Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Member. As on football, we agree on the principles. The Government are proud to have taken energy-efficient homes from 14% to 50%. Local initiatives can play a key part in that and I would be interested to learn more about the project he highlighted.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

Decarbonisation is welcome, but it must be achieved in a way that balances the country’s other priorities, such as food security. I welcome last week’s statement from the Secretary of State about the importance of protecting our best and most versatile farmland, but can the Minister tell me more about how he will ensure that we prioritise solar power on rooftops instead?

[Justin Tomlinson]

The Government are proud to have delivered an additional 43 GW of renewable energy since 2010 alone. We have also introduced planning changes to make it easier to install solar panels on rooftops, including those of industrial buildings, and we can thank consumers for leading the way: an average of 17,000 households a month added solar panels to their roofs last year.

Large-scale Solar Farms

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered large-scale solar farms.

I will start with what we all agree on: that we need to live sustainably, that food security is important, and that we need cheap and reliable energy for the economy to thrive. I think we can all agree—I know from my conversations with the Prime Minister that he does—that proposals to carpet vast swathes of our best farmland with industrial solar panels are wrong.

There is little doubt that renewable energy sources are crucial for combating climate change and ensuring a sustainable future. I am not opposed to solar panels in general. They are an important part of the mix of renewable energy sources, and they have some merit in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and in achieving our net zero ambitions. However, in the process of achieving that laudable aim, we must be very wary of unintended consequences. There is a considerable risk that in the name of saving the environment, we end up destroying it, and that in the name of energy security, we make ourselves dependent on food imports.

First, I will address the most salient issue, which is food security. The drive to net zero carbon emissions can be sustained only so long as there is food on our shelves. We would ideally have policies prioritising energy security and food security, but as it stands, the balance has tipped too far towards energy security at the expense of food security. National self-sufficiency in food has fallen from 74% to 61% since the mid-1980s. Although the Government may be right that food security does not necessitate complete food security during peacetime, and it is reasonable to assume that some level of international trade in food will always be a contributing factor, the war in Ukraine and its associated impacts on food security and prices internationally has demonstrated that the maintenance of historical trade patterns cannot always be relied on.

In that context, large-scale solar projects have threatened to swallow up rural constituencies with applications over the past few years. Alarmingly, those projects disproportionately affect the most fertile parts of the United Kingdom. One of the most targeted counties for industrial solar applications is Lincolnshire, which is the breadbasket of England. Lincolnshire alone produces 30% of the UK’s vegetables and 18% of its poultry; it is responsible for 12% of the country’s total food production. Lincolnshire without a doubt has some of the UK’s best and most versatile farmland, because it is flat and, for the UK at least, relatively sunny.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has done a great service to the House by bringing this debate to our attention. As she will know, my constituency contains a disproportionate amount of that very fine agricultural land, even by Lincolnshire standards. To compromise food security in the interest of energy security is a nonsense. We will make our country more dependent on imports, damaging the environment and robbing our people of the chance of buying and consuming domestically made food.

[Dr Johnson]

As is usually the case, I completely agree with my right hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour. He will be aware that 12 nationally significant infrastructure project applications are currently in progress in Lincolnshire for large solar projects. That includes Beacon Fen, Springwell, Heckington Fen and Fosse Green Energy, all of which are in my constituency. Those solar schemes alone would cover 9,109 hectares of farmland; such an area would otherwise produce 81,000 tonnes of wheat, which would make 57 million loaves of bread or 1.5 billion Weetabix.

Despite the Government’s guidance that solar prospectors should avoid using the best and most versatile land, many of the proposals would cover enormous swathes of it. Fosse Green will use 2,479 acres of prime farmland, thereby reducing the UK’s valuable food production capacity and exacerbating food insecurity. The best and most versatile land makes up 30% of the Springwell solar farm and 49% of the Heckington Fen application.

Lincolnshire undoubtedly has—I am sure that hon. Friends will agree—the best farmland in the country, but it is not the only place affected by the menace of these massive, farmland-consuming solar applications. My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), who is unable to attend today, has been campaigning assiduously against Mallard Pass solar plant in her constituency. That project is to be located on 2,105 acres of agricultural land, 70% of which is grade 1 —our very best farmland. That is the equivalent of 1,300 football pitches and will be 10 times larger than the current-largest solar farm built in the United Kingdom.

[Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)]

To reinforce my hon. Friend’s point about where these issues arise, even in my constituency, there is an application for 1,200 acres, and a number of other applications on a smaller scale, which make an aggregate of 2,000 acres between the villages of Bishopton and Brafferton. That would be completely inappropriate in scale.

On the quality of land, there seems to be a marginal differentiation between grades 3a and 3b, and the question is about who makes that decision and how it is made. We need to ensure that we have robustness and integrity in relation to the land that is being used, to make sure that it is kept for agricultural use where possible.

[Dr Johnson]

My hon. Friend is completely right and he demonstrates that this menace stretches the length and breadth of the country. I will come later to his well- made point about the grading of land.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Is she aware, in relation to the use of best and most versatile land, that our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when appearing before the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs last month, made a statement that he was reviewing the suitability of best and most versatile land for solar planning applications? As my hon. Friend will be aware, I am a supporter of solar energy, as she is, but it needs to be in the right place. We should not have, as she and our hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) have described, industrial-scale concentrations over vast areas beyond a reasonable level. It is a question of balance that we have to get right.

[Dr Johnson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I was not aware of the statement at the EFRA Committee, but I am aware, from my discussions with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, of his love for and attention to farmland and his desire to see that food security is protected.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

My hon. Friend knows that I am the last person to be a nimby, and Nottinghamshire’s heritage is among the richest for industry and energy production—it dates back centuries—but the point that our right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) made could equally be applied to the situation in Nottinghamshire. We are not opposed to solar farms. The issue is the scale of the applications and their aggregate impact on the landscape, which is profound. Were the three applications in my constituency to go ahead—I know that one borders the constituency of my hon. Friend—they will stretch from the South Yorkshire border all the way down to the Vale of Belvoir, peppering thousands of acres of land and impacting more than 60 villages. The landscape of that part of Nottinghamshire will be changed for a generation. That is simply unfair and exactly what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has campaigned against—an over-zealous application of net zero, which turns the public off.

[Dr Johnson]

My right hon. Friend and, as he mentioned, constituency neighbour is absolutely right: it is very important that we look at the cumulative effect of the applications and the industrialisation of our landscapes. Again, this is—

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Johnson]

Of course. I will get the next sentence out eventually.

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend has now heard from the proud counties of Lincolnshire, for which she also speaks on this issue, Durham, Shropshire and Nottinghamshire, and she will now hear from Bedfordshire. I gently point out that every single Back-Bench Member of Parliament present is a Conservative. There is not a single Labour Back-Bench MP here—or Liberal, for that matter—to talk about the impact of large-scale solar farms.

Small-scale solar farms in my constituency have been welcomed by local communities, because the developers have spoken to parish councils and worked with local residents to ensure that the siting is appropriate. It is these large-scale financial vehicles, which masquerade as solar farms trying to help us to achieve net zero, that have caused consternation. I am afraid to say that that includes the East Park Energy development proposed in my constituency.

[Dr Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. I am also expecting to hear from Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire, Suffolk, Yorkshire, Redditch, the south-west and more from Lincolnshire—I do not want to miss anyone out.

The Attorney General, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), and the Solicitor General, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts), are unable to speak today, while my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) is unwell. Alongside Rupert Harrison, the Conservative candidate for the new Bicester and Woodstock seat, they are actively campaigning against the Botley West solar farm in Oxfordshire. If it is approved, they tell me that it will be the size of Heathrow and the largest solar plant in Europe. It will encroach across four parliamentary constituencies in Oxfordshire. A project of that scale poses a disproportionate threat to agricultural land, much of which is of best and most versatile status, and will result in the loss of swathes of open countryside. In another part of the country, my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler) is concerned about the massive solar application on productive farmland between Rosliston and Drakelow, and the food security implications of the loss of such good farmland.

The ramifications of putting our best agricultural land out of use for 40 years could be incredibly destabilising. Arable land in the UK is declining. It is currently at 14.8 million acres, which is the lowest since world war two, with 100,000 acres being taken out of cultivation annually. Massive-scale solar plants—I call them plants specifically, because they are not really farms—withdraw hundreds of hectares of urgently needed farmland from UK food production. If such projects are allowed to go ahead, agricultural products will have to come from countries where the environmental and animal welfare standards may be less rigorous than ours, at a greater economic and—due to transportation and other things—environmental cost.

