Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 242B tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas. I strongly support the part of his amendment that inserts proposed new subsection (2A), but I am not so sure about proposed new subsection (2B)—(2B) or not (2B), that is the question he is proposing. Nevertheless, my suggestion to him is that I do not think anybody concerned about nature should then also try to limit growth; the two can be done hand in hand.

If Natural England or the Secretary of State for Housing need more resources or decide to subcontract to any designated person, that could be a private developer, which could come up with an EDP under the laws proposed by the Government. I am not saying that would be right, but people should be aware of the scope of where we are going. I would not support my noble friend if he re-tabled this amendment on Report to the full extent.

I think proposed new subsection (2A) is a very sensible approach on nutrient neutrality, the consideration of which is one of the issues that is particularly holding up aspects of development. This is the reason the Government have given more broadly. Of course, they have also latched on to a variety of things like jumping spiders and even ancient woodland, while still expressing concern for irreplaceable habitat. Nevertheless, we should have that very specific focus on what has been holding up the 1.5 million homes that the Government have promised to deliver by the end of this Parliament. We should keep focused on where these potential EDPs need to be, and that will keep Natural England focused as well.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to government Amendment 346E in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and Amendment 275A in the name of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe.

I approached this group with the words of the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, ringing in my ears from yesterday’s Oral Questions. He boasted how the Government’s planning reforms would cut away the bureaucracy to get Britain building. Perhaps he was thinking about that other planning Bill announced by the Chancellor in August. He could not have been thinking about the one before us today, because given the combination of Part 3 of this Bill, the involvement of Natural England, and the astonishingly long preparation process for EDPs, starting in Clause 58 but going on as far as Clause 61, it is difficult to see how any mitigation proposal envisaged by Part 3 can be completed in the three and a half years from now —and that for a Government who have only three and three-quarter years to run.

Even if Part 3 stands part of the Bill at the point of assent, it will take until the next Parliament before someone gets the keys to a new home that has been subject to an EDP. Perhaps someone should tell the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, that Part 3 does not work, and it will not get Britain building or the economy growing. I should know, because I have been in this space for the last three and a half years as the instigator and a person of significant control in Norfolk Environmental Credits Ltd, a company established and owned by all the planning authorities in Norfolk for the benefit of the local councils, taxpayers and economy. I know what I am talking about—this is another one of my specialist subjects.

I observe that government amendment 346E is a long one. I suppose we should be grateful that it recognises that the Bill as introduced was deficient, but it is incomplete. It articulates the problem and identifies the EDP participants, but it does not contemplate the earliest formative stages—the commercial, legal and contractual practicalities to put it into effect.

Let us think about the EDP processes that start in Clause 58. At the outset, it emerged on Monday that Natural England will report to the MHCLG Secretary of State, not Defra. That is quite a revelation. What technical knowledge exists in MHCLG to judge the veracity of the poor-science and unevidenced assertion referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in today’s Telegraph, where he is reported to have said that “anti- growth” environment quangos are blocking developments on spurious grounds? How can MHCLG have the intellect and capacity to assess this spuriousness?

Our company in Norfolk aims to go beyond the desirability of cleaning up our rivers and devise commercial models that are legally robust and contractually certain, with a financial system that discounts the 80-year tail liabilities and makes the bridge between those who need to purchase mitigation and those who are prepared to provide it. I can tell noble Lords from personal practical experience how hard it is to devise a system to resuscitate the second-largest sector of our local economy—which has been placed in suspended animation for the past three and a half years—to provide the much-needed homes, affordable-homes infrastructure and mitigation in an area two-thirds of the size of our county.

