Oral Answers to Questions
Greg Smith Excerpts(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Miatta Fahnbulleh
I am sorry to hear about the case of Lesley, and I know there are people across the country who have this frustration with standing charges. I reassure the House that we have a commitment to reducing them. We are working with Ofgem on a set of options. Our challenge is to ensure that standing charges do not penalise some households and that they are as fair as possible. That is what we are committed to doing, and that is what we are working every day to deliver.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman not just on this question, but on securing an Adjournment debate last night on exactly the same subject. As I stated last night, clean power projects in his constituency and across the country are vital to achieving our clean power mission, which will give us energy security and bring down bills for families. Of course, all proposals are assessed on their individual merit through the planning system, and where communities host infrastructure, the Government believe they should directly benefit from it.
Greg Smith
In answering my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) earlier, the Secretary of State completely dismissed the legitimate concerns of rural communities and farmers who are being asked to take on energy projects. Yet last night in the Adjournment debate, the Under-Secretary found a more reasonable tone, accepting the point on cumulative impact in constituencies such as mine that are being asked to take up to 3,000 acres of projects. Will the Under-Secretary go into more detail about how the Government will put in mitigations on cumulative impact to protect communities such as mine?
Michael Shanks
I would be testing the patience of the Deputy Speaker if I were to go into more detail than I could in an Adjournment debate. The point I made clearly to the hon. Gentleman was that it is not a credible position for him to take that there should be absolutely no infrastructure built anywhere in his constituency. The reality is we need to build new infrastructure, not just energy infrastructure but right across the public sector. I have said clearly that the work we are taking forward on the strategic spatial energy plan and on the land use framework by colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is about trying to ensure that we manage the best use of land, but we will have to build new infrastructure, and communities will have to host it.
Energy Development Proposals: Mid Buckinghamshire
Greg Smith Excerpts(2 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
I rise to register my outrage at the unacceptable situation that all my constituents in Mid Buckinghamshire are facing: a tidal wave of energy infrastructure driven by hype, speculation and a closed-minded approach to energy security. As we have seen with countless other large-scale infrastructure projects, be they road, rail or housing, it is rural areas that are thrown under the bus with no thought for the huge impact that both the construction and the operation of those projects has on communities. I therefore strongly encourage the Government to take note of what I believe is a ticking time bomb that risks permanently devastating not just my constituency but countless others across the United Kingdom.
I am sadly no stranger to the problem of big infrastructure. From the moment I was first elected, I have taken every opportunity to put on record the terrible destruction that High Speed 2 has brought on my constituency, from the shameless turfing out of farmers, who have often been left without compensation for years on end, to the sorry state of the roads used by heavy goods vehicles and the sheer size of the compounds that litter the Buckinghamshire countryside—literally industrial waste—for there is no justification for spending £200 billion of taxpayers’ money on a railway that has effectively already become obsolete.
The same is true of ground-based energy infrastructure, which is the least efficient form of energy production. Put simply, the enormous loss of agricultural land required to double the share of national energy consumption generated by solar, which will amount to less than 10% even with the proposed increase, is not worth it.
Greg Smith
It would not be an Adjournment debate without the hon. Gentleman. I am interested to see how he will get Mid Buckinghamshire into his intervention. I am all ears.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I remind you, Mr Shannon, that this debate is about energy development proposals in Mid Buckinghamshire. We are ready for your intervention.
Jim Shannon
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the importance of land. The priority for agricultural land is to provide the food to feed this nation, not for solar energy projects that clog and take away the land. My constituency is similar to his, and my interest is to ensure that that good land is kept for the production of food, as it should be.
Greg Smith
The hon. Gentleman is always on point on these matters. I will come to the important matter of food security later, but he is right. The inefficiency of some energy projects coming forward in Mid Buckinghamshire, as well as in communities in Strangford, I dare say, is a huge challenge not just to food security but to the rural way of life that those in our communities enjoy.
It takes 2,000 acres of solar panels to generate enough electricity to power 50,000 homes on current usage—before everyone has two Teslas on the drive—yet a small modular reactor requires just two football pitches to produce enough power for a million homes on current usage. It cannot be right that the Government are pursuing this technology. I put it to the Minister and to right hon. and hon. Members across the House that nuclear is the answer, but fingers seem to be in ears whenever it is raised. I assume that that is obvious to the Government, as is the vital importance of food security, which is directly compromised by taking land out of food production and giving it over to solar.
The Government seem content with ploughing on. Last week’s revelation in The Daily Telegraph of intentions to convert a tenth of our farmland to use for net zero gives a blank cheque to those intent on destroying rather than preserving our countryside. The countryside is for farming. It is not a building site for solar panels, power plants, battery storage sites or wind turbines. It is for growing food. It is for the local communities and businesses that rely on it.
Attempts to take land away from food production in my constituency are simply unjustifiable. An unjustifiable 3,000 acres of land are already lost or at risk of being subsumed by solar panels. Those 3,000 acres are taken out of food production, no longer farmed by families who have farmed them for generations but are now turfed out, with little to no compensation, and the land unlikely ever to return to food production. Let us bear in mind that that is just for the projects that have been proposed or consented to.