I will move on to land use strategy. Solar must take its appropriate place in the many conflicting demands on land: agriculture, housing, calls from some people for rewilding, health, and conservation. It does not trump all the others. We simply cannot have it all; we must make intelligent use of our finite resources of land and balance what some see as conflicting priorities.

Some people say that the land underneath solar panels can be grazed by livestock, but from practical experience, that is absolute nonsense. I challenge anyone to look under the ground-mounted solar panels already in place and see how often they find animals grazing there. The Government need to develop a comprehensive, carefully thought-out land strategy to ensure that our best farmland is not put at risk in this way.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I will not speak at length about the terrible development encroaching on Devizes—my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) will speak for Wiltshire shortly—but eight of the 10 largest solar sites in England are in Wiltshire, so we have a real problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) is talking about the necessity for national planning. Does she agree that local authorities should have more power to determine a solar strategy for their area, rather than having to conform to unwieldy national rules?

[Dr Johnson]

I certainly think that local people should have more say in what happens in their area in this regard, but I am cautious about having a solar strategy for each area. In areas such as Lincolnshire with high volumes of food-producing land, it may not be appropriate to have any massive-scale solar plants.

The loss of good-quality arable land at a time of unstable world trade situations is a first-rate folly, particularly when other infinitely more sensible sites are available, such as brownfield sites, domestic roofs and commercial rooftops. This should worry everybody wherever they live, which is why it is disappointing, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) said, that the Benches are full of Conservative Members but no Liberal Democrats or Labour people with any interest in food security have turned up. Food security is important for those who live in cities, too.

Does the Minister agree that the Government urgently need to produce a joined-up land use strategy? Will he update the House on what the Government are doing to encourage the use of brownfield sites, poor-quality land, and the roofs of warehouses and industrial buildings? What discussions is he having with energy suppliers regarding the balance between standing charges and usage costs in order to incentivise the installation of solar panels on industrial units?

There is a long backlog of people waiting for grid connection. What plans does the Minister have for grid connection prioritisation for those using brownfield sites or industrial and domestic roofs? Such connections are prohibitively expensive, which is also driving the spread of massive-scale solar farms. What assessment has he made of the actual costs of the connections rather than the charged costs?

On the concept of efficiency, Hinkley Point C, which is currently under construction in Somerset, will take up 174 hectares and is expected to produce 26 TWh of electricity per year for 60 years. In comparison, Springwell Solar Farm, which is in my constituency, will be almost 25 times the size of Hinkley Point C, but will produce only 950,000 MWh of electricity per year, which is just shy of 1 TWh per year, for 40 years. That is 25 times the size for 25 times less energy, for less time.

[Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I will return to Yorkshire later, but on the more strategic point, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) quite rightly talked about this issue being a matter of balance, and my hon. Friend is highlighting what we are paying per terawatt-hour for solar power. Other countries, most particularly Germany, that have depended on a balance of solar power and wind have found themselves being let down completely by the system. The Germans even have a word, “dunkelflaute”, for when there is cloud and no wind. They have had years in which they have had serious electricity deficits. So although we all agree that solar power is an important part of the Government’s repertoire, as it were, it is not the overall answer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Johnson]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend; in fact, he must have read my speech in advance, because my next point is that it is questionable to what extent solar is the most appropriate source of renewable energy. In the UK, solar generates maximum power for an average of only 2.6 hours per day, which falls to less than one hour per day during winter, the time of year when energy is most needed—in practice, we are most likely to need energy when it is dark and cold rather than when it is sunny and there is bright daylight.

In addition, battery storage is carbon-intensive and requires rare earth metals, as my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) has pointed out previously. There is an issue of land-use efficiency here. Currently, 2,000 acres of solar panels are required to power around 50,000 homes, but one small modular reactor, requiring the space of just two football pitches, would power 1 million homes.

To go back to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) about wind, a 140-acre solar project is capable of supplying electricity to 9,000 homes, but offshore wind turbines generate maximum power for an average of 9.4 hours each day, and just one turbine in the North sea has the capacity to power 16,000 homes, largely without bothering a single person or destroying any of our best and most versatile land.

The previous debate that I secured on this issue, in June last year, focused on planning regulations, and I do not plan to go into that subject in huge detail again today. To give the Government credit, since then they have clearly tried to get to grips with the issue, and they released a new national policy statement on renewable energy infrastructure in January. Nevertheless, I fear there is still a loophole in the regulations. The cumulative impact of solar applications is not properly defined, and the regulations are still characterised not by strict rules but by guidance, which can be flouted. Many planners still utterly ignore the guidance to avoid the use of the best and most versatile land. Half of the Heckington Fen project in my constituency would be on the best and most versatile land and—horrifyingly—it is proposed that 94% of the Drax project in east Yorkshire will swallow up BMV land.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Thankfully, in the northern part of Lincolnshire that I represent, we have been fairly free of solar farms, but applications have recently flooded in following some developments in the Immingham and Stallingborough area. When the planning guidance is read to local authorities, it could be interpreted much more robustly by those planning authorities than it is at present. Allowing for the fact that they interpret it rather loosely, I urge the Minister when he responds to confirm that the Government are prepared to tighten up the guidance to local authorities.

[Dr Johnson]

I agree with my hon. Friend and thank him for supporting my calls for the Minister to ensure that the guidance is tightened up to protect our farmland. It is clear that developers are taking advantage of the absence of rigid and specific Government guidance to protect BMV land and proposing ever larger solar installations as NSIPs in unsuitable places. As one developer commented:

“That’s the neat thing about the NSIP process. You put all the powers you need into one consent and have relative certainty”

—certainly in their view—

“of the consent being granted.”

Although the upgrade of substations within the electrical network is intended to be a positive thing that enhances local infrastructure, in my area it has inadvertently attracted speculators looking to profit from the farmland. When substations undergo upgrades, a cluster of large solar applications tends to emerge nearby. The approach is cheaper for companies seeking to complete solar projects, but it does not mean they are being built in the right places. Unfortunately, the consequence is a shift from a few small, unobtrusive solar panels on brownfield sites, and smaller amounts on poor-quality farmland and fields here and there, to massive industrial installations in completely the wrong places based merely on grid connection. Such industrial projects significantly alter the landscape, sometimes entirely swallowing whole villages, transforming once green fields into sterile expanses of photovoltaic glass. The companies have no ties to the land and no stake in its preservation.

One issue that I have raised with the Minister previously —it was brought up by my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell)—is that developers are having the land grades analysed themselves. They appear to be finding that the land is of lower grade than DEFRA and others thought it was.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Surprise, surprise!

[Dr Johnson]

Surprise, surprise indeed. There is a clear incentive for a developer to report a lower grade of land in this context. The Minister has said to me that he would take steps to review that; will he update the House on what progress has been made?

[Sir John Hayes]

I am delighted to get a second bite of the cherry, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me that. There are three deceptions. The first, which she described, is of dodgy surveyors and agronomists reclassifying land so that it can be developed. The second is that these large developments include land of different grades. Even if part of the land is grade 1 or 2, because some is not, the developer prosecutes their case accordingly. The third, of course, is that by having these large developments, local authorities and local people are taken out of the frame altogether. Those are deliberate deceptions, and it is up to the Minister, who I know is a fine man with a strong sense of diligence in this regard, to take action to end them.

[Dr Johnson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He summarises large parts of my speech succinctly.

Another issue that I want to raise is that although large-scale solar may technically be classified as clean energy, many tell me that the companies that supply it are neither morally clean nor environmentally green. My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton had an Adjournment debate earlier this week in which she made an interesting but rather disturbing speech relating to the use of forced labour in supply chains of solar panels. Her debate highlighted the fact that many solar panels also use vast quantities of coal in their supply chain.

Fosse Green—one of the organisations trying to muscle in on rural Lincolnshire—appears as a British company, but its structure is rather complex. It is actually a joint venture involving two established solar developers: Windel Energy and Recurrent Energy. The latter is, according to the firm itself, the

“wholly-owned subsidiary of Canadian Solar incorporated”.

As highlighted by my hon. Friend, Canadian Solar gets its panels almost exclusively from China, where about 60% of the grid is accounted for by coal-powered energy plants. The plants will have a significant carbon footprint of their own, and once the panels are produced they will have to be transported to and within the UK on ships and lorries powered by hydrocarbons.

