British Steel

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Blair McDougall]

As Minister with responsibility for regulations, if there are any particular regulatory issues that the hon. Gentleman has in mind, I encourage him to bring them to me and I will pursue them across the system. In addition to the reviewed guidance that we have given to ensure British Steel is in the mix for procurement, the clean industry bonus scheme—for offshore wind, for example—will incentivise its use.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I appreciate the point that the Minister made about the taxpayer having only owned British Steel for a matter of hours, and how the board is still being appointed. It is, however, imperative that the Government are clear, once the board is appointed, what the strategic priorities are for the board—as opposed to British Steel at large. Top of those priorities must be a timescale to get to profitability. Can the Minister—or his successor—commit to ensuring that the red lines set for the board are made clear to this House as soon as it returns in September, when the board will have been functional for five or six weeks?

[Blair McDougall]

I am disappointed in the hon. Gentleman’s lack of faith in my career prospects. I am sure that the Minister for Industry, who has deep expertise in steel and is an excellent Minister, intends to update the House on the strategic objectives of the new board.

Draft Electricity Capacity (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2026 General Committees

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. With your indulgence, I will start by welcoming the new Conservative Member, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South. I am sure that, in a series of firsts as he finds his feet around the House of Commons, his first Delegated Legislation Committee will be the one that stands out most in his mind.

As the Minister laid out, the draft regulations make several technical amendments to the capacity market. They are perhaps most notable for the absence of the proposed multiple price capacity market, which would have created a two-tier system that the industry warned would result in increased costs for consumers. I understand that the Government have said that these changes would

“ensure the continuation of security of supply while supporting the transition to a decarbonised energy system.”

However, can the Minister explain why the results of the latest four-year-ahead capacity market auction secured only 40 GW of generating capacity, which was 3 GW less than the year before? Not only is that less than the current peak demand of 50 GW, but it is less than the projected peak demand of around 80 GW by 2030.

His Majesty’s loyal Opposition have warned countless times that forcing decarbonisation and electrification on to families and businesses at any cost would simply result in industry shutting down and livelihoods being lost. Although the Government have rejected those warnings in public, the results of that auction seem to suggest that they have privately accepted the fact that industrial energy consumption will fall thanks to their policies.

I have no doubt at all that the Minister will seek to reassure the Committee that the Government’s mass roll-out of renewable energy and associated infrastructure will make concerns about security of supply redundant. However, what this completely fails to address is the cold, still winter nights when electricity demand is at its highest, yet generation from wind and solar is effectively nothing—precisely the scenario that the capacity market is supposed to address through securing firm power from conventional means, such as gas.

Even assuming the Government’s highly optimistic predictions that the billions of pounds-worth of additional generating capacity, battery storage systems and grid connections needed to support an entirely intermittent renewables-based electricity grid will be online by 2030—which currently seems very unlikely—that would still not ensure the security of supply that our electricity grid needs. As both the Government and the National Energy System Operator have admitted, nearly all our currently installed generating capacity from gas will need to remain online in 2030 to meet peak demand.

However, by refusing to support private investment to build new gas power stations, placing more burdensome decarbonisation requirements on new and refurbished generators, as well as pushing gas to the sidelines of our electricity supply while still expecting full capacity to remain available, the Government are making continued operation for many gas power stations economically and technically unviable.

Let us be very clear what the Government’s energy policy means: placing increasing strain on demand through legally binding electrification and decarbonisation requirements; reducing supply by failing to secure new firm power from gas; and the Government forcing families and businesses to ration electricity through consumer-led flexibility at the risk of facing blackouts. Although the Opposition do not oppose the very technical amendments made by these draft regulations, we believe that it is well past time for the Government to accept that they cannot sustain our energy system on blind faith in renewables, and that they must instead fully support new generating capacity from gas and nuclear.