Rosefield is a monster project of immense scale. For this monstrosity alone, over 2,000 acres of land—much of it arable grade 3a and 3b—have been sold off to EDF Renewables for the construction of vast swathes of solar panels right in the heart of the Claydons. That land produces a 10-tonne-a-hectare wheat harvest. Many farmers would bite your right hand off to get that, but it is cast aside by the consultants and proposers of the site as low-grade land. It simply is not. As the name suggests, the area is rich in clay soil, which is incredibly valuable to farmers as it retains rich levels of both nutrients and water. It allows us in Buckinghamshire to produce immense quantities of wheat, barley, beans, oilseed rape and much more.
We are facing a clear trade-off between food security and what is considered today to be energy security. Members will know that I have consistently questioned the suitability and sustainability of solar as a renewable source of electricity. There is nothing renewable about land left to rot underneath solar panels, or the huge amount of emissions from the construction of these vast sites.
We in Buckinghamshire face an equal if not greater threat from battery energy storage sites. These shipping container-sized units use hundreds of lithium ion batteries to store surplus energy, which is later sold back to the grid to meet demand when required. Not only are the battery storage sites noisy and unsightly, but they displace water run-off because of their concrete bases, create light pollution, are a target for vandalism and are a huge fire risk, as I will discuss shortly.
On top of that, such sites are not a sustainable form of energy production. In fact, they do nothing more than hold surplus energy, no matter how or where that energy has been generated. In fact, with less than 5% of today’s energy consumption coming from solar, the chances are that the energy stored by these sites has not come from the site next door. It is utterly shameful of BESS promoters to label their projects as “sustainable” and “part of the solution”. It is, I am afraid to say, simply a matter of profiteering off the taxpayer while doing little to nothing—that is, for those who do not enjoy a chemically fuelled bonfire. It has been proven time and again, with tragic results, how dangerous battery energy storage sites can be. In September 2020, for example, a fire at a BESS site in Liverpool took 59 hours to extinguish. While the promoters may spout about new technology guarding us against fire today, it does not and cannot justify placing such sites in rural areas. That is because—surprise, surprise—it takes far longer for fire crews to respond in rural areas, especially ones that are prone to flooding, such as the Claydons, in my constituency, where three BESS applications have been lodged in just one year.
It is not surprising that pouring concrete on to farmland exacerbates flooding, or that hundreds of shipping containers ruin the view for miles around.
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
The proposed energy developments will create a strain on our valuable farmland in Mid Buckinghamshire and across Buckinghamshire more widely. Many parts of the county are on a floodplain, which will already be under additional strain because of these different energy developments. Will the Minister look again at these proposals? We already have infrastructure demands because HS2 and housing, as well as energy development, are all going into a very constrained area in Mid Buckinghamshire.
Greg Smith
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and fellow Buckinghamshire Member of Parliament for that intervention. She is absolutely right that the strain being put on our small, rural county from so many projects—the cumulative impact of the energy proposals that are the subject of my speech, HS2, East West Rail, mega-prisons and so much more—makes the attack on our countryside and the risk, to go to her point on flooding, all the worse.
I just listed a number of things that should not be surprising. However, they seem surprising to promoters, who seem totally oblivious to the idea that farming gives us food, gives people jobs and a livelihood, and gives communities an identity and a vital source of income. However, that does not seem to have stopped them flooding the planning system in Mid Buckinghamshire with these BESS applications. What makes it all the more confusing is that, according to the Government’s newly formed national energy systems operator:
“The number of speculative connection applications has substantially risen over the past few years resulting in an excessively high volume of contracted parties when in reality only about a third of the volume of projects will make it to Completion.”
What we are actually seeing—what is very visible in Mid Buckinghamshire—is a number of these so-called zombie projects that are clogging up the system and causing incredible concern and outrage to local communities, but that may actually never happen. That is simply absurd.
My constituents are constantly being told that the projects are needed for a transition to net zero, yet the vast majority will not even be completed. That goes to show how misguided the Government’s so-called energy security policy really is: unable to deliver and throwing my constituents under the bus. It should therefore not be a surprise that the misguided and highly speculative nature of the BESS projects has led to countless rejections by local planning authorities.
Less than six weeks ago, when presented with its first BESS application—a 500 MW site in the Claydons—Buckinghamshire council resoundingly rejected it on the grounds of fire risk, lack of access and an inappropriate site location. Our local paper even described the plan as a “terrorists’ dream”. The same goes for York council, which rejected a 100 MW site in the village of Osbaldwick on fire grounds. The same reason led East Renfrewshire council to reject a 40 MW site in the village of Eaglesham in Scotland and Dorset Council to reject a 60 MW facility in the village of Chickerell. I trust the Minister will have taken note not just of those rejections but of the many others which are, if anything, increasing by the week. This, I hope, demonstrates the clear, strong opposition from local communities to BESS facilities.
It is not just about battery storage, solar farms, substations or whatever else forms part of the Government’s flawed approach to energy security. For constituencies such as mine, it is about the cumulative impact of all that and more, over which, time and time again, the local community has had little, if any, say. For my constituents in the Claydons, nearly every major project has been Government-sanctioned with little to no thought as to how, when we combine one of the UK’s largest solar installations, three battery storage sites, two major new railways, a new substation and several new housing developments, a collection of small villages in the middle of the countryside is meant to cope. The short answer is: it has not.