The other allegations made against Canadian Solar, which I understand the Minister will be investigating, are particularly worrying. What are the Government doing to investigate the actual benefit of solar projects, taking into account the panels’ production, transportation, regular cleaning and ultimate disposal, and to ensure that we are not complicit in the use of forced labour?

It is self-evident that the companies have little time for the views of those who will be most affected by them. I recently conducted a survey in my constituency in the areas most affected by large-scale NSIP applications. Letters were sent directly to thousands of households in Sleaford and North Hykeham, and I received over 2,000 handwritten responses. These were not simple online forms that could be clicked and submitted multiple times; they were thought-out responses, many of which contained pages—and I mean pages—of heartfelt comments. Of the respondents, 90% were concerned about the enormous scale of the proposals, 68% were extremely concerned about the use of productive farmland, and 55% were extremely concerned about the visual impact.

The accusation often levelled against people who are against the proposals but have to live next to the projects is that this is merely nimbyism: “We like solar panels, but just not next to us.” Actually, although visual impact was a considerable factor in the responses, the far greater concern was about the loss of productive farmland. A significant proportion of my constituents are veterans, serving military personnel and those who work in agriculture, and they more than anyone else understand the extreme importance of food security. The most common response was that we must protect our prime agricultural land in the interests of food security.

That said, I also have sympathy with the aesthetic arguments. Lincolnshire is a particularly beautiful county, and the countryside has inspired much of our nation’s best art and literature. Lincolnshire’s pre-eminent literary figure, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, felt his deepest sympathies for an unaltered rural England, and found himself a stranger in the rapidly changing industrial and mercantile world of 19th-century England. His work remains remarkably relevant to our situation today. His much-loved poem “The Brook”, a memorable personification of a stream, ends with the following lines:

“For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.”

What do we allow to go on forever? Do we allow the industrialisation of our countryside, or do we honour the landscape that has inspired so much of our great literature? Edmund Burke noticed that happiness is the promise of beauty, and it is clear that rural communities will be far unhappier after being deprived of the natural beauty of their surroundings.

Solar prospectors often hide behind claims that their panels will be hidden from public view, but that is often not the case. The panels are often more than 4 metres tall—twice the height of the tallest gentleman here—and especially visible from higher areas. Even in a relatively flat area like Lincolnshire, enormous solar seas such as the Fosse Green project could be seen from the limestone cliff running down the county. Their glint and glare could disturb any onlookers, and they are a particularly big threat to our national treasure, the Red Arrows.

[Sir David Davis]

I will stand to my full height. May I address the issue of the dismissive attitude behind the word “nimbyism”? Many people who live in these parts of the countryside—in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and the rest—moved there because of the environment. They go there for a peaceful retirement, because they would like to work there or because they want their children to grow up in a good environment. It is distinctly unconservative— to use a phrase frequently used at the moment—to dismiss peoples’ property rights as nimbyism. They bought their view. They placed themselves and invested their savings in the environment that we are talking about. When we take it away, we should not just dismiss it as nimbyism.

[Dr Johnson]

Unsurprisingly, I quite agree with my right hon. Friend. It is important that we represent the constituents we are sent here to represent. If they are unhappy with solar farms being put in front of their houses, whether that is because the farms are on productive farmland or because they ruin the environment in which they live, we are here to represent those concerns.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. I want to re-emphasise the point she just made about the height of the solar panels. I wonder whether the proponents of the schemes and those considering the applications in Government actually understand the scale of what is being proposed. For the application that my hon. Friend and I face, the panels are as high as a house, and some of them will be placed within just a few metres of a home. Imagine if that were your home, Mr Henderson. That is not a solar farm of the sort one might have thought of in the recent past. It will have a profoundly detrimental impact on that person’s quality of life, and we have to consider that when we look at these applications.

[Dr Johnson]

My right hon. Friend is right: the scale of the panels is difficult to comprehend. My staff have worked hard on some maps comparing some of the larger projects that have been built with the projects that are proposed in his constituency and mine, and the graphics are really very telling.

It is also notable that these projects offer very little commensurate financial benefit for the people most affected by them. Some of my constituents asked in their responses whether the solar panels would reduce the local community’s electricity bills as compensation for the industrial landscape, but no: the electricity produced will go straight into the national grid and will be transported to other areas of the country.

As we have said, this is not mere nimbyism. Communities should not be criticised for resisting solar projects if they are in the wrong place, as these are. Indeed, there should be a greater push for rational, proactive policy to facilitate renewable energy schemes that do not harm our landscape, rather than steamrolling over the views of locals. Large-scale solar projects are a democratic issue. We are sacrificing public trust through opaque planning laws, eschewing public consultation and silencing the voices of residents affected by these schemes. The rightful concerns of residents who do not wish to live in an energy factory must count. I hope that we as representatives can do much to redress the balance.

So what is to be done? We recognise that solar energy is a piece of the jigsaw in our transition to a greener future, but we must strike a balance. We should insist on alternative locations for solar panels, such as brownfield sites, industrial areas and roofs, rather than sacrifice any of our valuable agricultural land and pristine landscapes. Will the Minister confirm that the Government agree with that statement and reiterate their promise to protect our best and most versatile land?

I reiterate that I am not opposed to solar power in general, but we need to revise the strategy for where, and on what scale, it is implemented. Some 90% of respondents to my survey said they would favour solar on industrial roofs. It is estimated that there are 600,000 acres of south-facing industrial roof space not currently used for solar in the United Kingdom. A push to prioritise industrial, brownfield and poor-quality land over residential would be a step in the right direction.

This issue affects us all. There is a creeping danger that our countryside will become rapidly industrialised. If allowed to go through unchallenged, these projects will stretch across vast expanses of rural communities throughout the country, putting our best agricultural land out of use for more than a generation and transforming the character of our green and pleasant land. We, as representatives of largely rural communities, must find common cause. We must work to maintain the beautiful character of our countryside, support our farming industries, protect food security in times of great uncertainty and make the voices of local residents heard.

This is an urgent problem. If the polls are right, though I do not think they are, and we lose the upcoming election, we cannot rely on Labour Ministers. Look at the Chamber: the only Labour MP here is the Opposition spokesperson. There are no Back-Bench Labour or Liberal Democrat MPs. We cannot rely on Labour Ministers to protect our farmland, for the simple reason—as is obvious today—that they do not care about our countryside; that is why they represent so little of it. We must therefore ensure that any solution we pursue is carried out robustly and quickly. The Prime Minister said that on his watch, he will not allow great swathes of our best agricultural land to be swallowed by solar farms, and we will make sure he lives up to that promise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right on that point. It is almost as if he had been looking over my shoulder and seeing what was on the next page of my speech. I was coming to precisely that. Overpaid surveyors, the so-called experts who come in with a clear mandate of what they have to do, have been hired to test soil quality. They do not even go out into the middle of the field. They do not go to the most versatile part of the farm where the crop actually grows. We have caught them red-handed in Buckinghamshire testing the headland, the very edge of the field, They will always get a lower score from that test if they have not gone to the bit of the field where the crop grows. They deliberately test the edge of fields and the headland to get the poorer quality result. This would not be a speech from me without mentioning this: it is the same tactic that HS2’s contractors use in other parts of my constituency to get similar results to prove similar points. It is not unique to solar developers.

[Dr Johnson]

Has my hon. Friend compared the land results proposed by the surveyors with the maps that DEFRA produces of what it expects the land to be and noticed the differences?

[Greg Smith]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Yes, time and again we see a differential between what the developer’s surveyor and consultant come up with and what we believe the land to be. Much of my constituency sits on a blue clay base, so we expect a lot of it to be 3b. However, I come back to the point that I made: 3b land can be very good productive land producing the sorts of yields that I talked about. It is how that land has been farmed, often for generations, that dictates how good it is for production, not other things.

I made this point earlier: 60% of farms in the UK are tenant farms. However, beyond that, it is not just the farmers, the tenants or those employed on the farms who are hurt when that land is taken away from food production, but the packing plants, the equipment suppliers and the distributors. A huge part of our rural and national economy is hit when food production is diminished.

For the surrounding communities, the loss of farmland by no means starts or ends with solar panels. In the Claydons, for example, my constituents have suffered hugely from large-scale construction already, including a number of big housing estates, East West Rail and the ultimate destroyer, HS2. It is a daily struggle for them to get to work, school, the hospital, the GP or the shops without coming up against the obstacles of endless road closures, broken stretches of road that have become dangerous after the movement of thousands of HGVs, drivers travelling to and from nearby compounds, and severe light pollution during the winter months. That will be the same all over again with the construction of the huge solar farms. A solar farm of 2,100 acres is not built overnight. They are all put on concrete bases. There will be piling in places. The construction impact on local communities is considerable.

