Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I agree with the Minister that rooftops are the place to put solar. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) made clear when she was Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, agricultural land should be protected from ground-mounted solar installations. The campaign group Stop Oversized Solar has found that operational sites and solar facilities in the planning pipeline alone are set to replace an area of farmland bigger than Merseyside, and that overall up to 5% of UK cropland is at risk from solar, so why do the Government persist with their claim that land take will be 1%? When Labour said that food security is national security, did the energy team not get the memo?

[Michael Shanks]

I always welcome consensus in the House, so I am delighted to hear that there is still consensus on rooftop solar. The Conservatives have moved away from so many of their previous positions and I was not sure if this was going to be another, although I wonder why that rooftop solar was not built over the past 14 years. But we will leave that to one side.

On the hon. Gentleman’s question about land use, we have been clear that ground-mounted solar will play an important part as the energy cannot all be generated from rooftop solar, but we want to ensure that communities are part of the decision making. The planning process is hugely important in that, but we also recognise that some communities have felt that there has not been a joined-up strategic approach. That is why we are publishing the strategic spatial energy plan, alongside the land use framework. Even in our most ambitious scenarios, 0.4% of land will be taken up with solar.