Food Prices (Planning Policy)

Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Glyn Davies

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) on securing the debate on such an interesting topic. I did not intend to speak—I came to listen to what my hon. Friend had to say—but a number of points have been made that are of sufficient interest to me and I am grateful that there is time for me to do so. First, I should declare an interest. I have been a farmer all my life. At the moment, my land is rented out, but the rent I receive depends on the profitability of the industry, so I feel that I need to declare an interest that will be recorded in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

We are debating the consequences of land that is used for food production being used for other purposes. I accept the point—I think that we all do—that we are a trading nation and part of a trading world and that Britain has always been subject to change over the decades. I cannot help but feel, however, that we have reached a stage regarding land use where the change that we face is greater than we have ever faced before. In a sense, that is inevitable, but the Minister, the Government and all of us have to be aware of unintended consequences. Unintended consequences are always the problem—those things that happen that we are unaware of and do not give sufficient attention to when dealing with an issue.

The main driver for change in land use is population growth. During my lifetime, we have seen an enormous change in the projected number of people who will live in the United Kingdom. Before too long, that number will reach 70 million. Inevitably, if that happens, we will need more houses, more roads and more rail. How we live changes, and there will be more demand for leisure activity. All that uses a huge amount of land, far more than anticipated. We have to consider population increase carefully, because of its impact on the way we live as a nation.

I, too, want to touch on the use of land for energy production. I do not oppose that, but I am one of those stupid farmers who, because I detest onshore wind to such an extent, has decided that he does not want the additional income. I have no intention whatever of going down that road, and I advise most of my fellow farmers, if they can afford not to, to do the same. I must admit that in my Montgomery constituency, an awful lot of farmers take that view: they despise how my constituency could be destroyed by the ravages of the onshore wind business. This issue is more than just about that, however.

I have always supported biofuels, but in mid-Wales the potential for the development of miscanthus is huge. That is having an immediate impact—an issue that I raised in an intervention about maize. A new biofuels plant requires maize. For decades, dairy farmers rented land to grow maize to sustain their dairy stock. That was part of how they farmed. Suddenly, they can no longer do that. It is totally impossible for them to compete in the market, because there is a subsidised industry—biofuels—buying up all the maize and they have had to withdraw. Clearly, that involves reducing the number of stock that they keep—an unintended consequence.

When we talk about onshore wind—as my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) did, as always, in such an authoritative way—it is not just the wind turbine that takes up a certain area. I want to make two points on this. In mid-Wales at the moment, we are talking about a project that has a 35-mile line from Shropshire into the middle of my constituency. There will be 150-foot high pylons—steel towers—all the way along that line. That will mean sterilising a huge amount of land, and even the substation at the end of it will cover 20 acres. The impact on land use is huge, notwithstanding the 600 or 700 turbines involved.

We also have to be really careful about how the people of this country feel they are connected with government. In my constituency, the local authority has turned down all the large applications associated with this big project going ahead. If I have a public meeting on the issue, huge numbers of people turn up—probably a couple of thousand people. In fact, 2,000 people came to Cardiff with me, in 37 buses, to express our viewpoint. It is clear that the constituency feels that it does not want this imposed on it. Yet, my constituents also believe that, despite that being their comprehensive view, the Governments in Westminster and Cardiff do not care at all and will use every device that they have to ensure that those applications go through. It is dangerous for any Government to allow that democratic deficit to happen, in addition to the land use change, without being very careful about what they are doing.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

For the Minister, the damage is to the localism agenda. When so many people who have a vital part to play in the communities that they represent are being ignored—this is the point that I was trying to make about the Planning Inspectorate—and overruled by one person who comes in from outside with delegated powers, that causes an issue for localism. Perhaps the Minister can give us some assurances on how the Planning Inspectorate will deal with future local plans that involve renewable energy elements.

[Glyn Davies]

That strikes a real chord with me. I very much support the principle of the Government putting localism at the heart of what they are doing. However, I must admit that if one talks to anybody in my constituency about the principle of localism at the moment, when we are talking about onshore wind, they will snort with laughter. The idea of localism has gone completely out the window.

Returning to the land use issue, there is one other point I want to make.

Energy and Climate Change

Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Glyn Davies

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

It is such a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), who is a great mind in all areas of energy and one of the more assiduous Members of the House when it comes to constituency work, I am told.

I welcome the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who is standing in on behalf of Department of Energy and Climate Change Ministers. So far in this debate, the Government business managers have replied, probably better than most of the Ministers would have been able to do on their own, so I welcome the hon. Gentleman. He should be aware that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has a history of getting people to stand in for him in various matters, but I trust that his Christmas present from the Secretary of State will be slightly nicer than others that he might have given in the past.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), I am suffering from a spate of wind farm applications in my constituency. For years I have been campaigning against them. We should have gone nuclear a lot earlier, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South said. There is a fantastic quote in a very good book, “Let Them Eat Carbon” by Matthew Sinclair of the Taxpayers Alliance: “Renewable energy is plagued by old problems. Whilst the wind and the sun are free, using them to supply energy when and where we need it to power a modern economy is extremely expensive.”

We all know that, and even the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) would have to recognise it, so why do we keep trying to foist onshore wind farms on to areas of low wind speed, where they devastate areas of natural beauty? I guess it is because wind was the only game in town for a long time and its lobbyists are among the best.

I thought that in the spirit of localism, it would be a good idea to give power to local authorities, so I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill, the Onshore Wind Turbines (Proximity of Habitation) Bill a number of months ago. It languishes, I think, at No. 13 for the next Friday sitting that we might have, so is unlikely to see the light of day in this Session. However, I would like to think that, like the gubernator of California, it will be back in some form in the future. I offer it to Ministers as a way forward in trying to solve some of the problems by letting local councils decide the correct proximity of wind turbines to habitation.

Why am I so interested in this? In Daventry district, 19 sites are being looked at, are in the planning stage or are on appeal for wind turbines, most of which would be about 126.5 m high, roughly the size of the London Eye, and in a beautiful, green part of rolling English countryside. I am against the turbines because they simply do not work. Last December was one of the coldest periods on record, but it was also remarkably still. The turbines barely produced any energy and we needed to use all the other carbon-eating technologies.

[Glyn Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the sheer antipathy to wind farm development right across Britain is turning people against the development of renewable energy? It is transforming antipathy to onshore wind into antipathy to renewable energy.