After all the disruption that my constituents have already taken—and are still taking—from those big national infrastructure projects, this once quiet corner of Buckinghamshire is now expected to take, in the case of Rosefield, a 2,100 acre development, which would dwarf the amount of land that High Speed 2 has taken in Buckinghamshire. Given the extent of the proposed site, it is not unreasonable to expect to see yet more of the same disruption that has plagued the Claydons for years. All of that comes without any commitment by the promoters to fix any of the damaged roads, which already have to be patched by the council, even though other people have broken them. It is simply not fair for my constituents and areas such as the Claydons to foot all that pain all over again.

It is not just the panels that consume vast amounts of countryside. The infrastructure needed to carry the electricity generated through to the grid swallows up yet more. It is no coincidence that adjacent to the proposed Rosefield site, there is a proposed battery storage facility, with the equivalent of 90 shipping containers of battery storage right next door. That is more food-producing land being sacrificed, and the facility itself poses a major fire risk in an area where the emergency services are already struggling, in the face of such disruptive amounts of construction work, to get to any emergencies that occur.

Let that be a warning to any community where solar is coming. It does not end with just the solar panels. Of course, there is no community benefit whatsoever from solar development, whether large or small. As has been said, there is no cheap electricity for local residents or businesses, and no support systems in place for those impacted by construction. There is no recourse for anybody affected.

I have spoken a lot about Rosefield, but I will briefly talk about some other large-scale solar developments in my constituency. In the south, we have seen an equally blatant tactic—admittedly, on a slightly smaller scale—of significant ground-based solar installations being installed or proposed just metres from each other. Let us take the proposed solar installation near the village of Kimblewick on the eastern side of the village of Ford, and Callie’s Solar Farm on the western side of Ford, which combined, would be the second largest land take in my constituency after Rosefield for ground-mounted panels. We have seen that tactic time and again; it puts community and local authority resources under strain, in turn diminishing their influence over the whole planning process. We have to find a way to ensure that the cumulative impact of solar farms is taken into account.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Gray]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. If I remember rightly, we heard on the Floor of the House earlier this week that it is believed that Uyghur slave labour is being used in China for the production of those panels. They are then being shipped here on huge ships, and then they go on to lorries. They are extremely environmentally unfriendly in their production.

I will tell the House another thing that is extremely environmentally unfriendly. Macquarie says that in 40 years’ time the solar farm will no longer be used, that it will be demolished and that the land will be returned to agriculture. There are two or three things I want to say about that.

First, the chances of Messrs Macquarie still being here and living up to that promise are extremely remote. The farms are sold week after week, from one financial house to the next. The chances are zero that some nice company will come along in 40 years’ time and say, “Thanks very much, North Wiltshire: you’ve done your stuff and now we’re going to take these things away and return it to how it was.” It cannot happen, particularly because it is likely that the technology will move forward in the meantime. These things will very probably be out of date in five or 10 years’ time. Who will then remove them? Who will remediate the land? Nobody. There will be no such person.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

My hon. Friend is making a good point about the obsolescence of products over time. Does he have any electrical appliances in his home, or is he aware of any, that have lasted for 40 years and are still useful?

[James Gray]

There is some very interesting correspondence in The Daily Telegraph at the moment about household items that are surviving for 40 years, but there are precious few. And then what happens? How do we dispose of them? That is the other great problem: even if the land is restored after 20 or 40 years, there is no known means of disposing of the panels under national planning policy. Do they go to landfill? What happens to them? Nobody seems to know. There is no known solution.

Our descendants will curse us for covering the countryside in these vast vanity mirrors with no known means of remediation. When we are long dead and our children and grandchildren are inheriting them, what a mess that will be. What will happen, incidentally, is that some planner will say, “It’s a brownfield site now, so we’ll turn it into a new town or factory,” or something else that we do not want. The way these things are created is worrying. The point about Uyghur slave labour is extremely important, and the question of disposal has not yet been answered.

I have two or three asks of the Minister about matters on which we need laser-sharp attention to detail. The first relates to the quality of land that is allowed to be used for solar farms. About two years ago, the then Secretary of State for DEFRA, my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee, and I pressed him on the point. He said that 3a and 3b would definitely not be used for solar. I asked him three or four times, and he reiterated that answer. As the Secretary of State, he made it absolutely plain that 3a and 3b may not be used for solar.

Unfortunately, my right hon. Friend had to write to me a couple of weeks later to say that he had made a small mistake, which his officials had picked him up on, and that he now realised that only 3a would not be used. None the less, the fact that the Secretary of State for DEFRA thought that it was all grade 3 land is itself important. We have talked about the fact that the land is being surveyed by people who are paid by the developers. It is hardly surprising that they find in favour, and the fact that they go around the headland rather than the productive centre of the field is extraordinary. Anyhow, 3a and 3b are both productive agricultural land, and we must find a way of examining precisely how that is defined and what exactly the mapping is. I am told that Natural England does not have a map of 3a and 3b land. It should. It does not even have a clear definition of what it is. We need a laser focus on the kind of land that we allow solar farms to be on.

Secondly, I want to hear from the Minister on the cumulative effect of solar farms. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) said, there are many small applications that, together, come to a very large one. I slightly disagree with her: I would rather my district or county council were deciding on the matter, because at least then it would be local. If it is a vast one decided by the Secretary of State, we have no way of countering it. However, my right hon. Friend was quite right to say that when we put all the applications together, they come to a much bigger thing than any of them is individually. The Government might therefore like to give some thought to the cumulative effects of solar farm applications, so that they strengthen the presumption against the totality coming to more than they would otherwise allow.

Thirdly, I would like a comment from the Government on grid capacity. I am told that in the south-west and Wiltshire particularly, the grid is already near its capacity; there is no more room for solar farms to go into it. None the less, speculative developers apply for planning permission and then sell their options to other speculators, despite the fact that the grid cannot take the electricity. This is financial shenanigans: it is fiddling around with money. People say, “We’ve got planning permission on these 2,000 acres in North Wiltshire and we now want to sell it to you, the next financial shenanigans individual.” They may say, “You never know—maybe down the road, it will work,” but they know perfectly well that there is no capacity in the grid. The Government ought to pay some attention to whether grid capacity could be a pertinent factor in considering these applications.

I know that the Minister is in a quasi-judicial position and cannot comment on any individual application or any particular site, particularly during the purdah in the lead-up to the local elections. I very much respect that, but I hope that he has understood the strength of feeling on the issue among all Conservative colleagues, including many who are not here today. Many of them are Ministers and may feel constrained. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) feels equally strongly about the Lime Down application; of course she cannot say so publicly, but I did clear it with her beforehand that I could mention that in passing. A great many colleagues feel very strongly indeed about the issue.

I hope that the efforts that have been made in the past couple of weeks will have brought home to the Minister what a very important issue this is and how very strongly the Conservative party and Conservative Members of Parliament feel about it. I hope very much that, in the next few months available to him, he will find ways of bringing about some of the changes that have been discussed today, whether they be on cumulative effect, on land supply or on the general principle of solar. I hope he will find ways of bringing in nudges to the inspectorate to say, “These are the things that Ministers believe should or should not happen,” so the inspectorate will be more inclined to turn a thing down, rather than being inclined to accept it, as happens at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

That is certainly true, but a much wider issue is the fact that connections in this country are pretty much available on a lottery basis. At the distribution network operator level, most of the capacity in most DNOs is taken up, and at the national grid level, the connections are entirely dependent on where the lines go. They do not necessarily go to where people want to connect up, and they are also very much at the limit of their capacity at the moment. A national plan to enable those connections onshore to be distributed equally across the country would go a long way to facilitating much better distribution of the wind and solar projects that we want to see for the future.

Although I do not represent a rural constituency myself, I have great sympathy with the problems of accumulation with solar development. The solution, however, is not to throw solar out; it is to do a number of the things that I have mentioned this afternoon—to reach our target and secure the equitable deployment of solar across the country to manage our electricity future positively.

[Dr Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about equitable distribution. I understand to some extent the point he is making, but surely there is some sense in saying that areas such as Lincolnshire, which have such high-quality farmland, should not have massive solar farms at all, because we will simply reduce our food security.