Steel Tariffs

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris McDonald]

I am aware of the challenges for spring steel businesses. Spring steels are incredibly difficult to produce and use high-quality, high-value steel. They are clearly within the capability of Speciality Steel, but the business is not operating. Given the number of requests for meetings, we might do a roundtable or something similar, but there will certainly be an opportunity for my hon. Friend to speak to officials. Perhaps we can get together with the Minister for Trade.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

Prototype Productions in Long Crendon, Gibbs Gears in Stoke Mandeville and Aircraft Materials in Stokenchurch are all businesses in my constituency that categorically rely on grades of steel not made here in the United Kingdom. We have heard countless examples from around the Chamber of such businesses in other parts of the country. I have heard the Minister say “if” there is a problem with quotas; I would put it to him that there quite clearly is a problem with quotas. As we approach this cliff edge, I urge him, as so many others have, to stop, pause and ensure we get this right, or jobs will be lost.

[Chris McDonald]

The hon. Member talks of tool steels. As I have said, this is about steels that are made or could be made in the UK. Clearly, for the steel businesses to be profitable, we need to—[Interruption.] Well, the phrase “could be made” is actually quite important, because the Speciality Steel business was unable to compete with subsidised steel coming in from China. If the Opposition say they want our steel strategy set by the Chinese Government, that would be why our steel industry is in the position it is. I am sympathetic to the calls from UK businesses to manage the transition, and I am trying to do that. Understandably, however, I do not believe that our steel strategy should be set by the Chinese Government.

Draft Contracts for Difference (Allocation) (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 General Committees

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. The lens through which we must view any legislation on contracts for difference, including the draft regulations before us, is one that asks: what do contracts for difference mean for all our constituents who ultimately pay the energy bills?

The Opposition oppose forcing families and businesses to pay even more money to subsidise wind and solar developers, which I am afraid is precisely what happened in the last allocation round for contracts for difference, which the draft regulations amend. My Conservative colleagues and I warned Ministers for months that wind and solar developers would take advantage of the Government’s blind commitment to building more clean power, regardless—I repeat, regardless—of the cost. What was the result? Prices that were far higher than those agreed in the previous allocation round, higher than the average cost of electricity the year before, and the highest in over a decade.

The Government are locking in uncompetitive electricity prices for decades to come. Britain already has the highest electricity prices in the world, and it is now clear that it is the cost of the excess capacity, curtailment, batteries, storage systems and interconnectors, as well as the imports of gas needed to offset the intermittency of renewables and the subsidies that developers are extracting to pay for this, that are driving up prices in the long term. It is a reality that seemingly everyone but the Government have come to accept, with energy bosses giving a pointed warning to Parliament last year that the price of electricity could be higher in 2030 than it is now even if gas were free, because of these rising network and policy costs.

If the Government believe that their policy will lower energy bills in the long term, can the Minister promise that the maximum strike prices agreed in allocation round 8 will be lower than the price of gas-powered electricity last year, and lower than the strike prices agreed in previous allocation rounds? If the Minister cannot answer those straightforward questions, how can the Government continue to claim that their policy is lowering the cost of energy, when the available evidence suggests otherwise?

Today’s draft regulations may involve just a number of minor technical amendments, and His Majesty’s official Opposition will not divide the Committee today, but the bigger picture to which the draft regulations speak should be of concern of all members of the Committee, and all Members of the wider House.

Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill

Greg Smith Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 21st May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

Given that no UK steel producers produce the specialist grades of steel used by precision engineers such as Gibbs Gears in Stoke Mandeville, in my constituency, which supplies components for the aerospace and defence sectors, what is in this Bill for them? All they can see are incoming tariffs on the steel that they necessarily have to import because nobody makes it here.

[Peter Kyle]

The hon. Gentleman will know that when I took the difficult decision to introduce measures, I did so for products that compete directly with the products that we are capable of making domestically. Speciality Steel UK is going through an administration process at the moment, but when that is complete and the company is up and running properly, I need to make sure that its products and services are protected and viable domestically. Given the world in which we are living, where national resilience is so important to our nation and the economy in a way that it simply has not been for decades, the decisions that I am making to ensure that British steel production is viable and sustainable are of paramount importance.