Initially faced with both East West Rail and HS2 construction, the latter ongoing for many years to come, my constituents in that part of Buckinghamshire now face a raft of new energy infrastructure, as well as yet more housing and a new prison. The cumulative impact is devastating, made worse by the fact there is no mechanism—no mechanism—within the planning system that allows the cumulative impact of multiple major infrastructure projects in the same area to be accounted for when local authorities are presented with them. It seems logical, yet the Minister must recognise that there is no circumstance that necessitates the flattening of an area that serves no benefit to local residents and leaves them in a near permanent state of disruption and misery.
The latest example of that glaring omission is the application and subsequent rejection of Statera’s plan, which I spoke about a moment ago, to build a 500 MW BESS facility in the Claydons. It turns out that the promoters did not check that they could even get a grid connection on completion, as confirmed by National Grid when pressed on that substation expansion plan before Christmas. This is yet more evidence of the speculative nature of Government-backed infrastructure projects. Just as well, with Statera’s plans having now been rejected.
Elsewhere in my constituency, yet another solar installation, at Callie’s farm near Ilmer, was recently granted planning permission, joining two other nearby sites at Bumpers farm and Whirlbush farm in Kingsey. As a result, when someone enters Buckinghamshire on the train from neighbouring Oxfordshire, they are met not with farmland but with acres upon acres of solar panels. Further south, and directly affecting my constituents in Little Missenden, we find yet another potential BESS site at Mop End, which if built would require infrastructure reaching 6 metres in height right in the heart of the Chilterns.
In Long Crendon and the surrounding villages, I and the local community are fighting against Acorn Bioenergy’s proposed anaerobic digester, which once again cannot be justified in the middle of the countryside, not when there are 140 lorry movements a day during construction and then operation through villages—I declare an interest as they include my own village of Chearsley—that simply cannot cope and cannot be expected to cope. These are small rural villages with small rural roads, and often the front doors to people’s homes, and the entrances to primary schools and children’s playgrounds, are off those very same roads.
Joy Morrissey
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about the shocking amount of development that is happening, and it is not just about energy; he is also making an excellent point about the lack of local consent. It is shocking that the Government are not honouring the opinions of local people.
Greg Smith
My hon. Friend has made exactly the point that I want to make, with, perhaps, more succinctness than I have been able to manage. This is indeed about local consent. It is about communities giving their views and actually being listened to when it comes to these projects. Far too often, the desktop exercise that is done in London or Birmingham or Leeds or Manchester, or any of our great cities, is done largely by those who have little or no understanding of rural life—of the way our rural roads actually operate, the way our farmland is actually farmed, and the way our countryside actually works. If local people were listened to a little more often, we might not have some of the problems that these energy infrastructure projects, or projects such as HS2 or East West Rail, throw up on the land that any local will tell you floods three or four times a year.
Those doing the desktop exercise say, “Oh, that is nothing. It is nowhere near a floodplain. That land will not flood.” I have stood on many of these sites in my own wellington boots a number of times, on the land that the consultants in the city say will not flood, with the water lapping up at the top of my boots, and have gone home with wet socks. That is a reality that local people often understand in a way these consultants and desktop exercises never would.
I gently invite the Minister to acknowledge that no matter how sustainable such projects claim to be, the hard truth is that whether it be during the construction or operation of these sites, the transportation of materials effectively offsets any benefit and does permanent damage to a local area, exactly as it has with HS2. Only this week I objected to yet another BESS application in the Claydons, in which the developer has not even bothered to include a battery safety management plan. It is utterly disgraceful, and a reflection of just how speculative these applications are becoming.
Despite this speculation on solar and battery storage, wherever we go in Buckinghamshire there are few if any warehouse roofs with solar panels. That is a real shame, given the amount of unused roof space that could generate 15 GW of solar-derived energy without damaging a blade of grass or any crop growing in any field. That is equivalent to 46 million solar panels. Why, then, are the Government not actively incentivising the use of large-scale roof-mounted solar, particularly on industrial buildings—the distribution centres and warehouses and factories that we see popping up all around us, certainly near my area when we go out towards Bicester or up towards Milton Keynes? That is a question that is rightly being asked by farmers across my constituency who stand to lose everything when a solar developer comes along, or indeed someone involved in any energy project, with little or no compensation provided.
This is, I am afraid, fairly typical in relation to infrastructure, especially in rural areas where a farm is not just a source of income but someone’s livelihood, and the very shape and beauty of the landscape in rural communities. When it comes to a project the size of Rosefield, which primarily affects tenant farmers, the loss of income not just for individual farmers but for the whole area is devastating. That is because, unlike a freeholder—in this case, the Claydon estate—tenant farmers do not have ownership rights and are therefore not entitled to proper compensation, although this and other sizeable projects are spearheaded by large multinational energy companies for which compensation is normally just a rounding error.
However, it is not just farmers who are affected. Unpaid parish councillors across my constituency are spending ever more time fighting this infrastructure tidal wave. I dare say many have become rather good at it following years of doing battle with HS2, but that by no means justifies thousands of hours each year being spent by countless individuals—countless heroes—sometimes combined with significant sums of money, fighting projects that local residents do not want and did not ask for. They, along with farmers and local business owners, are paying the price for this nonsensical approach to energy security.