[Dr Whitehead]

I was intending to go into the 3a and 3b debate, but I do not think it will add anything greatly to what I have to say. Again, it is in the gift of Government, for schemes above the 50 MW level, to look at what the overall planning guidance suggests we should do. I am personally a little sceptical of the overall case about food production and land use because after all it was recently estimated that if we did produce the 70 GW target, that would take about 0.3% of UK land area, up from 0.1% today, compared with 69% of the land that is farmed. That does not add anything to the debate on Lincolnshire itself, but the point is that the actual land take of solar overall will be pretty minimal compared with what is in agriculture currently. As a matter of interest, the land taken by solar already is one fifth that taken up in the country for golf courses.

[Dr Johnson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gordon Henderson (in the Chair)]

I remind the hon. Lady that she will have the opportunity to wind up at the end of the debate.

[Dr Johnson]

Thank you, Mr Henderson. It is great that the hon. Gentleman seems to be laying out some of the problems, but he does not seem to be talking about solutions. Labour wants to form the next Government and my constituents want to understand what its policies will be. He says he does not want to get into the grades of land, and that the amount of land taken is negligible. My constituents do not consider the amount of their land that may be taken in their constituency to be negligible. Could the hon. Gentleman clarify what the Labour policy might be?

[Gordon Henderson (in the Chair)]

You will have to be quick, Dr Whitehead.

--- Later in debate ---

[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?

[Andrew Bowie]

indicated assent.

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

Writing for The Daily Telegraph last year, our now Prime Minister said:

“On my watch, we will not lose swathes of our best farmland to solar farms.”

Yet the industry has not heard that, and vast swathes of farmland in my constituency, totalling 16 square miles, are open to planning, engulfing whole villages and using the best and most versatile land. Will my right hon. Friend meet me to discuss how he and the Department can ensure that the Prime Minister keeps his very important promise?

[Graham Stuart]

I can assure my hon. Friend that planning policy and the associated guidance encourage large-scale solar projects to be located on previously developed or lower-value land. Where greenfield sites or high-grade land are used, developers are required to justify using such land and to design their projects to avoid, mitigate and, where necessary, compensate for any impacts. I hear my hon. Friend’s personal testimony, and I will be happy to meet her to discuss this further.

Energy Bill [Lords]

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alec Shelbrooke]

It has been a pleasure to speak on the Bill on Second Reading and in Committee, but I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg) that it is a great pity we cannot have a long debate on Report or Third Reading, to expand on issues further.

One of the issues that I wanted to expand on is about some of the alternatives. We keep talking about electric vehicles moving down, but hydrogen combustion vehicles offer a real opportunity to move forward. We also talk about net zero, but this has now moved to zero-emission vehicles. That rules out hydrogen combustion, so again, we are going down a rabbit hole of just having electric vehicles, but an electric vehicle is not a zero-emission vehicle. If it was, the underground would have the cleanest air in London, and it does not, because there are a lot of particulates around it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) makes it clear through new clause 47 that we have to look at the sources, and new clause 37 relates to where batteries go. We keep talking about the rare earth metals that are needed. Indeed, the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) talked about being able to maintain baseload by using various aspects of energy storage. We keep coming back to the need for rare earth metals and materials to enable that, and they come from areas of the world that we do not have an influence over. In the past 18 months, there has been a huge debate about the fact that we cannot be reliant on Russian energy, and yet few Members in today’s debate have recognised the fact that we are wholeheartedly moving towards becoming reliant on China to supply our energy needs.

This is a huge Bill. It is a fundamental Bill that we have brought forward as we look to the future, but it is far too big, with far too many aspects to it. It has become a bit of a hodgepodge, saying, “We want electric vehicles. We want electric heating in homes. We want to have arc blast furnaces rather than coal furnaces, so we will ban new coalmines.” I promise this House that if we move to just arc furnaces, we will destroy steel manufacturing in this country, because we do not have the ability now to produce the electricity that is needed. We are not going to switch off the lights in people’s homes before we switch off an arc furnace, and once it has been switched off, we cannot switch it back on.

That is the big mismatch in the Bill, which is why I regret that we will not have a Third Reading debate to discuss these issues on a slightly wider basis. The rush to renewables is happening quicker than the timeline for making sure we have enough turbines, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) pointed out. My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) made very important points as well. Although the aims are there, and I think we all want to follow those aims—not being reliant on foreign energy is highly important—at the moment there does not appear to be a connection between these things as they come online. As such, although the aims of the Bill are good, we have to make sure that we implement them over a consistent timeframe so that we take the public with us.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

The beautiful food-producing farmland in my constituency is a particular target for industrial-scale solar farms, often backed by prospectors who have no personal connection to our area. This raises huge concerns among my constituents about the scale of the projects and the lack of thorough consultation. With the imperative of food security on our minds, we must explore alternatives to covering vast expanses of our productive land with solar panels.

Many people do not appreciate the scale of the issue, so to illustrate the magnitude of this challenge, I will highlight one proposal for a solar farm in my constituency. It aims to engulf a staggering 587 hectares of land, just under half of which is grade 1 to grade 3A farmland—the very best and most versatile agricultural land, the best land for food production. In fact, almost 10,000 acres of my constituency are currently open to planning for solar farms. Those farms will dwarf villages such as Witham St Hughs, Thorpe on the Hill, Bassingham and Holdingham, and will almost encircle villages such as Scopwick, Digby and Ashby de la Launde.

I do not stand against solar panels in principle; I have previously spoken about the unexplored potential of utilising industrial roof spaces for them. However, I do not believe that covering our farmland in solar panels is the right thing to do, and I vehemently object to the lack of food security it could produce. I therefore support new clause 48, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), which seeks to solve this injustice and put an end to these large-scale projects. Furthermore, I appreciate that that clause also encourages future developments on brownfield sites, which are far better suited to such endeavours. Let us work together to protect our precious farmland, maintain our food security, heed the concerns of our constituents, and chart a more sustainable path for our energy future.

I was also shocked to hear that more than 90% of solar panels may be made by, or have elements that come from, slave labour. As we discuss the slavery of the past, let us do all we can to prevent the slavery of the here and now. I therefore also support new clause 47, which should be pushed to a Division later.

Lincolnshire as a whole produces a vast amount of this country’s food, yet 22,500 acres—1.3% of its land area—are currently open to applications for solar panels. As such, I ask the Minister to answer two questions in his summing up. First, what will we eat when our best and most versatile farmland is covered by solar panels? Secondly, what is his assessment of the impact on the environment of growing energy from solar panels instead of food, then importing food from elsewhere?

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

The Bill has an important role to play in ensuring that we meet our 2050 net zero targets, enhancing our energy security and creating new jobs, particularly in coastal communities such as the constituency I represent. In driving forward the measures in the Bill, I urge the Government to have in mind the following parameters.

First, we need to pursue a strategic approach to the provision of infrastructure while maximising the leveraging-in of the enormous amount of much-needed private sector investment that will be required. Secondly, the Bill’s framework needs to be sufficiently flexible to allow all regions of the UK to play their full role in the transition. It has been estimated that by 2035, East Anglia’s renewable and low-carbon energy supply portfolio could power the equivalent of 90% of the UK’s homes. In our area, we need a recognition of the role we will play.

Finally, the Government need to rural-proof their policies, as articulated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) and the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi).

Community energy has an important contribution to make in boosting clean energy generation and in offering people the opportunity to benefit from agreeing to host new energy infrastructure. Therefore, the announcement of the new £10 million community energy fund is to be welcomed. However, it is important that the Government monitor very closely the fund’s impact and whether it is successful in unblocking more community-owned projects. If it is not, they need to bring forward further measures, such as the amendments that were proposed in the other place.

Planning and Solar Farms

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered planning and solar farms.

Today I would like to shed light on an issue that has the potential to have a significant adverse effect on the constituents I represent in Sleaford and North Hykeham. I am concerned about the industrialisation of our countryside through large-scale solar farms. Solar power does have its merits in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the transition to a sustainable future. However, while acknowledging the merits of solar farms, it is also essential that I address the concerns that have quite rightly been raised by my constituents. Some of the solar farms proposed in my constituency would dramatically alter the landscape for the worse, shattering the character of what is not only beautiful countryside but highly productive arable land.