Wind Farms: Protected Peatland

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) on securing this important debate. Since this Labour Government came to power, they have been recklessly zealous in their commitment to net zero targets over all else, not least their willingness to trash our countryside for wind turbines, ground-mounted solar and more, when far less land-intensive energy solutions such as small modular reactors would deliver our energy needs in a much more sympathetic way to our landscape, food security and natural environment.

On the one hand, the Government promise to restore our natural environment, while on the other, they open England’s protected peatlands to industrial wind farm development such as Calderdale, which my hon. Friend mentioned in his speech. I wish him luck, and I support him, in his fight against that monstrosity as he sets out to protect his constituents and iconic Brontë country.

The consequence is that habitats storing more than 3 billion tonnes of carbon, formed over centuries and millennia, are now exposed to excavation, road building and the foundations of turbines. What do people get in return? They get not a ban, not a firm line, but guidance from the Government that says that deep peat should be “avoided”—a word that is not a prohibition, merely a suggestion. That will create irreparable damage to irreplaceable habitats, and it has been reduced to a footnote in a planning document.

In January 2026, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero published guidance permitting wind farm development on peatland. The national planning policy framework states that development on irreplaceable habitats, which includes a quarter of England’s peatland, should be refused, yet the Government have chosen just guidance over prohibition. It is shocking but unsurprising of this Labour Government—we find contradictions in their policymaking at every corner. Crucially, the new guidance on construction practices for wind farms on peatland has not even been published yet—the bulldozers may arrive before the policy framework lands.

That failure extends beyond one habitat. Peatlands supply more than a quarter of the UK’s drinking water and provide fertile agricultural land and habitats for rare wildlife. The Government’s secondary legislation, which came into effect in December 2025, removed the de facto ban on onshore wind, handing planning consent back to the corridors of Whitehall, rather than local communities. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) said, that bypasses the consent of local people and empowers the Secretary of State to impose infrastructure irrespective of their concerns. Given that Labour controls the levers of national Government, energy policy and planning guidance simultaneously, that should give us pause for thought: what are they trying to achieve?

The Government hold a statutory responsibility to protect irreplaceable habitats, which makes it even more important that they demonstrate visible leadership on this issue, rather than convenient ambiguity. Instead, Energy Ministers tell us that existing protections are sufficient, yet those existing protections have not prevented the guidance from being issued. The Government cannot have it both ways. Over recent years, costs imposed on rural communities by energy infrastructure decisions have grown significantly. With the expansion of the NSIP regime, increases in centrally directed planning consent and innovations in bypassing local democratic oversight, the least that those communities could expect is that their most precious landscapes would be protected.

In addition, when the science itself warns against development on peatland, the Government should be able to point to a clear policy to reflect that. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has been unambiguous, stating that “modelling…suggests” that

“emissions from the windfarm development on undamaged peatlands…will not”—

I repeat, “will not”—

“be offset by…the green energy generated.”

That is not a fringe position, but the conclusion of the body dedicated to this very question.

As ever, I would like to be charitable, but it is hardly surprising that the Government have been slow to draw a firm line when their approach to net zero treats all means as justified by the end.

[Anna Dixon]

Will the shadow Minister clarify his own party’s position? Does it remain committed to net zero, and does it acknowledge there will be a lot of nature damage if we do not make the transition swiftly to generating clean and renewable energy by 2030?

[Greg Smith]

The Conservative party has been very, very clear on that. We believe in decarbonisation, but we need to do it in a way that people can afford and that does not trash our country in the process, in the way that ground-mounted solar and these wind farms do. The points I am making in arguing that damaging untouched peatland ends up causing more environmental damage than the supposed benefits of the wind farms that those who argue for them want to put there should make every Member of the House pause. They should think whether, in getting to decarbonisation, we are not creating more problems than we are solving by simply taking the first technology off the shelf or going for the convenient bit of land that might be available to build this on. It is a totally false economy to go down the rabbit warren of saying, “It looks green, so we must do it,” rather than doing a whole-system analysis, from the manufacture of parts to the destruction of habitat, land and place across our country. That may actually reveal that the results are not as green as they look on the metaphorical packaging.