My insight is that, before the provisions envisaged by this amendment are engaged, there are some fundamental principles to be established first. They should be set in statute, but they are not. It is envisaged that the EDPs will issue permits or licences. It is a critical point. A permit is something that is purchased and bought and has asset value. Noble Lords with long memories will remember the last time the state tried to introduce such permits to solve a problem: it created the madness of the milk quota system. By contrast, a local authority issuing licences provides for the point at which the mitigation is no longer required because, say, the local sewage treatment plant has been upgraded. Then the licence can be surrendered and issued again, with that second slice of revenue returned to the taxpayer.

At the drop-in session last week, Natural England’s representatives had blank faces when I asked them what they planned to sell to developers—permits or licences. They had not a clue. That illustrates the intellectual hole in that organisation. The risk of the permit approach is that, once issued to the builder of a new home, the nutrient neutrality permit is attached to that home and goes with the conveyance. That permit will have cost somewhere between £5,000 and £15,000. That is a pretty powerful incentive for the home owner to sell it on to someone else, so we find ourselves, as with milk quotas, sleepwalking into creating markets for tradeable assets, secondary markets, derivatives and everything else that history tells us happens when the state gets into the permitting business. The taxpayer misses out: that is the lesson from the milk quota fiasco.

By contrast, a licence is never owned by the developer or the landowner; it does not exist as an asset; contractually, it is tied to the property; and it can only be surrendered back to that property. The perverse incentive to sell it on and create secondary markets falls away. That is what we should be doing, but none of this fundamental design principle or parameter is contemplated by either Amendment 346E or the Bill.

Let us move on and think about the longevity of an EDP. It is proposed that an EDP lasts for 10 years—an assertion restated in the letter to noble Lords this morning, for which I thank the Ministers. But the tail liabilities are 80 years for nutrient neutrality and 30 years for biodiversity net gain, so I question whether a local planning authority can issue a permission if they are not sure what will happen between year 11 and year 80. I do not believe they can legally issue the permission. Perhaps the Minister will clarify that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and my noble friend Lord Randall. First, turning to baseline data and coming back to earlier discussions in Committee, I know that work is going on to improve what we have by way of baseline data, and I have been involved in extensive discussions with the local environment record centres and others. I would really appreciate being given an understanding, either now or by letter, of what the Government’s intentions are by way of giving momentum and a sense of determination to taking our current system and moving it on to the point where we gather all the environmental information, which we collect into one place, both that generated by the planning system and the extensive environmental data generated through high-quality amateur systems, and use for the benefit of understanding what is going on in local ecology.

It is all very well to do a baseline survey—it is traditional around us to do them in February—but doing proper baseline to really understand what is going on in an area requires presence throughout the year over a period of years. We have that data. We are collecting it. The world is full of seriously good amateur natural historians putting in a lot of work for free, and we are not taking advantage of that. We do not even use it to monitor the condition of SSSIs. Where the Government intend to go on this and how they will pick up on the discussions currently taking place and take them forward are important to understand before we get to Report. I will write to the Minister on that subject.

Secondly, when it comes to such things as water quality and nutrient neutrality, I am afraid that the monitoring system run by the Environment Agency has been run down to such an extent that we really do not have a good picture of what is going on in the average river catchment. As I have said before in Committee, my brother, Tim Palmer, is involved in the efforts that the Wylye Valley farmers are making. They have created their own laboratory. They are doing their own measurements, working with the Environment Agency, producing a much better quality of baseline data, and understanding where the problems come from and what can be done to deal with them.

High-resolution data makes it possible to resolve problems. The sort of stuff we have as the general flow from the Environment Agency just leaves us puzzling. Again, I very much hope that the Government will find themselves able to work with all the resources, interest and determination that are out there in the farming and other communities to get the data better and not just think that they have to pay huge amounts to environmental consultants to do it through the usual methods. There are better ways of doing these things by opening up. I hope that is the direction the Government will take.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, on the face of it, I welcome government Amendment 245A and the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, because it is clearly right that the public should understand what the sequence proposed might be.

