Solar Farms

Debate between David Davis and Steve Barclay

Thursday 15th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

To understand this Government’s approach to solar farms, one should start by re-reading the Labour manifesto —page 59 of the Labour manifesto to be more precise. I know that it was only a year ago, but in its solemn promise to the British people, it said:

“Labour recognises that food security is national security. That is why we will champion British farming”.

That may now seem a long time ago, because a succession of announcements from this Government have made it clear that there is no commitment to farming or to food security. Indeed, that applies to many of their other commitments—smash the gangs, council tax bills will not go up, or energy bills will come down. On food security and its importance to national security it is clear that it was a fake promise. Indeed, there is an irony here, because we still have the ongoing covid inquiry. I was Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the time of covid, and it was clear to me that at a time of national crisis, value for money changes; there is competing demand across nations for scarce resources. I assure Members that, at such a crisis point, food security becomes an issue of national security, which is why the carelessness of the current Government on their manifesto commitment matters so much.

[David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend makes a brilliant point. Does he also recognise that the way that this Government have set up the arrangements—they are guaranteeing 10% to 20% returns on investment on these farms—is in effect bribing farmers to move away from farming?

[Steve Barclay]

Indeed, the Government are creating an incentive to do the exact opposite of own manifesto pledge, which is why I started with that point.

Let me come on to the second place where we can see Labour’s approach—in the Cabinet. Of course, we cannot witness the Cabinet in action at first hand, but it is very clear—certainly to someone who has had the good fortune to sit in Cabinet—how marginalised the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has become. We see the Prime Minister announce things such as the compulsory purchase of farmland in order to support infrastructure schemes; we see the former Labour leader, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, make a whole raft of decisions in his first few weeks of office on massive solar farms, overriding DEFRA; we see the Deputy Prime Minister riding roughshod over the DEFRA Secretary of State on housing schemes; and we see the Chancellor phoning officials at DEFRA the night before to say that the sustainable farming incentive had been reduced so quickly that the Government have now had to concede in a legal case that their approach was wrong and allow a further 3,000 farm applications to proceed—and that is without any clear commitments in this area.

When I warned at the election about Labour’s farm tax, the now DEFRA Secretary of State said that it was complete nonsense. Well, we have seen the Government introduce that tax and watched while the Treasury rode roughshod over the Department. We have a Department that is completely sidelined in the Government and failing to speak up not just for food security and farming, but for the very commitments that were made in the Labour manifesto.

We see a theme running across a whole range of policy announcements that shows the instinct, the values and the priorities of this Government, who always believe that top-down knows best. They do not believe in localism. The implication for solar farms can be seen in how the delivery of the policy is happening on the ground. We are seeing clusters in the east of England, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) would point out, in areas of the best food production. We are seeing a gaming of the system, where the developers bring in consultants to grade the land in ways that sit at odds with historic knowledge of the value of that land.