Rural constituencies such as mine have been plagued by applications for large solar farms. As I am sure is the case for many of my hon. Friends, my inbox is often filled with passionate pleas from constituents whose homes, and sometimes their entire villages, would be surrounded by a sea of solar panels. Not only will the landscapes they love and cherish be destroyed, but in many cases, it seems, people lack any effective means to stop such plans. It is a core tenet of our democracy that we listen to the voices of our communities and address their concerns. Transparency and an inclusive consultation process are key to fostering a sense of ownership and ensuring that those affected are heard and their concerns are addressed. Sadly, the consultation process for some solar farms has fallen short of expectations and failed to engage adequately with the affected communities.

The Government have produced plans to reach net zero and create sustainable and reliable energy production —for example, yesterday my hon. Friend the Minister announced plans to expand British nuclear. It is estimated by the Government that we will need to need use 0.5% of land to meet the solar panel target, but it is also estimated that 600,000 acres of south-facing industrial roof space is currently unused, and I do not believe that the Government anticipated all the panels being in Lincolnshire, or would wish for such an outcome.

There are essentially three ways to gain permission to build solar panels. The first is through permitted development rights. Planning permission is not usually needed for up to 50 kW on a domestic roof, or for up to 1 MW on a commercial roof. Between February and April this year, the Government consulted on expanding the permitted development rights for commercial installations—for example, on the roof of a warehouse. The consultation proposed removing the current threshold of 1 MW, as well as expanding rights for solar canopies on non-domestic car parks. That would liberate smaller developments that do not destroy the character of the countryside. The Government have not yet responded to the consultation, but the “Power Up Britain” document said that they would amend the relevant regulations by the end of the year, and I would appreciate an update from the Minister on when he intends to do so.

The second mechanism is for mid-scale farms that do not have permitted development rights but fall below 50 MW. These are applied for using local planning authorities—essentially, elected local councils. The planning guidance says that local planning authorities should consider the site, size, colour and design of solar panels, their visual impact, the effects of glint and glare, the need for renewable energy not to automatically override environmental protections and, pertinently, the cumulative impact of solar panels on local amenities and landscapes.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. On the point about local planning authorities having the power to look at and consider individual planning applications for solar farms under a certain size, does she agree that there is potentially an effective way forward here, which is for local authorities to introduce their own planning policy frameworks for solar farms to allow them to have local discretion to look at certain local circumstances that may exist in the national guidance?

[Dr Johnson]

My hon. Friend is right, but as I will come to later, where such frameworks are produced, they are being circumnavigated using the nationally significant infrastructure project process to avoid local community engagement.

The NSIP process is final way that planning can be attained for large-scale solar farms. According to part 3 of the Planning Act 2008, solar farms with a generating capacity above 50 MW are considered NSIPs. These are not decided locally; they are decided by the Secretary of State. NSIP applications, if successful, can contain an element of compulsory purchase orders, and from speaking to constituents, I am aware that some landowners feel intimidated by this fact. When they are being produced by a plethora of people prospecting and asking them to rent their land, they worry that if they do not comply, they will lose their land to compulsory purchase orders. The Government must address this.

[Dr Poulter]

There is a problem in Suffolk with solar farms being proposed, but very few of them have used that final mechanism that my hon. Friend has outlined. In a lot of cases I can think of in my constituency in mid-Suffolk, it has been down to the discretion of the local planning authority to examine on their merits. The lack of a local framework against which the planning authority judges these applications means that the developer is empowered and local communities are disempowered, and unfortunately a number of applications have gone through. Will she join me in pushing this issue with the Minister?

[Caroline Nokes (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind Members that interventions should be brief.

[Dr Johnson]

My hon. Friend is right that if these applications are of the size decided by local authorities, a local plan in place can enable a local authority to made decisions based on what it wants locally, rather than what it is told to do. My hon. Friend is right that a local plan can be very helpful when dealing with a smaller application.

I was informed yesterday that there are 12 NSIP applications currently in process in Lincolnshire for large solar farms, including Beacon Fen, Springwell, Heckington Fen and Fosse Green Energy, which all appear in my constituency. I am also reliably informed that there are a further two NSIP solar applications in the pipeline for North Kesteven. However, it is notable that as of yesterday there is only one small-scale application to our local council. The Government need to reflect on why they have created a planning system for solar panels that drives applications off the NSIP scale, as we have so many NSIPs in Lincolnshire and so few small applications.

As we have just heard, through NSIPs, local people have decision-making power taken away from them rather than given to them. The upgrade of substations on the electrical network, such as the ones in Navenby, should be a positive enhancement to local infrastructure, but in practice it has acted as a magnet for speculators seeking to cash in. Where substations have been upgraded, we get a cluster of large solar farm applications near to them, as it is cheaper for the companies that want to build them. As a result, instead of a large number of small, low-impact solar farms, we get a small number of gigantic industrial farms, which utterly ruin the landscape, in some cases choking entire villages of potential future expansion and turning what has traditionally been a food-producing haven into a vast glimmering desert.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. On her point about food-producing land, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee is just finishing a food security inquiry, and one of the key areas we looked at was land use. Solar has a big part to play in our energy mix, but we must be careful of the unintended consequences of taking prime food-producing land and the greenbelt out and replacing it with these installations. It is similar to the trees debate: we must have the right trees in the right places. We should have the right solar panels in the right places. Does my hon. Friend agree that there are right places to put them, including the many roofs across the country, and not least those on agricultural buildings?

[Dr Johnson]

I could not agree with my hon. Friend more. In some respects, he has paraphrased my speech into a few sentences very eloquently, so I thank him. I ask the Minister to ensure that when the Government improve infrastructure they do not destroy the countryside in the process. The scale of these applications is quite difficult to imagine from a map alone, though I see that my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) has brought a map with him today. Each covers around 2,000 or more acres—that is just over 3 square miles. Some of these NSIP applications are larger than that, sometimes substantially.

I would also like to raise the threat of glint and glare from light reflecting off solar panels. In Lincolnshire this is especially significant due to the presence of the RAF. The Red Arrows operate from RAF Waddington, which sits on the edge of my constituency. The limestone cliff top means that the Fosse Way site that is being proposed will be an especially visible eyesore from across the constituency. Many of my constituents choose to live in a rural setting because of the superb views, which solar farms threaten to spoil entirely. The impact will also extend to house prices. Many of my constituents fear that houses with unburdened views will sell for much more, leaving residents individually out of pocket as well.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Before my hon. Friend moves to her next incisive and powerful point, I wonder whether she might recognise, given her expertise in this field, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) said, that arable land available to grow the food that we need to be secure is at its lowest level since 1945 and is being lost at around 100,000 acres a year; we lost over 750,000 acres in the 10 years to 2019. We cannot have it both ways: either we have food security from the production of domestically produced foodstuffs or we give up land for solar and onshore wind.

[Dr Johnson]

As ever, my right hon. Friend is right and has read my mind—I was going to move on to talk about food production.

I am particularly concerned about the use of good agricultural land because farming is a cornerstone of my constituency. It does not just form the backbone of the economy in my constituency, but it has evolved to underpin the area’s very culture. The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have revealed the fragility of the global food market, so it is more important than ever that we make strides towards becoming agriculturally self-sufficient.

I am informed by the Greater Lincolnshire Local Enterprise Partnership that Lincolnshire alone produces 30% of the UK’s vegetables and 18% of its poultry, and is responsible for 12% of the country’s total food production—all from a county covering less than 3% of the UK’s land mass. Lincolnshire, without a doubt, has some of the UK’s best and most versatile farmland, yet it seems to be particularly targeted by large solar farms.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler) is not able to take part in this debate today, but she told me that she has similar issues in her constituency, and is particularly aggrieved by the loss of good agricultural land. I am aware of the concerns of Members of the House of Lords, too, including Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who told me of his concerns about the use of good-quality agricultural land local to him for solar farms.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is quite right. The national planning policy framework has a presumption against the use of good quality agricultural land, but that is not the problem—3a land is exempt from solar. The problem is slightly less good quality land, 3b in particular. In the old days the Government said solar was banned from 3b, but they have now changed their mind and are allowing 3b to be used. It is slightly less than good land that we are looking at.

[Dr Johnson]

My hon. Friend is right. However, what I have seen across local applications is that in some cases the application does contain land that is of a higher grade, but two things are happening. One is that the companies tell me they are going to re-analyse the land to check that it really is of that grade. After all, it might be of a much lower grade if they re-test it. The fact that they are marking their own homework concerns me as well. Secondly, speculators have explained to me that they are told that if their application contains mostly lower grade land, and they have demonstrated that there is no other land locally that they can use or is available to them, or that it is in a corner or surrounded by panels, they can use the higher grade land, too. So it is not just land below grade 3a that is at threat.