My noble friend Lord Lucas has stolen some of my thunder in identifying that some of the research can take place only at certain times of year which, if it is a particular time window, may be, say, 11 months away, and there is this temporal longevity which may happen over many seasons. It is really important that, as part of that requirement for laying out the sequencing, we get an understanding of what timescales may be needed, because my concern is what happens at the point at which an EDP is first mooted and that sequencing process starts. What assurances can the Minister give that, because the process may take several years, it will not, in effect, impose a moratorium on any development while we wait for the sequences and processes to go through? These were laid out in the helpful diagram from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the bits before.

It is important that government Amendment 245A which, as I say, I welcome, should be coupled with the anticipated timescales. It might be implicit in the amendment, but it would be helpful if the noble Baroness could make it explicit that sequences and timescales are in there and whether that applies to a moratorium in the meantime.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak first to my two amendments in this group. Amendment 293 would require Natural England to report on environmental delivery plans more regularly than simply at the halfway and completion points of the plan. This is important, because without frequent reporting, Parliament, local authorities and indeed the public are left in the dark for too long about whether the plans are on track. More frequent updates would allow for earlier course correction where plans are falling short, helping to build public confidence through transparency and ensure that delivery does not drift between the start and the finish. Can the Minister set out why the Government are confident that the current reporting framework is sufficient when many stakeholders believe more timely scrutiny is essential?

My Amendment 295 would require environmental delivery plan reports to include assessments of their impact on local communities and the local economy, rather than focusing solely on environmental consequences. This matters because environmental improvement is not achieved in isolation. Communities are directly affected, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, by the choices made in land use, development restrictions or habitat restoration. Understanding the economic and social consequences alongside the environmental ones is the only way to ensure that these plans are fair, balanced and capable of commanding long-term public support.

My noble friends Lord Jamieson and Lady Scott of Bybrook have repeatedly argued that local community voices matter in planning and this is no different. On these Benches, we continue to stand up for local engagement and meaningful consultation so that communities are partners and not bystanders in shaping outcomes.

Briefly, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, for her Amendment 258C and my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge for his Amendment 285A. These are both vital because they strengthen the foundations on which environmental delivery plans are built. I have direct experience of this with my own farming activities and new forest development. Without accurate data on the baseline condition of the soil, flora and fauna, and water quality, it is simply impossible to be confident on progress. I would go further and suggest that this data should be published so that all stakeholders can hold Natural England to account. It is essential if plans are to be scientifically robust, deliver measurable benefits for nature and remain aligned with the environmental principles that your Lordships’ House has consistently supported. In that context, I should refer the Committee to my register of interests, which I have not done before in this respect, as a shareholder in Agricarbon.

These are constructive and necessary amendments. Taken together, they provide the checks, the evidence base and the community voice that will make environmental delivery plans more effective, more trusted and, ultimately, more deliverable.

Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to make a brief intervention. I have absolutely no interests to declare and I have no criticism of my noble friend the Minister or the Minister in the other place, the Member for Cambridge. In fact, in 14 years in opposition, he was the only shadow Minister who ever contacted me to ask me to talk about my experience of Defra and MAFF during the new Labour years of government. He listened, and that was fine—it was good to do, and I have no complaints about that at all.

However, I am reminded of a time when, at that Dispatch Box in about early 2002, when I was on my third ministry and the first in this House, I said that, in my experience to that date, the Treasury had

“wrecked every good idea I have come across”—[Official Report, 16/4/02; col. 837.]

in government. Obviously, the Chancellor was not very happy about that. The fact is that, three ministries later, before I left government, I was thoroughly justified. We have a classic example of this tonight. I am in favour of the CAP going; I have no problem with that—I am a remainer, but that is not the issue. I am in favour of reform of the CAP but, to wreck a good idea, it takes the Treasury. I do not hold Ministers responsible for this at all.