For projects that are given the go-ahead, there is little chance of promoters paying up for the damage that they will invariably do to our local road network. That is the sad reality for infrastructure projects, as we have seen with the countless others that I have referenced, although I am proud of the work that I and Buckinghamshire council did to push East West Rail to pay up for the damage it caused. There is no such prospect with energy infrastructure, but the fact is that, with so many sites in one area, the impact on our roads from all the construction traffic would be far worse than any promoter is prepared to admit. Just as we have seen with the railways and the highways works clash, it will delay all projects in the area, ultimately costing the taxpayer and prolonging the misery for my constituents.
This is the reality. If something is not done, we will lose our ability to produce food and we will see the continued erosion of rural communities, and all while doing little to source our energy sustainably. Energy infrastructure does not belong on farmland. It does not belong in Mid Buckinghamshire. Let us drop this nonsense and go for nuclear instead.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
I thank the hon. Member for securing this evening’s Adjournment debate. It has certainly not been lacking in hyperbole, and I look forward to responding to his specific points. Phrases such as “ticking time bomb”, “intent on destroying” and “thrown under the bus” suggest that we have taken a rational view on some of these decisions, although I will say that his comment about “two Teslas on the drive” suggests that our constituencies are quite different. Perhaps that will come forward in my remarks.
I will pick up on the general thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s speech before turning to some of the specifics. He put forward a case that wrongly asserts that the only options are either a clean power system with renewables at its heart, or nuclear. I will come to his point about SMRs shortly, but I agree with him that there is a rational case for balance. We see nuclear as playing a critical role in our energy system in the future, but we also understand that building out a clean power system requires building renewables as well, because they are cheaper to operate and they deliver home-grown energy security in a way that gas plants do not. I will come back to the clean power action plan’s pathway in due course.
The truth is that the hon. Gentleman spent the past 20 minutes outlining—in fact, he was quite open and honest about this—that he wants no infrastructure built in his constituency at all, yet I assume that his constituents still want to be able to rely on that infrastructure in their daily lives, including railways, hospitals, schools, energy and prisons. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues certainly want us to use prisons much more, but he does not want us to build prisons anywhere in his constituency. I am always very careful about the arguments on nimbyism, but at the heart of this issue is a real question about the fact that, at some point, we have to acknowledge that if we are to build infrastructure in this country, it has to be hosted somewhere.
As someone who has one of Europe’s biggest onshore wind farms just outside my window in my constituency, I recognise that some constituencies will have to host important infrastructure on behalf of the country, and we all need to play a part in that. The reality is that delivering energy security requires us to build much more infrastructure, even if that includes small modular reactors. However, it is estimated that demand for electricity in this country will double by 2050, so the need of all our constituents, including the hon. Gentleman’s, for electricity and the jobs of the future will mean building much more infrastructure.
The hon. Gentleman made an important point about the cumulative impact of infrastructure, which the Government have tried to wrestle with. That is partly why we launched the strategic spatial energy plan, so that we have a holistic approach to planning the energy system in the long term—the work should have been started a long time ago, but it was not undertaken by the previous Government. Alongside that, colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have launched the land use framework for the same reason: to try to plan the long-term future for land across our country. Given that food security is incredibly important, how do we protect land for food, and how do we identify pieces of land where we will build nationally important infrastructure? That is incredibly important.
I repeat the point that we need to build infrastructure in this country. I am afraid that we have buried our head in the sand for far too long with respect to the infrastructure that is necessary, and the grid is struggling as a result. It is really important that we find a way to build that infrastructure in a holistic way that recognises the cumulative impact on communities. I want the hon. Gentleman to appreciate that I recognise that point.
The hon. Gentleman noted that several projects are in the queue to connect to the grid—I think there is some 746 GW in the queue at the moment. I say gently that the reason it has got quite so out of control is that the previous Government did not manage the queue properly. There was not sufficient reform to manage it, so there are, as he says, several zombie projects that will never be developed but are taking up space in the connections queue. We have announced that we want significant reform to ensure that we are prioritising the projects that will actually be delivered, that are important for our energy security and, crucially, that will free up space for demand projects to be connected to the grid, which is important for our economic growth. More on that will be announced by NESO and Ofgem in due course.
The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to hear that I cannot give an answer to some of his specific points, because for legal reasons I have to be careful not to comment. However, Rosefield, the solar farm that he mentioned, is at the pre-application stage. The application for development consent is expected to be submitted in, I think, Q3 or Q4 of this year. At this point, it is developer-led.
On a number of the points that the hon. Gentleman raised, I should say that the Government do not go out and identify these projects; developers identify the projects and then have a conversation with landowners.
Greg Smith
The problem with the argument that the Minister is trying to construct is that every time a developer comes along with a proposal, and the community pushes back with “Why are you doing this?”, the answer—every single time—is “Because the Government are asking us to.” That is what frustrates communities and frustrates me every single time. If the Minister accepts that that is the developers’ excuse, he can either correct them and say, “No, the Government are not asking you to do this,” or find a way to challenge those presumptions and the cumulative impacts, which I am grateful that he says he wants to address.
Michael Shanks
I take the point, but although the Government absolutely do say, “We need to build a clean power system and therefore these projects are important,” what we do not say is, “Please build a solar wind farm in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.” These are developer-led projects; it is developers who identify the site.
