Planning Policy and Wind Turbines (South-West)

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Glyn Davies

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

The debate and the issue are hugely important. I live in Montgomeryshire, which is a long way from the south-west, and I did not intend to speak when I came to the debate. I came because I have a great love for the south-west. I spend much of my holiday time there. St Ives and Padstow are beautiful, and I find the Isles of Scilly irresistible. We spend a great deal of time in the south-west, so I travel through it. Inevitably one notices the impact of the development of onshore wind turbines while driving through Somerset and Cornwall. They are quite dominant. I was hugely impressed by the power of the speech made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox). Because the issue is so important to me, I felt an irresistible urge to speak in the debate.

My aim is to speak about planning policy. I would not want to incur your wrath in any circumstances, Mr Pritchard, and particularly not when you are in the Chair. I have a special interest arising from my constituency, but I shall make a passing reference to what makes this such a big issue for me: it is scale. My constituency has more than 240 turbines already, and we have a proposal for probably 35 miles of 400 kW cable, a 20-acre substation and about 500 extra turbines—it is a dedicated line—and about 100 miles of cables criss-crossing the constituency from the centre. The proposal would completely change a beautiful part of Britain, which shares a standard of beauty with the south-west. Anyone representing such an area is bound to be involved in the debate. It is a question of scale.

We have a general Government policy, supported by the Opposition and all parties, of seeking an energy mix. I think that that is right, and have never argued that wind should not play a part in it. The question is about the scale. The Government do not have a target, other than having 15% of energy coming from renewable sources by 2020. As for onshore wind, there is, I think, an expectation of what it would provide. That expectation is between 10 GW and 13 GW of power. Currently, we have 7 GW of power that is up and operating, 6.8 GW that has passed planning and another 6 GW that is in planning. We have achieved the target that the Government expected to achieve by 2020. Clearly, the level of support is so high that there would probably be an onshore wind farm on every hill in Britain if planning permission could be gained, but the case for a moratorium is strong. As manifestos are prepared, I hope that all parties seriously consider a moratorium to protect the most beautiful parts of Britain.

There is a real issue with local democracy and how people feel locally. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon referred to hopelessness, and that is exactly how people feel. A research project at Aberystwyth university looked at how wind farms impacted on mid-Wales. The research found a sense of hopelessness and helplessness throughout the area about being able to affect the implications of Government policy on where they lived. The council signed off on the development and gave up believing in local democracy. It is probably one of the poorest local authorities in Britain, yet it felt that it had to set aside £2 million to support its decisions and defend its policies at a public inquiry.

[Mr Cox]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the other baleful effects of the proliferation of applications for out-of-scale wind turbines is that it tends to turn people against renewable energy as a whole? As they search for arguments to defend their communities, they immediately start to look at the whole case for cutting carbon emissions and do so from a hostile point of view. That cannot be a good thing for a cause that we would all support.

[Glyn Davies]

I absolutely agree with my hon. and learned Friend on that issue. In 2004, I was thought to be a strong supporter of renewable energy. I campaigned for the principle of renewable energy. When the project that impacted on my area came forward, I said that it would damage the view of renewable energy in a part of Britain that was the most supportive of it—the Centre for Alternative Technology is in the middle of my constituency—and, indeed, the opposite is now true. Some 2,000 people came to Cardiff to protest on the steps of the Assembly with me. The impression is that we are now anti-renewable energy, but that has been driven by this obsession with onshore wind. It seems crazy to me.

I have a few points to make before I finish. The first is on cumulative impact. How can cumulative impact not be a major part of planning? I was a planning committee chairman for seven years, and with every development the cumulative impact was a hugely important factor. Suddenly, as with everything else, there are special rules for onshore wind, and cumulative impact hardly matters. We are seeing huge proliferations close together. We must pay real attention to cumulative impact and take into account the new pylons that the National Grid has to build as part of that development.

The second point is about the individual turbines that are popping up everywhere. The local planning authority has to have a policy that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) said, accepts a certain number, where they support the community. We would support a farmer who wants to use the policy to develop their own energy production. Local planning authorities, however, do not have a policy and are approving those turbines on a hit and miss basis. I have seen them go through when the planning officer has recommended refusal, and we are destroying the most beautiful parts of our country.

Finally, we need to have an appreciation of landscape at the core of our planning policies. Before coming to this place, for three years I was the president of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales, which is the equivalent body to the Campaign to Protect Rural England. We worked together. It is heartbreaking to see policies being adopted that pay almost no regard to the value of landscape. The planning inspectors have got one view only, which is this mythical target. They say, “We have listened to what you have told us and we accept everything, but it is trumped by the target.” It is devastating for rural parts of Britain, it is devastating for the south-west and it is devastating for my constituency. It is time that the Government recognised that and came forward with a policy based on a moratorium.