The fact of the matter is that you go back through the memories on this issue. The Minister talked about diversification. I can remember a very senior official saying to me when I was at Defra—I left Defra in 2008, so we are going back a little bit—that they did not really pay much attention to a particular farmer in the Lake District because he was not a full-time farmer, because he diversified into writing. That was what was said to me—it was because he was not a full-time farmer. Noble Lords are obviously aware of who I am referring to.

It is only my respect for this House and our procedures that prevents me walking out, because I have not the slightest intention of voting to support these regulations. I understand the rules about fatal amendments, but the Government would have to pick it up and do it again—that is the reality. We have the power, but we do not use it; as a senior Cross-Bencher said recently, powers you do not use, you lose, so there will come a time when we do not have that. I do not intend to vote to support this, so I will do exactly what my friend from the gym, the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, said and I will abstain on both amendments. I will not hang around during the votes; I shall go.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I add my name to those regretting these reckless regulations. I am particularly saddened, because they are just one element of a multipronged attack on our farmers, the supply trades and the entire food chain in one of the most important industries and sectors in our economy. I declare my interest in that I am involved in farming, but more particularly in the agricultural supply trade in the fertiliser industry. I therefore know more than most the damage and the harm that the Government are doing to those people who live in the sticks.

I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker; he said that he does not have an interest, but we all have an interest in the food industry. We have to eat every day, and food in your belly is more important than a roof over your head. The truth is that these regulations are harming a sector that needs finance in order to be sustained, to invest to grow. I do not know what rural Britain has done to deserve this metropolitan-based Government, who have turned an understandable and instinctive indifference into outright hostility. Like the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, I do not blame the Minister, because the fault lies elsewhere. She has always been most courteous and honourable and she acts with integrity in this House, which we thank her for.

The truth, however, is that this Government must be held to account because their actions are harming today’s farming profitability, which drives tomorrow’s corporation tax revenues. They are damaging the long-term capital underpinning of the industry, which harms investment, innovation and growth. This is collapsing the cash flow, that financial lifeblood that makes it all happen. I will speak to each of those three elements in turn.

On profitability, it is a shame that the noble Baroness, Lady Batters, who is meant to be leading a review for the Government, is not in her place. She would have told us, had she been here, that farmers are already under terrible, tremendous financial pressure, caught in that pincer movement between low grain prices and elevated input costs. Tighter margins are pressured by the national insurance rises, and now there are these inexplicable plans to persevere with a fertiliser tax that could add a quarter to the cost of the most expensive input, flipping even breakeven businesses over to loss.

On the balance sheet, the effect of the agricultural property relief element of the inheritance tax has been well ventilated. I will not dwell too much on that now, save to say that it is the effect on the business property relief—slightly different—that particularly harms the self-starting, innovative and entrepreneurial tenant farmers, who live by their wits because they did not have the good fortune to inherit the land, free of charge, upon which they make their living. The effect of all these in combination is to remove the long-term generational incentives to invest in the farm, develop the countryside and the landscape, protect nature and, yes, in so doing sustain wealth in our islands, particularly in the shires, where, let us not forget, 90% of businesses employ 10 people or fewer.

I have heard the argument that the IHT can take 10 years to pay, but those annual instalments over 10 years would be more than would be paid by the rent. It is just cloud-cuckoo-land.

Landed estates, for the most part, have already incorporated, in one form or another, or transferred to trusts, so once again those farmers left behind are the smaller farmers. Totally contrary to what Minister said, with these effects Labour is targeting the little guys, the sole traders, the family partnerships, particularly in the less favoured areas, while allowing those larger, more corporate farmers—the ones she says have the broadest shoulders—off the hook.

It is the summary cancellation of slurry lagoon grants that, more than anything, could help solve the problem of river pollution. It is the cancellation of those twin cabs on pickup vehicles. Let us be clear, these pickups are tools of trades. They are as good as a tractor. They are the sort of thing that a man in a factory would have as a crucial part of the plant and machinery involved in the business. It is really a spiteful misunderstanding of how investment in plant and machinery works.