The guidance does little to help the communities living along these landscapes, the wildlife that depends on them, or indeed the climate if carbon storing habitats are destroyed in the name of carbon reduction. In contrast to that inaction, there is a straightforward solution: prohibit wind farm development on protected peatland across our country—full stop. Despite the Secretary of State holding responsibility for both energy and net zero, it is preposterous that no such ban has been enacted. It is either that the Government do not wish to constrain their ambitions or are displaying sheer negligence towards the natural environment they claim to champion.

The reality is that this is not an abstract problem. These are living landscapes that once destroyed cannot be recovered on any human timescale. We need the Government to bring forward a clear prohibition—not guidance, balance or nuance deployed as a smokescreen, but a complete ban. Without the will to protect these habitats absolutely, the peatlands will be lost, and with them 3 billion tonnes of stored carbon, a quarter of our drinking water supply and the quiet, irreplaceable richness of the United Kingdom’s upland landscape.

UK Steel Strategy

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

My hon. Friend will know full well that when it comes to energy, we have announced the supercharger programme. Compensation is now being increased from 60% to 90%, offering relief and injecting competitiveness into the sector at the same time as offering protection. If we had done one without the other, we would, of course, just be pouring money down the drain. I can assure him that we are working with the National Grid and colleagues in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to make sure that we get the energy supply needed for the conversion to electric arc furnaces as quickly as possible.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

Now that the Government have some experience of running a business with British Steel, what assessment has the Secretary of State made of the £37 million cost of the Employment Rights Act 2025 and the national insurance jobs tax increases on the viability of our steel industry?

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving himself the opportunity to score an own goal. When we came into office, we inherited a broken economy that was not delivering for working people. Our international relationships were on their knees, public services were stretched to breaking point and our economy simply was not generating income because of the circumstances that we inherited. We have acted to update workers’ rights for the moment we are living in, while getting a grip on the public finances that the previous Government left in utter chaos. Those are the fundamentals that we need moving forward to deal with all the global challenges that will come our way. If we had not got the finances on a stable footing, we would be in a much worse state now that we are facing the challenges that have come our way in recent times.

Draft Energy-Intensive Industry Electricity Support Payments and Levy (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 General Committees

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz.

Energy-intensive industries have long been the backbone of our industrial economy. From steel and chemicals to ceramics and refining, these sectors provide skilled jobs, anchor local communities and guarantee our economic security, yet they are operating in an increasingly hostile environment driven largely by the cost of energy.

The draft regulations will make limited but important amendments to the energy-intensive industry electricity support payments regime. Specifically, as the Minister says, they will increase the compensation available under the network charging compensation scheme from 60% to 90% from April 2026 and will extend the application window from one month to two. The changes are made using powers under the Energy Act 2023 and are intended to strengthen the British industry supercharger package. The stated aim is to lower electricity costs for the most energy-intensive sectors, reduce the risk of carbon leakage, and help retain manufacturing investment and jobs in the United Kingdom.

The Opposition will always welcome measures that provide greater clarity and modest additional support for industries under pressure. However, it is impossible to consider this instrument in isolation from the wider context. Britain’s industrial electricity prices are among the highest in the world. On a per-kilowatt-hour basis, our electricity costs are the most expensive in the G7 and the European Union—around 46% higher than the median. Industrial electricity prices here are around four times higher than in the United States, and roughly 50% more than in France and Germany.

As my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) has rightly said in other debates, Government policy risks accelerating the deindustrialisation of this country, from Stoke in the Potteries to the Prax Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I never miss an opportunity to talk about ceramics. When the hon. Gentleman listed the sectors that the scheme helps, he mentioned ceramics. Given that the supercharger scheme was set up by his Government, he will surely know that it does not cover the ceramics sector: the product standard industrial classification codes that were specifically listed when the scheme was set up excluded ceramics. Can the hon. Gentleman tell me why his Government decided that ceramics were not entitled to the level of support that they put in place for other energy-intensive industries?