The Heckington solar farm in North Kesteven promises to power 100,000 homes, but there are only 45,000 homes in the entire area of North Kesteven. It is unfair to expect that area, which already punches well above its weight in food production, to also provide much more than its fair share of electricity. After all, the National Farmers Union estimates that the total land use for solar farms at present is no more than 20,000 hectares. If the 12 proposed farms in Lincolnshire all went ahead, they would cover 9,109 hectares, increasing the land used in the whole country by almost 50%.

The impression is given by some—this comes back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray)—that class 3b land is not particularly good for farming, but that is not true because 3b land can support a wide variety of crops. In Lincolnshire such land is often flat, relatively easy to cultivate and accessible by roads. As we face continual food inflation and a growing global population—by over 40 million so far this year—that land is needed more than ever. Now is not the time to be increasing our carbon footprint by importing yet more food.

An argument I have heard in favour of large solar farms is that they are occasionally used for grazing sheep or beekeeping, but I am concerned that those are mere token gestures that do not compensate for the damage done to the wider environment. Transitory animals such as deer have their routes blocked; that would not be such a problem if a solar farm covered only one field, but one proposed site in my patch covers 1,400 hectares or 5.4 square miles. Birds and bats that mistake glass for water can be killed when they land on the hot panels. Worst of all, the presence of solar panels limits the potential for biodiversity due to the persistent shadow cast and the set channels created by rain water run-off without proper dispersal.

I am not against solar power in principle, but I am desperately concerned that the character of our beautiful countryside could be completely altered by continual rows of glass panels, sometimes stretching for miles and miles. I am also concerned for my constituents, who did not seem to have been given an adequate say in projects that ultimately affect them the most. There is a great deal that we can do to transition to green energy, but surely there is a better alternative to industrialising our countryside.

In the UK, 600,000 acres of south-facing industrial roof space is currently unused. Prioritising industrial, residential and brownfield land for solar farms is a step in the right direction. The large Bentley factory in Crewe, its roofs coated in solar panels, is a brilliant example. It produces an average of 75% of Bentley’s daytime electricity demands—equivalent to demand from more than 2,300 homes—a year, all without using as much as a square metre of productive and beautiful agricultural land.

It is perhaps fitting that the proposal near Aubourn and Thorpe on the Hill looks like someone standing and throwing a shot putt, since it will drive a wrecking ball through the area if Ministers do not stop these applications going ahead.

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[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Everyone is in favour of renewable energy and there is no harm in having some solar farms; the problem is the sheer scale in Lincolnshire and Leicestershire. Ten thousand acres of applications ring the small town of Gainsborough, and are marked on the map in the red and black. This is ludicrous overdevelopment. To distribute, say, 1,000 acres —that is the offer—in a large rural district such as West Lindsey, covering perhaps up to 600 square miles, would be reasonable, but 10,000 acres ringing one town is just ridiculous overdevelopment.

The point I want to make is that when it comes to a public inquiry—and there should be a public inquiry—the applications must be taken as one, because developers are trying to have their cake and eat it. On the one hand, they say that these solar farms are nationally significant infrastructure projects. They say that simply because they want to bypass local opinion—that is the only reason. They want to bypass the whole planning process. They say that they are nationally significant infrastructure projects and therefore must be considered by Whitehall rather than by the local authority. That is their point of view, although when Tony Blair brought in the new planning system, it was designed for nuclear power stations, not for one little company making numerous applications and subverting the local planning process.

On the other hand—this is where the devil comes into all this—the developers are dividing the projects into separate applications. One of my constituents noticed that some developers submit multiple applications, but under the same project management team. All three of the developers in our part of England use the same law firm. When the Department considers such applications, it must consolidate them into one and look at them as a whole. I do not think any fair public inquiry would allow development on 10,000 acres ringing one town, as long as the applications were consolidated into one. But they are trying to pick us off one by one.

We all know that if the applications were approved, thousands of acres of good farmland would be lost. This is at a time when food distribution networks worldwide have been turned upside down by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Even this week, since the latest attack on the Crimean bridge, Russia has said that it is suspending the agreement to allow grain to be exported through the Black sea. Our own national planning policy framework presumes against the approval of applications that would build on highly graded agricultural land; that is because Britain’s food security is of the utmost importance.

I am sure that when the Minister responds to the debate he will say that we do not want to build solar panels on good agricultural land. We all know that the protection applies to land grades 1, 2 and 3a, but we must extend the exemption to 3b as well. Talk to any farmer in Lincolnshire—my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) is married to a farmer, so she knows this issue more than anyone else—and they will say that the quality of land is all much the same for wheat, grain and barley. Any farmer will say that. Solar companies are trying to conduct so-called analysis of the land to prove that it is 3b when no one in the past has cared whether it is 3a or 3b. The whole thing is a con and a cheat.

It is worrying that there is some evidence that some of these companies have Chinese backing. All this stuff is made in China. What are we playing at? Opposition to the projects is both broad and deep. I have had objections from the parish councils of Brampton, Brattleby, Broxholme, Burton, Cammeringham, Fillingham, Glentworth, Ingham, Kexby, Knaith, Marton and Gate Burton, Saxilby with Ingleby, Scampton, Springthorpe, Stow, Sturton by Stow, Upton and Willingham.

Consider the visual impact. Look at the cliff that runs all the way down the centre of Lincolnshire. If all the applications are granted, anyone looking from the cliff will see a sea of black. Instead of seeing unique farmland stretching away to the Trent, perhaps all the way to the Pennines, there will be a sea of black. The developers have offered almost nothing in community gain. We have heard all about the threat to good usable farmland. Building solar farms on that land undermines farming as a profession and the agricultural sector as a whole. Farming is a challenging, all-consuming and difficult calling in life. It is incredibly rewarding for those involved in it, and absolutely necessary for the lifeblood of the country.

As we have heard, Lincolnshire is the breadbasket of England, and we would like it to stay that way. Covering 10,000 acres around one town is not the way to do that. The land covered by the applications I have talked about could feed two cities the size of Hull for a year. The panels would stand 4.7 metres tall. I have known tenant farmers, whose families have been farming 200 or 300 acres for 200 years, who will be thrown off their land. They have absolutely no rights: the landowners can come in and throw them off the land they have been farming for generations.

Who gets all the benefits? I have nothing against large landowners. Unfortunately, I am not one myself; I would love to be a large landowner. We have many large landowners in Lincolnshire. To be fair to them, they are good people. They are already quite well off, but they are going to get fantastic rewards. The rewards that landowners get are staggering.

[Dr Johnson]

The situation may vary for different landowners. I have talked to those in my constituency—that does not include my husband because, although he is a farmer, he is not planning a solar farm, or at least not to my knowledge—and the amount offered is more than they would get for farming the land. It takes out the risk of things such as bad weather. Equally, the difference after tax is not so great. In fact, the money is going to the speculating companies—the prospectors who approach landowners to rent the land from them.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am worried about where those companies come from. This has all grown up very suddenly and they have huge financial resources. I suspect that they are not very interested in Lincolnshire; they are based in London. They are a group of entrepreneurs who are going to make shedloads of money and then sell the planning application on. They do not care a damn about us.

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[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I might come across as taking a slightly different view, but that is absolutely not why I am here. I represent a beautiful part of the world. There is not a massive amount of housing going on in my part of the world, and there is not a huge population. There is a huge amount of countryside. There is lots of farmland, and it is very productive land. Natural England—God bless it—has just taken a huge amount of farmland out of production for a site of special scientific interest. We must recognise that the land squeeze is not just about renewable energy.

I come at the issue from a different angle, in that the reform of policy allows us, as we have just heard, to get solar in the right place, deliver the right thing for our communities and address the cost of energy and the pressure on energy security. To give some context, the size of the prize, as we heard in the Chris Skidmore “Mission Zero” report on the upside opportunity of net zero, is likely to be over £1 trillion by the 2030s. That is a generational economic growth opportunity in relation to renewable energy. The downside risk, stemming from current issues in the UK planning grid and the wider investment climate, is potentially £62 billion of missed investment in the same period. That is not £62 billion-worth of solar farms all over our beautiful green and pleasant countryside. It is about having that £62 billion of investment in the right place. I will touch on that later.

