Climate and Nature Bill

Greg Smith Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bowie]

I would never seek to argue with my hon. Friend, but actually the Bill does not do that. What the Bill does is set a limit at 100 MW, which even the largest solar farm does not quite reach, so there would still be a presumption in favour of large solar park developments. Shotwick solar park on the Welsh border, for example, is the largest in the country, and it is at 72.2 MW, so it would be automatically approved. That again speaks to the contradiction at the heart of the Bill: we cannot say that we want to protect farmland and the great British countryside while seeking to approve at pace large-scale renewable projects that would do the exact opposite.

[Greg Smith]

It is slightly worse than that. We heard the debate earlier about the word “and”. Many of these large-scale renewable energy projects such as battery storage are surrounded by such severe fencing that local nature—for example, deer runs—is severely disrupted or destroyed.

[Andrew Bowie]

My hon. Friend knows that I am in complete agreement on that, given that a significant number of renewable energy projects, battery storage facilities, substations and pylons have been proposed for my constituency as a result of the plans brought forward by the Government. He is, as ever, absolutely right.

The Opposition obviously cannot support the Bill. It would see jobs lost and moved abroad, and it would see decisions taken out of the hands of democratically elected politicians and placed into those of judicial activists and vague, unaccountable bodies. However, I am sorry to say that the lack of seriousness and the inconsistencies in the Bill, including a lack of understanding of how government works and an ignorance of energy markets and of how an increasing reliance on imports is bad for us not just economically but environmentally, mean that we cannot afford it.

The Bill would do great harm to British industry, undermine parliamentary democracy and consign future Governments to goals that are not unachievable but would be achieved on the back of devastation to our energy, food, national and economic security. It would also not protect the great British countryside. Despite the laudable and admirable aims of many right hon. and hon. Members who support the Bill, that is why we cannot support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

All too often in this place and in politics at large, what divides us is not necessarily the end result—in this case reducing emissions, halting the decline of nature and supporting nature’s recovery—but the means by which we get there.

I have some serious issues with the Bill. I say clearly and categorically for the record that I spend most of my time in this place and in my constituency arguing against the very things that cause nature’s decline in the beautiful Buckinghamshire countryside. I spend most of my time arguing against the unnecessary greenfield housing developments that concrete over our countryside and destroy nature. I argue against the massive industrial solar installations, battery storage facilities and substation upgrades that take away the farms next door and have fencing around them that disrupts the deer runs and is harmful and dangerous to nature. So many in this House have argued that those things are the solution to some of the challenges we face, but I do not accept that at all, and I do not accept that the Bill will help us get to the end goal that I think the vast majority of people want to see.

I am grateful to constituents who have lobbied me in favour of the Bill, such as the Speen Environmental Action Group. I sat down with them over the summer and we had a good discussion. I do not think we agreed on everything, but we absolutely agreed on the need for the right sort of action and measures that will get us to where we want to go.

From a legislative perspective, I would argue, as the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), did in his excellent speech, that we already have a legislative framework in which we can work. We have the Environment Act 2021. Almost five years ago to this day, in the previous Parliament, I stood somewhere on the other side of the Chamber and delivered my maiden speech on the Environment Bill. It is now an Act of Parliament, and it has a section explicitly about halting the decline in species populations by 2030 and increasing populations by at least 10% to exceed current levels by 2042.

We have the legislative framework. We now have to allow our great innovators to come up with the real solutions—ones that do not bring about the destruction of our countryside and nature. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), who has left his place, give an impassioned defence of an ancient woodland. It is, in fact, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew), but it was a good defence none the less. I thought to myself, “It’s quite rare that I agree with him, but I agree with him on this point.” But then I thought about my own constituency, and I thought, “Hang on.” There is a project that has destroyed many ancient woodlands, not just in Buckinghamshire but up and down the entirety of phase 1: High Speed 2. The vast majority of Members of the 2017 Parliament—the Labour Members, the Liberal Democrat Members, although there were not so many of them then, and the Members of other parties—all went through the voting Lobby to vote for the destruction of ancient woodland in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire. It is a position that we all have to reflect upon. As I said at the start, we can disagree with the means of getting somewhere, but I invite every right hon. and hon. Member to reflect on what they themselves have proposed or supported in the past, and the impact that has had on the nature challenges we face.

