025, we will double the NSIP threshold for solar projects from 50 megawatts to 100 megawatts. However, the Government believe that large solar farms, even when they propose to use higher-quality agricultural land, are best dealt with under the NSIP process.

The NSIP regime is rigorous. Although the decision is not taken locally, local engagement is still at the heart of the process. Under the current legislative framework, developers taking projects through the NSIP regime are required to undertake community consultation as part of the preparation for the application. This gives communities ample opportunity to feed in their views and shape the project. Currently, the level and quality of community consultation, among other factors, is taken into account by decision-makers. I am glad the noble Lord made a protest about the one that he was subject to; I hope communities will do that if they feel that those consultation processes are not being carried out in good faith.

Moreover, considerations under the NSIP regime include any impact on land use and food production. Planning guidance is clear that poorer-quality land should be preferred to higher-quality land, avoiding the use of best and most versatile agricultural land where possible. This is in line with the policy governing decision-making by local planning authorities. Even if there were a marginal gain in public confidence from returning the decision to local authorities, we would not expect the outcomes to change.

This marginal gain must be weighed against the likely costs of this proposal. First, a proper examination of the potential impacts of a large-scale solar farm is a major and lengthy undertaking. Giving this responsibility to local planning departments may place an untenable burden on resources which are already under pressure.

Secondly, it is right that projects of such scale, size or complexity as to be nationally significant should be considered through the NSIP process. These proposals are of strategic importance to the country as a whole, and as such central government is the most appropriate decision-maker. Changing policy to allow decisions about these projects to be taken by local authorities may increase investor uncertainty at a pivotal moment for the Government’s 2030 clean power mission. This may jeopardise our work to reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels, increase energy security and protect consumers from global price shocks, just at the very time when Members have raised the issue of security.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I am prompted to intervene only because the head of the noble Lord, Lord Khan, nearly seems to be falling off with nodding. The point is that the NSIP regime is combining schemes which, frankly, should normally go through the local planning authority. These are disparate, small, stand-alone schemes which fall under NSIP only because the system is being abused to string them all together quite artificially. There are no capacity constraints in local government planning to do with these smaller schemes; we know where they are and we know the issues. To suggest that stringing together a dozen different small schemes is nationally significant demonstrates the falsehood and the paucity behind the argument that NSIP should be engaged in this manner.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

These are geographical schemes. As I said, we are increasing the size of schemes that will go to NSIP.

Lastly, I am concerned that accepting this amendment would imply that there are some issues on which the NSIP regime is either not competent or not qualified to adjudicate. This is simply not the case. Setting this precedent may reduce public confidence in the NSIP planning system as it applies to other types of infrastructure. It may undermine trust in decisions which have already been taken. For all the reasons I have outlined—although it sounds as though I have not convinced the noble Lord—I hope he will not press his amendment and will continue to work with us on this issue.

Amendment 94A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, seeks to prohibit battery developments on best and most versatile agricultural land. The Clean Power 2030 Action Plan set out an expansion of renewable technologies required to achieve the 2030 ambition, including the acceleration of grid-scale battery development from around 5 gigawatts at present to at least 23 to 27 gigawatts by 2030. Grid-scale batteries, which are rapidly falling in cost and increasing in scale, allow the power system to store cheap excess renewable energy and use this, rather than expensive polluting gas, at times of need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Can the Minister not deal with the problem of patches of best-quality land on a site with a classic de minimis rule of, say, 5%? That would still allow us to protect the best land without needless delay and Defra—or the new framework that the Minister mentioned—could easily provide the data for that purpose.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am sure that if the noble Baroness wished to put that forward in the land use framework it would be considered. I always worry about de minimis rules because there will always be the exception to the rule that goes slightly over it, and then you end up with a big problem sorting that out. However, if she wishes to feed that into Defra’s part of the land use framework consultation, I am sure it will take account of it.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her extensive response and all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, especially those who have given support. Many interesting points have been raised, and some very worrying statistics. I simply repeat that, especially given the international situation, we really need to think about national food security and resilience. We import 40% of our food and, if we got into a war situation, we would need to grow more than we are at the moment. It seems counterintuitive to be allowing good agricultural land to be used to generate electricity when this can be done elsewhere.

I will not repeat all the points previously made, except to say that we also need the good will of the British people. We need to ensure that local people can have their views heard. I was heartened when the Minister said that there would be community consultation, but too often these consultations are binned and not acted on—people listen and then some other outcome happens. I hope that community consultation in which local people expressed that they really did not want solar farms would be respected and the schemes would be turned down.

I was slightly disappointed that the Minister did not address the points about foreign investors leasing this land long term. I imagine that we do not know who they are and we are not checking on who is buying what. I am very disappointed to hear that the Minister is not prepared to recognise the depth of feeling on this issue. I withdraw the amendment now, but hope that we can have further consultations and some movement can be made to address what all of us have tried to say about making sure that prime agricultural land does not have solar farms on it. I reserve the right to bring this back at the next stage of the Bill.