All of these contribute to this £80,000 a year profit cap on aspiration, which is the number that, through EBITDA, gets you to the million quid, at which APR and BPR kick in. If we stop that aspiration, how are we going to grow an economy? This is what is happening, so, yes, I have sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said: this is the Treasury holding the economy down and not letting it flourish.

As for cash flow, since we have mentioned these delinked payments, I want to put a number on this; I do not know why the number is what it is, but I have it in front of me. A specimen 680 hectare farm that would have received £160,000 in 2020 will receive just £7,200 this year, over and above all those other financial headwinds that I have mentioned. A black zero is the best that many farmers can now expect. How does that help everyone? It is particularly important because, although I do not want to dwell too much and repeat the points my noble friend Lord Roborough made from the Front Bench, there was that interplay between the delinked payments and the SFI, and by taking one away the contract between the Government, Defra, farming and the food industry, as well as the supply trades, has been broken. That has a knock-on for machinery dealers, contractors, auction marts, professionals and those family businesses disproportionately affected in the countryside.

In summary, no wonder people living outside the M25 and the conurbations think they are under attack from the cumulative effects of all these proposals in a concerted war on the countryside. The effect is also, astonishingly, to undermine the Government’s environmental objectives, because the effect of all of this is that if land is put under the plough, it must be pushed as hard as possible to get a return. I suppose that leaves more land not ploughed, for other environmental schemes. In essence, it proves that Labour does not understand the countryside, but I tell you, the countryside now understands Labour. The industry that, more than any other, meets the most basic human need—food in your belly—is being made unviable, and rural communities are paying the price.

Farming and Rural Communities

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, in just six months Labour has morphed from casual indifference towards the farmers who grow the barley—for our noble friend Lord Bilimoria—and the communities who act as custodians of our landscapes towards outright hostility.

Noble Lords will know from the register that I have farming interests, but I am principally involved in the fertiliser industry, which sits at the start of the food chain and is part of a very large economic ecosystem in the sticks, alongside machinery dealers, dairy engineers, animal feed manufacturers and the more esoteric artisan trades such as ditchers, drainers, fencers and thatchers, to name just a few. The Government’s hostility to these people is felt not just by farmers but in the trading estates that surround every market town in Britain, mostly through these family-owned businesses. We know, and have just heard, that it has taken Defra to tell the Treasury how to count the number of farmers correctly, but neither Defra nor the Treasury has stopped to consider those wider ecosystem businesses, which are the true multipliers of rural prosperity.

Labour’s fundamental misunderstanding of how the real economy works has perversely and disproportionately affected the shires, where 90% of businesses employ 10 people or less, and the business property relief plans discriminate particularly against tenant farmers, the most dynamic and entrepreneurial of farmers, who live by their wits without the cushion of inherited land. As our noble friend Lord Bilimoria, says, business property relief is not a loophole; it is a feature of our economy.

Labour has precipitated a countryside cash-flow crisis by the summary suspension of SFI, with the result that artisan craftsmen have to wait longer to be paid. Astonishingly, the scaling back of ELMS has made nature-friendly farming approaches economically unsustainable. Now only intensification can prevent a small fortune being made by starting with a big one. The effects of VAT and business rates on private schools are hollowing out our rural market towns, where the school is often the largest employer, and the cook, the cleaner and the groundsman—not highly paid people—are being let go.

Alongside this economic illiteracy, I detect something more sinister afoot in the new planning measures, for buried away in the Finance Act we saw provisions whereby agricultural property relief could be available only to environmental schemes operated by the state. In Labour’s world, there can be no room for private sector innovation in the delivery of environmental goods, where Britain has demonstrated substantial comparative advantage. Labour’s solution is to reward the deeply conflicted enemies of growth at Natural England with monopoly operating powers, alongside other powers to confiscate land in pursuance of their activist agenda. Who knew that the socialists wanted the state to own all the factors of production so badly?