[Greg Smith]

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that point; I have always been impressed, on a cross-party basis, by the passion with which he speaks for industry in his constituency. My point is that we need to talk to those industries that do not currently have the support. I noticed that the hon. Gentleman bobbed to try and catch your eye, Ms Vaz, so perhaps he will have some helpful comments for the Minister on that front when he is called.

I am making a point about the wider context in which we have to see the statutory instrument. The most glaring omission is the oil and gas industry in the North sea. Energy-intensive industries are not just struggling; they are being driven overseas by costs that they simply cannot absorb. The very thing that the Minister said he was trying to prevent is happening. Since Labour came into government, more than 15,000 manufacturing and industrial jobs have already been lost, largely because of astronomical energy costs combined with unnecessary green levies and carbon taxes. When manufacturing moves abroad, we do not eliminate emissions; we simply offshore them, often to countries like China with weaker environmental standards and far greater geopolitical risk.

We have also heard clear warnings from industry leaders. Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been explicit that high taxes and energy costs have left sites such as Grangemouth unable to compete with overseas rivals. These are not abstract concerns, but real decisions affecting real jobs. Against that backdrop, while the draft regulations make proportionate and technical changes, they do not address the fundamental problem. Increasing compensation within a flawed system is not the same as fixing the system itself. The best way to reduce electricity prices for energy-intensive businesses is to tackle costs at source by scrapping the energy profits levy and removing punitive carbon taxes that undermine competitiveness.

I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify how this statutory instrument fits into a broader long-term strategy for energy-intensive industries. Does he accept that compensation schemes, while welcome, cannot substitute for the structural reform of energy pricing? Can he assure the Committee that the Government are developing a plan that genuinely restores Britain’s industrial competitiveness? Ultimately, energy-intensive industries know that their future depends on predictable affordable energy. If we are serious about growth, resilience and security, the Government must ensure that the policies of this country enable those industries to survive and thrive at home, not drive them abroad.

[The Chair]

As he caught my eye, I call Gareth Snell.

Net Zero Transition: Consumer-led Flexibility

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

As ever, Mr Vickers, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. The Opposition have a deep and growing concern about the direction in which Ministers of this Government are taking our energy system. It is a direction that depends increasingly on the weather, and I do not believe that anyone in this House should pretend that such dependence makes our country more secure. I have battled with this in my own constituency of Mid Buckinghamshire, where large-scale solar development projects threaten to consume vast areas of productive farmland and countryside while adding yet more intermittent generation to an already fragile system.

Expanding weather-dependent capacity without addressing firm power needs not only strains local communities, but further undermines the resilience of our national grid. We are also moving towards a system in which electricity supply must follow the wind rather than meeting the needs of households and businesses. This is being presented as modern, progressive and resilient. In truth, it is none of those things. It is a system built on hope rather than reliability, which is not what this country needs.

The National Energy System Operator has already set out that the future system will require a very large amount of what it calls flexible demand to prevent power shortages and to keep the lights on. “Flexible demand” is a polite phrase. What it means is encouraging or requiring people to use electricity at times when they might not want to use it. It means shifting everyday life around the weather to accommodate low output from wind power. That is not energy security; it is energy insecurity by design.

As the economist Sir Dieter Helm has put it, such arrangements amount to voluntary power cuts, because they rely on people reducing their demand whenever renewable output falls. Sir Dieter has also warned that wind and solar do not provide firm power and that without enough firm capacity, the system simply cannot function reliably.

The facts support Sir Dieter. A recent study of wind patterns found that extended periods of very low wind are surprisingly common and can last a week or more. These wind lulls occur at times, and for durations that exceed the capability of storage and interconnectors to compensate. In those conditions, families, hospitals and industry cannot simply wait for the breeze to return, yet that is exactly what the current strategy risks requiring them to do.

Consumers are already paying the price for an energy system that prioritises intermittency over reliability. According to the Nuclear Industry Association, balancing costs, which are the payments needed to bring dispatchable power online when renewable output is too low, reached £2.1 billion between January and September this year. That represents a 25% increase on the previous year. These costs add nothing to the strength of the system; they simply mask its weakness and push bills upwards.