On the question of land ownership, the Government are not in the business of appropriating land for energy projects. The landowners have made a decision to sell their land for these projects, and that is a relationship that they have with the developer. It is a developer-led process. I know that the hon. Gentleman will continue to provide his views as the process continues. If the Rosefield application is accepted by the Planning Inspectorate, he and all his constituents will be able to engage with the planning process and register as interested parties.
I reiterate that although the Government think that the planning system could be considerably more efficient, that is not about removing the robustness of the system so that communities no longer have a voice. We want communities to have a voice in the process, but we do not want them to be hanging around for years until decisions are made. We want the process to be more efficient, but communities should absolutely still have a voice. That is incredibly important.
If the application comes to the Secretary of State, it is the duty of the Secretary of State to be satisfied that the pre-application consultation process has been carried out properly and adequately, in compliance with the Planning Act 2008. I know that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that, given my Department’s quasi-judicial role in these applications, I cannot comment on anything more specific.
The hon. Gentleman raised a number of points on batteries. Battery storage is incredibly important. To build the clean power system we need, we need a mix of both short-duration storage, which batteries provide, and long-duration storage, which we have not built in this country for an extremely long time. We have announced that we will build new long-duration storage, but we know there is an important role for batteries to play in short-duration storage so that we can store the clean power generated from wind and solar for when we need it.
Of course, these projects will go through the planning process too. I am aware that East Claydon has been rejected by the local council. Of course, the applicant has a right to appeal. Again, I hope the hon. Gentleman understands that it would be wrong for me to comment on that particular case at this point.
More generally, batteries are important both for maintaining storage and for reducing people’s bills by storing clean power, which we know is much cheaper in the long run. This minimises the investment in new generation, so if we get the mix of batteries right alongside other renewable technologies, we can help to minimise the need to build more infrastructure by storing power for when we need it. Batteries play an important role in balancing the electricity system.
We outlined in the clean power action plan that between 23 GW and 27 GW of grid-scale batteries could be required to meet our decarbonisation goal by 2030. Not far from my constituency, one of Europe’s largest battery plants was announced recently, so this infrastructure is being shared across the UK.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman on rooftop solar, which is a real opportunity. He rightly talks about warehouses, and we have a lot of multi-storey car parks, a lot of factories and a huge number of roofs in this country that I am happy to see covered in solar panels. It is not an either/or. There is certainly a role for rooftop solar, and we have announced that we want to see a rooftop revolution in solar. We have been working on bringing forward new building standards so that new build houses and commercial buildings have this as a key part of their design. There is also a critical role for ground-mounted solar, and we can meet our ambitions if we combine the two.
The previous Government launched a solar taskforce to build out as much capacity in rooftop solar as possible, while also increasing the number of ground- mounted solar projects, and we have reconvened it to address not just the roll-out but how communities can benefit much better from hosting that infrastructure. We look forward to publishing that soon.
The hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members spoke about food security, and I make it clear that we take the view that food security is national security. It is critically important that we maintain food security across the country. Even if we built out all the solar that we currently expect to build, it would still take up less than 1% of the UK’s agricultural land, so we do not see food production and renewable energy as competing priorities. The two can co-exist.
We all want to see a resilient and healthy food system. The hon. Members for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) and for Mid Buckinghamshire both mentioned floodplains. Tackling climate change will be one of the most important ways to reduce the frequency of floods in such areas, which is crucial for maintaining arable farmland. We have to tackle the climate crisis if we are to maintain our food security, but we also want a balanced approach to land use.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the land use framework, which was announced last week. Unsurprisingly perhaps—far be it from me to say this—The Daily Telegraph misleadingly suggested that all of this farmland will be reused for renewable energy projects. That is not what the framework says. It says there are a number of uses for that land in relation to sustainability, such as where there are peatlands or particular environmental schemes that could help to lock in carbon, support biodiversity and wildlife, and help us to meet our climate obligations. It is not that the land will be used to build energy projects, as the article wrongly said.
We are determined to bring communities with us. We want communities to have a voice and for communities that host infrastructure to benefit from it, so we will deliver a package of community benefits.
On small modular reactors, as I said at the beginning of my remarks, we do not see energy as coming from one source or another. Nuclear will play a critical role in our energy mix far beyond 2030. It provides a critical amount of baseload, as well as skilled and well-paid jobs across the country. We want to see the SMR programme rolled out. We inherited much of that from the previous Government, but it had not really been progressed and none of it had been built during those 14 years. We now want to move at pace to deliver it. We see nuclear as important, alongside a balanced renewables system.
I conclude by again thanking the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire for securing the debate. He and I will not agree on everything, but I hope we can find a way to ensure that we build a resilient energy system that balances the needs of different communities. On his point about the cumulative impact, I hope we can find a way through that, so that all communities benefit from infrastructure, but some will have to host it as well.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Greg Smith Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
Small modular reactors are less land intensive, are very efficient and would get us to clean energy very quickly if the Government were to get on and actually support some orders. As land is in scarce supply, when will the Government get on board with nuclear, instead of shackling themselves to the inefficient, land-destroying, countryside beauty-destroying and inefficient solar.