I should know because I have had to deal with Natural England as a leader of a council. I exposed it as selectively quoting and misrepresenting academic evidence that it said supported its views but did not. It capriciously chops and changes its mind on a whim. It stands in the way of progress and innovation by mendaciously and spitefully placing every obstacle in the way of councils and others who have been forced to step in to do the work it and the Environment Agency are paid to do but are not doing. It is unaccountable, yet places unaffordable burdens on business, stops the building of affordable homes for rural families and has driven many small builders to the wall. I have read the Corry report, published yesterday, and I regret to say that there could not be a less appropriate body than Natural England to be given this important work or to be awarded trusted status, for by its actions it has forfeited that trust.

My overwhelming fear is that the Government will now be “Nationalising Nature” by becoming the sole regulator, financier, inspector, confiscator and operator of environmental schemes, jacking up charges to support a bloated bureaucracy while acting as judge and jury of what only they deem to be acceptable. I welcome suggestions to realign the overlapping cat’s cradle of regulators that hold back ambition, but we will need more than a rewriting of guidance to remove the dead hand of the state that acts as a drag anchor on progress, innovation and growth in the shires. Only a complete rewiring will do.

Whether it is by its economic, social or environmental policies, Labour may think that it is attacking farmers in a class war, but it is ordinary working people in family firms in the wider rural economy who are caught in the crossfire of its culture clash, the effect of which is to damage the long-term rural economy and the landscapes we should all strive to enhance.

Rural Economy

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak as a council member of the Royal Norfolk Show, which is much better than the other ones that have been mentioned. This is a debate about growing the rural economy. There is so much I want to say but, in the six minutes I have, I will focus on rural governance and show how the Government’s actions are making the country cousins the even poorer relations.

Before we start, there is not even a firm definition of what constitutes “rural Britain”. Yes, it is the rolling countryside, but are our county towns and market towns part of that scene? No one is really sure so, as part of my prep, I thought I would create a definition myself. It is that part of Britain where, at 4 am, you cannot get an Uber within half an hour after a particularly heavy bender or a night on the tiles: “Can’t get an Uber late at night? Well, you’re in the sticks. That’s just how it is”.

The confirmed city dweller looks down on these sorts of places. It is all rather provincial, you see. That is the problem: rural Britain is governed by metropolitan voices who ill serve 70% of the landmass. Even the new mayors are to be called “metro mayors”. When the governance and rural voices are marginalised, it is harder to champion the rural economy.

There are more councillors within the M25 than in all the county councils of England. It is an extraordinary state of affairs. The metropolitan bias is structurally embedded in our nation. The shires are levelled down to London. It takes just 3,109 electors to elect a councillor in London but 15,000 in Essex and 18,000 in parts of Kent. Contrast this with the approach for parliamentary elections, where constituencies must, by law, be of the same value so that everyone has the same weight of voice. Somebody who lives in the shires has between a third and a fifth of the say of the townie. That is a problem for rural democracy, which is not addressed by the devolution White Paper.

As my noble friend Lord Gascoigne mentioned, the closest the Government have to a rural definition can be found in Defra’s local authority districts rural-urban classification 2021 dataset, which classifies local council areas as either predominantly rural, rural with some urban or just urban. It turns out that the Government will abolish all the 84 predominantly rural councils. Another 50 that are “urban with significant rural” are likely to be abolished, with their rurality subsumed into urbanised population units of half a million and their local distinctiveness decorated by the detritus of chicken shops.

Then, of course, there are 175 urban, city, London borough and metropolitan authorities, mostly controlled by Labour, untouched by abolition if they do not want to ask for it. I know it is Christmas, but I think we all know that turkeys do not vote for this kind of thing. Labour denies that there is a war on the countryside, but these announcements prove that there is a war on rural Britain and the lack of Members on the Government Benches rather proves this point. Labour always secretly wished we all lived in big cities and now it gets to pretend that we do.