NESO’s winter outlook for 2025-26 forecasts an operational margin of 6.1 GW. Although this is the highest margin since 2019, the operator warns that there will still be tighter periods, when further interventions may be needed. In other words, even now, with relatively healthy margins, the system is fragile. As more dispatchable plants retire and more intermittent generation comes online, that fragility will only deepen. That point leads me to the most pressing issue underpinning this debate.

At the end of this decade, the United Kingdom faces a firm capacity crunch. Older baseload and dispatchable plants are closing, and they are not being replaced at the required scale. Nuclear projects are delayed, investment in new gas capacity has slowed, and Government strategy appears to assume that flexibility and good fortune will fill the gap. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) has called for greater private investment in gas power stations to provide the security of supply that only firm capacity can deliver, yet the Government persist in placing their hopes in demand shifting and in a growing share of intermittent power. That is not a credible energy strategy for a modern industrial economy. Other major economies are not taking this gamble; they are investing in firm, reliable power generation, because they understand that energy security is the foundation of economic strength and national resilience.

I ask all Members to consider what this would mean in a time of national emergency or war. In such circumstances, our productive capacity would need to run at full speed, continuously and without interruption. A system that is built around weather-dependent electricity and consumer demand shifting simply could not meet that requirement. We should not resign ourselves to an energy future in which households are constantly asked to postpone cooking, heating or charging appliances during peak times purely to compensate for low wind output, nor should business be expected to halt operations because the breeze has dropped. Innovations that give consumers the option to save money or lower bills are welcome. Where demand flexibility is voluntary and genuinely benefits consumers it should be encouraged, but it must never become the cornerstone of our national energy strategy. Flexibility should support the system, not prop up its structural weakness.

Our ambition as a country should be far higher. We should aim for an energy system that provides cheap, reliable and abundant electricity at all times of day and in all seasons; a system that does not depend on weather patterns and does not require consumers to become the balancing mechanism; a system with enough firm capacity built in that the lights remain on, even in the stillest winter week.

[Martin Wrigley]

May I draw to the hon. Member’s attention the analogy with off-peak train tickets? That is a similar way of using flexibility and offering consumers cheaper tickets when the trains are empty. He would have us believe that that is not a good thing, but it is exactly the same with offering flexibility in electricity consumption.

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, but the trains will continue to run 24/7, whereas we are talking about a system in which if renewable sources drop and the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine, the electricity is not there. I am not sure that his analogy is necessarily a helpful one, but I hear the point that he makes.

Ministers are creating a system that depends on the weather, while claiming that it makes us more secure. It simply does not. It papers over a capacity crisis that is approaching fast, and it risks burdening families and businesses with the consequences of that miscalculation. True energy security requires firm power, serious planning, serious investment and, above all, a willingness to confront reality rather than wishing it away. I urge the Government to rethink their approach and pursue a strategy based on reliability first and flexibility second. The country deserves nothing less.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I agree with the Minister that rooftops are the place to put solar. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) made clear when she was Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, agricultural land should be protected from ground-mounted solar installations. The campaign group Stop Oversized Solar has found that operational sites and solar facilities in the planning pipeline alone are set to replace an area of farmland bigger than Merseyside, and that overall up to 5% of UK cropland is at risk from solar, so why do the Government persist with their claim that land take will be 1%? When Labour said that food security is national security, did the energy team not get the memo?

[Michael Shanks]

I always welcome consensus in the House, so I am delighted to hear that there is still consensus on rooftop solar. The Conservatives have moved away from so many of their previous positions and I was not sure if this was going to be another, although I wonder why that rooftop solar was not built over the past 14 years. But we will leave that to one side.

On the hon. Gentleman’s question about land use, we have been clear that ground-mounted solar will play an important part as the energy cannot all be generated from rooftop solar, but we want to ensure that communities are part of the decision making. The planning process is hugely important in that, but we also recognise that some communities have felt that there has not been a joined-up strategic approach. That is why we are publishing the strategic spatial energy plan, alongside the land use framework. Even in our most ambitious scenarios, 0.4% of land will be taken up with solar.