Ed Miliband
I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we support the SMR programme, and we are driving it forward through Great British Nuclear. I am afraid he is making a terrible mistake, which is that we need all of these clean technologies at our disposal—we need nuclear, we need renewables, we need carbon capture and storage—and the difference is that this Government are getting on with it. We have delivered more in five months than the last Government did in 14 years.
Oral Answers to Questions
Greg Smith Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Michael Shanks
My hon. Friend is right to make a point about community energy. The local power plan that we are committed to will deliver community energy projects throughout Great Britain. I am sure that Macclesfield has some fantastic projects that Great British Energy will look at. We want to unleash the potential of community energy across the country.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
National Grid’s rationale for rebuilding East Claydon substation is based on speculative applications, not consented real schemes. Will the Minister therefore meet me to find a way to get National Grid more grounded in reality rather than speculation?
Michael Shanks
I am happy to look at specific cases, but the Secretary of State’s role as final decision maker on some planning applications means that I cannot comment on them. However, generally speaking, the hon. Member makes an important point about looking at how we plan projects holistically throughout the country. That is why we have announced the first ever spatial energy plan for the whole of Great Britain.
Large-scale Energy Projects and Food Security
Greg Smith Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. In following the hon. Member for York Outer (Mr Charters), I will start by putting the other side of the argument that he was trying to develop about compatibility or incompatibility with solar installations. I use the word “installations” deliberately, because the word “farms” conjures up images of warm, cuddly, nice things that we all like to see in our countryside, rather than these brutalist fields of glass, metal and plastic that take away the natural landscape as well as food production. I have no issue with farmers who wish, on a very modest scale, to take 10, 20 or perhaps even 50 acres of totally unproductive land in order to diversify into an energy project, be that ground-mounted solar or a wind turbine, or whatever it might be, but the clue is in the debate title: this is about the large-scale solar installations that are being proposed.
Rosefield in my constituency started off as a 2,100-acre proposal; the developers are trying to trim the edges a bit, but there is still a reality that it will take away food-producing land. The National Farmers Union’s own statistics show that we are losing land from cultivation at a rate of 100,000 acres per year. I understand that the proponents of ground-mounted solar want to talk about very low fractions of a percentage today, but if we look at the number of applications coming through in my constituency and, I dare say, in many other hon. Members’ constituencies, the cumulative impact will be considerable. Take Rosefield alone: we have already seen two battery storage proposals on prime agricultural land right next door, as well as National Grid having to come along and say, “Ah! If all these proposals go ahead, we are going to have to rebuild East Claydon substation to take in the power that these facilities are allegedly going to be generating.” And guess what, Sir Mark? That is on yet another farm in that neighbourhood, taking away more food-producing land.
Anna Gelderd (South East Cornwall) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for giving way, and the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Llinos Medi) for securing the debate.
Cornwall, and South East Cornwall in particular, has the potential to lead the way in the renewable energy revolution and in relation to our food security, offering significant opportunities. Does the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) agree that it is essential to have a balanced approach that respects our farming and fishing communities, which play a vital role both locally and in national food security and in relation to the environment, on which they depend? We must seize this opportunity to address Cornwall’s economic challenges and ensure that we do not damage ecosystems, as they play such an important role. A partnership approach would enable these essential areas across the UK, and Cornwall in particular, to succeed.
Greg Smith
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention and congratulate her on squeezing her speech into it. I would argue that, yes, a balanced approach is right and important, but this goes to the nub of the argument that ground-mounted solar is actually incredibly inefficient. When we have something in scarce supply—land, in this country—we need to go for the technologies that are going to deliver.
I have used these important statistics in Westminster Hall before and I will make my penultimate point with them today. We need 2,000 acres of solar panels to produce enough power for 50,000 homes on current usage; for a small modular reactor, we need the space of two football pitches and it will produce enough power for a million homes. A single wind turbine will produce enough power for 16,000 homes and probably needs only half the size of the room we are in right now.
This debate is about efficiency and proper land use. It is about getting to renewable energy production, but it is also about using technology that does not destroy our countryside and that does not fundamentally take away our other core source of national security, which is food production.
Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Llinos Medi)—I hope I have pronounced the constituency name correctly—on securing this important debate, and Members from across the House, including my own colleagues, on their speeches. I support the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for York Outer (Mr Luke Charters) and for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes). I should also declare an interest: I have a number of family members, although somewhat distant, who are farmers.
My experience of solar, including from visiting solar farms near Reading, is entirely positive. I want to describe a visit I went on with the former Conservative Minister, the former Member for Hexham. We visited a large solar farm next to the M4 motorway that is on a reclaimed site—a site that had been landfill and before that gravel pits, but which has been re-adopted as grassland with ground-mounted solar. The benefits for the economy are clearly enormous. The landscape imposition of the site is minimal, as it is on reclaimed land next to a motorway.
I would like to hear more talk about how land that has been reclaimed, or has low landscape value, can be used. I understand that in much of the country there are large areas that fall into that category. Certainly, my own county of Berkshire has the M4 motorway running through it, and we have other areas of lower landscape value, as well as some of very high landscape value. I would like to see a sensible approach, protecting very valuable landscapes.