Labour is slashing £110 million from the rural services delivery grant. I was grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Devon, who is not in his place. He identified that £10 million out of a £100 million will be taken from that county. Norfolk is not far behind and North Yorkshire will be £12 million short. We are being short-changed. Reorganisation will increase stealth taxes to mayors and a levelling-up of council tax where rural people used to live to pay for their urban neighbours. With no money, how can the countryside grow?

The White Paper promises a new fair funding settlement for what is left of local government, but we all know what that means: redirecting money from the countryside to their friends in the city, where social problems can be concentrated. It totally ignores rural areas, where poverty is diffuse. Being spread out does not make it any easier. In fact, isolation can make it worse. The additional cost of delivering services in areas where houses can be miles apart is ignored. I could go on. The point is that short-changing the countryside and diluting its say makes it harder for rural areas to grow in stature and make the economic contributions they should.

At least you can say that rural Britain has resilience—which it needs, with a Government characterised by townies hell-bent on fighting a class war that never really existed. Labour does not understand rural Britain, but rural Britain understands Labour. I almost feel sorry for the 90 Labour MPs representing the countryside. They have been abandoned and sacrificed by their party, unforgiven by those who lent them support. It is not too late to change tack. But, unless there is a change of tack, it will be difficult to grow the rural economy as part of a United Kingdom.

Solar Farms and Food Production

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Fuller]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to safeguard the overall quantity of agricultural land for food production in the light of recent proposals for solar farms.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government recognise that food security is national security. We will champion British farming and protect the environment, and we are committed to maintaining strong protections on agricultural land to ensure that our mission to deliver clean power will not come at a cost to food production or security. We are confident that the rollout of ground-mounted solar will not affect UK food security.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, you cannot eat a solar panel, yet very soon, a large proportion of our most productive and versatile farmland could be covered by them. Earlier this month, I tabled a Written Question asking the Government how much land was being considered for solar farms under the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects programme and the answer came back that just two farms of 1,400 hectares were being considered. In the last few days, the Eastern Daily Press has reported proposals for 7,000 hectares of farmland for solar panels in Norfolk alone, and I know that other Members have the same experience in other parts of the country. The Government have quite simply lost control of the numbers. Can the Minister say whether the upcoming land use strategy will explicitly stop the conversion of grades 1, 2 and 3 land, and does she agree that the NSIP programme is being abused by the aggregation of a large number of small proposals into one? Does she also agree that Britain will starve if all we have to eat are solar panels?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

First, I reassure the noble Lord that estimates suggest that ground-mounted solar used just over 0.1% of land in 2022, and we expect any future rollout to take up a very small amount of agricultural land. The large solar farms that I have information about are not on any grade 1 or grade 2 agricultural land, as far as I am aware. However, the noble Lord makes the very important point that the land use framework will be critical in how we manage what our land is used for. Is it used for energy, housing or farming, and so on? We expect the Green Paper to be published for consultation in the new year and I urge all noble Lords to read it and take part in the consultation.

Biodiversity Net Gain

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I am sure the noble Lord is aware that restoring marine biodiversity is very complicated. In many ways, it is more complex than restoring biodiversity on land; it is a very challenging subject. Clearly, we need to look at the marine conservation zones to see what they can do, and to work internationally on this because it is a broad international area. The Government are reviewing this at the moment.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, last harvest, the UK’s wheat production fell by 30%—from 14 million to 10 million tonnes. One of the reasons was that so much land had been taken out of production for environmental schemes. We have heard that land for BNG must be locked away for 30 years. What assessment has been made of the long-term impact on our food security of locking land away for a generation, making it unavailable for food production?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I suggest that the noble Lord looks in detail at our land use frame- work when we put it out for consultation shortly. That is one of the things we want to look at, and it is why we are doing the framework: we need to balance our need to produce food against environmental considerations—where we plant our trees, build our houses, and so forth. I look forward to a good debate on that subject.