I will touch briefly on some of the issues with the targets in the Bill, which would have severe unintended consequences. My hon. Friend the shadow Minister set out many of them in detail, but it is worth double underlining that if British industry is forced too far, too fast towards targets it cannot meet, that will simply drive those businesses, those jobs and those innovators overseas. It will not combat any global challenge; it will just move it somewhere else in the world. I cannot believe that the sponsors of the Bill, or anyone else, actually want to see that happen.

Fossil fuels will be needed for decades to come. I have been a vocal advocate of de-fossilisation, both in my time on the Transport Committee in the last Parliament and in this Parliament. My argument is that we have the technology out there, but Government regulation, not just in our own country but worldwide, is preventing us from enabling it to grow. We will need fossil fuels. We will need something to power the 1.4 billion internal combustion engine vehicles that will still be on the roads worldwide after the ban on new petrol and diesel engines in this country. I put it to the House that the solution is the synthetic fuel industry: making fuel literally out of air and water, using the Fischer-Tropsch process.

[Luke Taylor]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the number of Liberal Democrats in this place; I think that we were a very effective method of de-fossilisation on 4 July. On the point about synthetic fuels, does he agree that the measures in the Bill, particularly the ones to encourage sustainable aviation fuels and alternatives for internal combustion engines, will spur investment in those technologies exactly as he wants to see?

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. On his first point, all I will say is: not in Mid Buckinghamshire. They tried, but they got 25% of the vote.

To answer the hon. Gentleman’s serious point, I do not see anything in the Bill that challenges the zero emission vehicle mandate. The ZEV mandate is obsessed with testing at tailpipe rather than whole-system analysis, which gets in the way of developing synthetic fuels and greenlighting the great innovators in this country and worldwide to get on with developing that technology. If we put a synthetic fuel through an internal combustion engine, there is still carbon at tailpipe, but it is the same volume of carbon that will be recaptured through atmospheric carbon capture to make the next lot of fuel. It is carbon neutral. It is one volume of carbon in a perpetual circle, yet I see nothing in the Bill that will enable those great innovators to move ahead and get—as some of them claim they can—cost parity with the fossil fuel equivalent within a decade.

[Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)]

I would like to challenge the hon. Member. This Bill sets a very clear direction for what this country wants to achieve, and that will help innovators and businesses to know where to go, which they were not sure about under the last Government. I would like him to think about that.

[Greg Smith]

I hear the point the hon. Lady makes, but I fundamentally disagree. We already have the direction—it was the last Conservative Government who were the first in the western world to legislate for net zero by 2050 and who passed the Environment Act. The answers to the challenges we face in the development of synthetics do not sit in the Bill before us today. They sit in other legislation, which I admit I voted against in the last Parliament, but it is the ZEV mandate that gets in the way, because it fails to look at whole-system analysis. Who else wants to have a go?

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

Businesses and car manufacturers said that the previous Conservative Government’s chopping and changing on car manufacturing made it really hard for them to achieve those scientific and technological innovations.

[Greg Smith]

The hon. Lady makes a point about the change that happened in the last Parliament, but she is allowing the facts to get in the way of a good argument. The reality out there is that car manufacturers are finding that, aside from fleet sales, they cannot sell electric vehicles. Consumer demand for them is through the floor—nobody wants them. That is part of the fundamental problem. If we take the solution that this Bill wants to speed up and put on steroids, the innovators get blocked, and everybody simply jumps on the technology that is available today, which is sometimes not the best technology to achieve the climate and nature goals that we in this House all want to see.

The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) spoke of the value of nuclear, which is another great example. We should look at the damage that grand-scale solar and battery storage cause to nature. We need 2,000 acres of solar panels to produce enough electricity for about 50,000 homes on current usage, but we need only two football pitches for a small modular reactor that will serve 1 million homes, so why are we messing about with solar? That is the fundamental point we should all reflect on when we think about the Bill. We must think about the legislative framework we need to achieve these goals and then look at more practical solutions.