My visit to the solar farm was entirely positive. The site is financed by pension contributions; it provides a long-term source of energy, as well as a long-term source of income to pension savers, which is also important, and general benefits to the economy. It was a huge win-win for everybody. While I was there, the former Member for Hexham—who has a strong rural background —pointed out to me the ability of sites to be built in the UK so that livestock can graze under the solar panels. His own experience in the north-east of England was exactly that. I commend that point to the House.
I will add a few related points. The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) pointed out the pressure on farming incomes. It is worth remembering that many farmers are seeking to diversify. There is a strong tradition of farmers renting out disused barns and workshops to small enterprises. There is a place for farm diversity, and it is important to think about that aspect of farming. We should be commending farmers for their entrepreneurship and ability to be adaptable, as well as supporting them, as we do in many other ways.
It is also important to remember that there are large farm buildings in our landscapes that have had relatively light treatment in planning terms. I am thinking of the hon. Member for—I apologise, I cannot quite remember his constituency—
Matt Rodda
Mid Buckinghamshire—fantastic. He is obviously a Thames valley MP, like me. There are some large farm buildings in our part of the south-east that already—from the point of view of landscape—have a very large visual impact. Some ground-mounted solar arrays are low; they can be screened if they are looked at from ground level. The site I visited had trees on one side—obviously not shading it—so that a passer-by on a footpath would not necessarily know it was there. We need to bear in mind the importance of balancing different issues while looking at this topic, of working together in a cross-party way, and of supporting the move to a sustainable future and a sustainable economy.
Oral Answers to Questions
Greg Smith Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Michael Shanks
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. She is absolutely right to say that, in order for us to meet our 2030 ambitions, we will need a whole range of different options. Community energy is a critical part of that, helping to deliver energy security and lower bills. Crucially, it also gives communities a stake in the energy future. That is why one of Great British Energy’s five objectives is to support the delivery of a local power plan, which puts local communities, combined authorities, local authorities and others in the driving seat in restructuring our energy economy. I am happy to meet my hon. Friend and others to discuss this issue further.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
Contrary to what one of the Ministers said earlier, the last Government brought about one of the largest revivals in nuclear energy in 70 years in order to provide clean electricity generation, yet we hear precious little from the new Government on their plans for nuclear; we hear only their plans for inefficient technology that will destroy the countryside. Why are they so anti-nuclear, and when are they going to get on with delivering nuclear energy?
Michael Shanks
I will give credit to the Conservative Government on one thing: they were very good at making grand announcements. On delivery, however, they were much poorer. Looking at a whole range of things—carbon capture being a very good example—they had lots of warm words but no delivery whatsoever. On nuclear, they had lots of warm words but no delivery whatsoever. In 14 years, how many nuclear power stations were built under the Conservative party? None. We will get on with doing the work.
Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower
Greg Smith Excerpts(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
I add my congratulations to you on your new role, Madam Deputy Speaker.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick), and equally, I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches in this debate. In particular, I join the hon. Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) in paying tribute to Craig Mackinlay, who was a superb Member of this House. As he makes his transition from being the bionic MP to being the bionic peer, I think I speak for the whole House in wishing him well.
On today’s subject matter, I want to be clear from the outset that we absolutely have to decarbonise and we absolutely have to defossilise. The challenge laid down to our great innovators and scientific minds is enormous, and those great minds are rising to the challenge, from electricity generation to the fuels of the future. But that is also why I am so frustrated by an approach to cleaner energy and cleaner fuel from Government that always seems to favour the first, but not necessarily the best or most sustainable, solutions for the future.
Let me start with the controversial topic of solar. Since I was first elected in 2019,
the threat of large-scale solar developments has caused significant concern for many of my constituents. Across my constituency and parts of my former constituency now represented by others, field after field and farm after farm have already been blanketed by solar panels, to the detriment of the surrounding community, food security, nature and landscape. Food security is national security, yet before any of us who were elected on 4 July had even sworn in, the new Energy Secretary had signed off 6,000 acres of solar installation, later admitting in his statement a week after that a land use strategy was yet to come. We simply cannot have this language of community consent when the decisions that are taken walk all over the views of the communities so badly affected. Smaller, stand-alone solar is less impactful, quicker and easier to install, does not risk damaging the local infrastructure, and provides an additional, reliable source of income for many struggling farmers.
It is not just the panels that consume vast amounts of our countryside. The infrastructure needed to carry the electricity generated through to the grid swallows up yet more. It is no coincidence that adjacent to the proposed Rosefield site in my constituency a battery storage facility is being put forward. In the ultimate manifestation of the tail wagging the dog, National Grid has come along and proposed another huge land take essentially to rebuild the east Claydon substation next door.
Let that be a warning to any community where solar is coming: it does not end with the panels. Solar has its place, but that is on our rooftops and not our fields. Research by the wonderful charity, Campaign to Protect Rural England, found that there is potential for 117 GW of renewable energy to be generated from rooftops and other existing developed spaces in England. We should be prioritising that, and not losing our agricultural land.
My solution has always been to propose nuclear as the option, and to look at small modular reactors. I have given this statistic in the House before, but I will do so again: we need around 2,000 acres of solar panels to generate enough electricity—on current usage and before everybody has two Teslas on the drive—for 50,000 homes. By contrast, just two football pitches are required for a small modular reactor that will power, again on current usage, 1 million homes. I fail to see how anyone can look at those two competing land uses and choose solar over the small modular reactor. It is simply not a good use of land to turn our farms into solar.