The risk is crystallising in part due to the negative global headwinds that are adversely affecting the UK, such as post-covid inflation and the war in Ukraine, but also because of proposed policy decisions that have been deeply unpopular with investors—for example, the electricity generator levy and the continued issues with planning. Although the EGL was a negative indicator to the markets, more important issues pertaining to planning are holding up the connection of solar projects to the UK grid, slowing our transition to net zero and harming our ability to secure national energy security.

The situation is impacting a crucial partner in solar generation that often goes forgotten. We have referred to them today: the farmers and landowners. I have heard the comments about posh Land Rovers and very wealthy landowners; that is not the case in my neck of the woods. Farmers there are not extraordinarily rich and have not made a huge amount of money by using their land for things other than producing food. They are able to put renewable energy infrastructure, solar farms, and other stuff such as mobile connectivity, on their land in the right place where the land is not productive. That has actually helped farms to survive. We all know that if farms are not viable, they are broken up and sold off. Then we do get the very rich, Chelsea-tractor drivers coming into beautiful parts of the countryside and not looking after it. Maybe they have hobby farms or estates that do not protect the countryside.

[Dr Johnson]

My hon. Friend talks about small-scale connections; one of the things that is driving against small-scale connections is their price. The price is determined by the electric companies, which are driving people towards the massive scale, because that is the only way to make the connection commercially viable.

[Derek Thomas]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. I wanted to come to that, which is why I was hesitant about appearing to take a view different from the rest of the room. That is the thing: it is not just the suppliers that drive out the smaller-scale solar installations but the planning process. I am told that the cost of going down the NSIP route to get permission could be £10 million. If someone is going to spend that kind of money on a solar farm—I agree that the term is dreadful—I can understand why they go for a huge solar installation. The cost of that route makes the installations so concentrated and on such a scale. It would never be delivered in Cornwall.

Currently, a site is limited to, I think, 50 MW under what I would describe as the traditional route of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which is much healthier for local communities to engage in—it is easier for them to have their say and for the right solution to be reached. I therefore suggest that consideration be given to reforming that traditional route to allow slightly bigger sites to be used without having go down the NSIP route. I say that because land-use planning is key to everything. A lot of work is happening in the Lords and in the Government, with lots of conversations about how we plan land use for housing, transport, growing food, producing energy and caring for the natural environment, but that work must accelerate. It is the best possible tool to deliver the energy and food that we need and to enhance the natural environment, while doing it in a way that works for communities and in everyone’s interest.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Johnson]

May I press my hon. Friend on grid capacity? One thing that is driving the problem in my constituency is the issue that we had with grid capacity. The National Grid upgraded a substation and, therefore, for several miles around it, everything is open to applications for solar panels. That is what is driving those massive applications that destroy the countryside.

[Derek Thomas]

I hear that, and I do not have an answer—thankfully, I am not the Minister.

[Dr Johnson]

My hon. Friend might become the Minister.

[Derek Thomas]

I hope not. I am arguing that there is a real danger—as happened with onshore wind, and I do not object to onshore wind in the right place—that we create a situation where these things cannot happen at all. We would then hinder the right kind of development and movement in the right direction. In Cornwall, we have the opportunity provided by the Celtic sea, with a huge amount of offshore wind, which is a much better solution. I still think, however, that grid capacity, land use and reform of planning that understands and recognises everything that has been said can stop the gold rush for something that does not deliver anything for food or our countryside, so we can enjoy our green and pleasant land as we should. We must not cut off our nose to spite our face when it comes to delivering energy as close to home as possible to meet our constituents’ needs. That is what I am getting at, and local community networks are an important part of this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Gray]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend; she is of course quite right.

We are concerned about the technology; it will not last. We are concerned about the 40-year planning permission that has been granted. We are concerned about who stands behind this. I am also very concerned, in a technical sense, about battery storage units. These solar farms are no use at all, because the use of energy fluctuates during the day and therefore there have to be very substantial—and hideously ugly—battery support units to make them work. These things are ugly, huge and dangerous—many of them burst into flames spontaneously. A very large question exists with regard to their technology. We must be very careful indeed about the way in which we use this stuff, for that reason alone.

Secondly, my hon. Friends have made a very important point about food security. Post Ukraine, we are deeply worried about who will feed us in Britain and who will feed the world. It strikes me as morally quite wrong to be covering good agricultural land—3b is good agricultural land—with vanity mirrors being paid for by overseas investors. That seems to me to be morally unacceptable; morally, it simply cannot be sustained.

The food production versus energy security argument is a potent one, and of course the very simple answer to the energy security question comes, as my hon. Friends have said, from putting solar farms or solar panels off agricultural land. I am proud that in my constituency I have RAF Lyneham, which has the largest solar farm in Europe. It is huge—absolutely enormous—but cannot be seen by anybody. It is on former military land. The same applies to Wroughton, just outside my constituency, where, again, one of the largest solar farms in Europe is on entirely unproductive land. That is absolutely fine, but why are we having a spate of applications right across North Wiltshire for 200-acre or 300-acre sites on grade 3b land that has been used for years for the production of wheat and of grass? Indeed, in the west country, those crops are very important with regard to dairy. It has been used for donkey’s years to do that, but all of a sudden, because it is 3b and these companies are going round proving it is 3b, somehow there is a presumption in favour of them getting the application.

That brings me to my final point.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

rose—

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[Matthew Pennycook]

The right hon. Gentleman has a lot of expertise in this area, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. He pre-empts a point that I will come to. We think the Government should be far more ambitious and creative about rooftop solar, which we think can meet the bulk of our solar needs.

As the House is aware, the Labour party has committed to delivering a zero emission power system by 2030—five years ahead of the Government’s target date—and we assess that honouring that commitment will require us to triple the deployment of solar by the end of this decade to up to 50 GW of capacity. We are under no illusions: we know that is a stretching target, but it is essential to achieving zero carbon power by the end of the decade, and a Labour Government will do what is necessary to meet it.

Our plans are premised on a significant uplift in solar photovoltaic deployment on rooftops, which analysis suggests could provide the bulk of the 50 GW of capacity that we want to be installed by 2030. I think hon. Members are broadly in complete agreement on that point. As I said, we want the Government to be far more ambitious and creative in how they do that.

[Dr Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman is setting out what he thinks a Labour Government would do were they to get the chance. My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) talked about the new clause she will table to the Energy Bill to say that grade 3a and 3b land should not be used for solar panels. Will the Labour party support it?

[Matthew Pennycook]

That is a good question. I listened with great interest to the suggestion from the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns). There should be greater protections for best and most versatile land graded 1 to 3a, but we disagree with Government Members when it comes to category 3b land. We think there is sufficient flexibility in the system, and that we need 3b land in certain circumstances. We certainly would not exempt 3b land in its entirety, as a couple of hon. Members suggested.

Although we want the majority of solar to be deployed on rooftops, there is no question but that we will need to take steps to enable the deployment of far more ground-mounted solar than is presently being installed, and that will include a number of large sites. That will require reform of our planning system. We believe that the planning system as a whole needs to be overhauled and aligned fully with our net zero emissions target.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Johnson]

Thank you, Ms Nokes. I will be brief as time is short. It has been a very interesting debate. I think there is broad consensus that solar panels are not a great idea and should not be on agricultural land.

I want to address points made by other hon. Members. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) talked about the massive scale of the speculation and the 10,000 acres surrounding Gainsborough. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) talked about the absolutely huge scale of the very good, in his view, solar plant at RAF Lyneham. That huge thing is reported on the internet as being 250 acres. The scale of the applications we are talking about in Lincolnshire are each over 2,000 acres, sometimes much more than that, so they really are enormous.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) made good points about the potential for innovation and how wind farm innovation has driven a much better solution. In fact, restrictions on food-producing land lead to innovation on buildings and the types of panels that can be used on top of commercial centres.

The Minister talked about protecting best and most versatile agricultural land. We also need to consider the concept of planning justification, which is based on what else is locally available. In Lincolnshire, the land is good land. We have to travel a long way to find land that is not good land, so justifying something on the basis of what is available locally is not helpful. I would like him to look at that.

I think we all agree that the use of brownfield sites is better. I will support the proposed new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) on the use of best and most versatile agricultural land.

Finally, the Government need much more joined-up land use planning. They want to build more houses and create more energy, and they want more land to be set aside for the environment and more land for growing food. They cannot have all of them. In this case, the Minister cannot have his cake and eat it. In fact, without the best and most versatile agricultural land producing eggs, flour, sugar and other ingredients, he will not be able to have his cake at all.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered planning and solar farms.