Let me move to another clean energy that I am particularly passionate about, and away from electricity generation to the future of fuel. The United Kingdom is already an international powerhouse in the field of synthetic and sustainable fuel, with companies such as Zero Petroleum innovating right here, and international companies such as P1 Fuels making huge investments in bringing the manufacturing of fossil-free fuel to the United Kingdom. It is a straightforward fact that there are 1.4 billion internal combustion engine vehicles on the road worldwide, and that is before we start counting agricultural and construction vehicles, planes, ships and so on. They are simply not all going to convert to electric, as some argue that they should. Green hydrogen mixed with atmospheric carbon capture makes a wholly man-made liquid hydrocarbon that works in everything we already have. After more than a century’s refinement on those engines, and this clean fuel will just work in them.
Mr Holden
On the point about synthetic fuels, is it also the case that for several types of vehicle, such as incredibly heavy vehicles or those that need to travel incredibly long distances, there is no battery option, and synthetic fuel as an alternative is exactly where we need to go?
Greg Smith
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Certainly for heavier application vehicles, batteries just would not work. I saw a diagram at one of these companies that shows that if we were to try to make a 747 fly on batteries, the batteries would be bigger than the plane. Therefore, that is not a viable option going forward. Synthetic fuels are entirely man-made. There is no need to grow food to burn or recycle old chip fat, or for raw earth mineral mining for batteries; it is just clean synthetics. My ask to the Government, as they look to a clean energy future—that is the right ambition; where we disagree is on how we get there—is that they truly embrace synthetic fuels and make them mainstream. They need to be scaled, and in order to be scaled, manufacturers need confidence that the Government will permit that.
An important point to finish on is that the carbon at tailpipe when these fuels are burned is the same volume that is then recaptured to make the next lot of fuel. They are net zero. It is one volume of carbon in a perpetual circle. I congratulate the Minister on his appointment, and ask him to take the message back to the Department that we need to embrace synthetic fuels as part of the clean energy revolution that he claims at the Dispatch Box to want to see.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call Torcuil Crichton to make his maiden speech.
Greg Smith
I accept that the figure at the moment is 1%, but the volume of solar applications coming forward literally every week in my constituency alone means that the cumulative impact will be a hit to food security. I gently ask the Minister to look at the projected numbers for the future, not what we already have.
Clean Energy Superpower Mission
Greg Smith Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Edward Miliband
I was delighted to visit the port of Milford Haven during the election campaign. There is an interesting issue here: the £1.8 billion investment that this Government are making in our ports will hopefully allow us to invest in floating offshore wind at more ports than the last Government were able to. I cannot make promises about particular ports from the Dispatch Box, but this is so important, because if we are to get the jobs here, we must invest in our port infrastructure.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State referred multiple times to community consent, yet the 6,000 acres of solar installation in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) had no community consent. That sends shivers down the spine of my constituents in and around the villages known as the Claydons, who are looking down the barrel of a 2,100-acre solar installation called Rosefield. That is on top of a proposed battery storage plant next door, and on top of the National Grid wanting to build a brand-new substation to take the thing in; it is the tail wagging the dog. What will change to make community consent a reality?
Edward Miliband
What the hon. Gentleman wants for nationally significant projects is community veto.
Edward Miliband
The hon. Gentleman nods his head. I will be honest with him: we are not going to give community veto. The last Government did not give it either. There are nationally significant projects that the Government have to make decisions on. Obviously, we have to take into account the views of local communities, but the whole point of decision making on the nationally significant infrastructure programme is that we look at the needs of the nation as well. That is why community benefit is important. If we ask local communities to host clean energy infrastructure, sometimes they will not want it, or sometimes a minority will not want it—I am not making presumptions in this case—and then we should ensure that those communities benefit from it.
Large-scale Solar Farms
Greg Smith Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Henderson. I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) on securing what is a very important debate for many counties around the country, not least Buckinghamshire.
Since I was elected in 2019, the threat of large-scale solar developments has caused significant concern for me and my constituents. Across my Buckingham constituency, field after field and farm after farm have already been blanketed by solar panels, to the detriment of the surrounding communities, food security, nature and our beautiful landscape. While we must strive towards a more sustainable and secure energy strategy, that does not and cannot include the huge sacrifice of agricultural land that we have already made and many plan to make in pursuit of that lofty goal.
Within the 335 square miles of rural Buckinghamshire that I am lucky enough to represent, a total of 3,600 acres of land has been either allocated to or planned for solar farms. That is 1.5 times larger than the entirety of Heathrow airport.
The largest proposed industrial solar installation, Rosefield, which sits among the villages known as the Claydons, dwarfs the size of the nearby town of Buckingham —a town of more than 10,000 residents. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Buckinghamshire countryside is slowly being consumed by solar panels. Does it benefit anybody locally? No, it does not—not when we consider the construction impact, the visual impact, the risk to wildlife and the risk to the local economy and our tourism economy.
Buckinghamshire is lucky enough to have stunning, beautiful countryside that people come to walk through; they then spend their money in our cafes, bars, hotels and campsites. I am not sure that they will still want to do that if the landscape is just covered in the glass, metal and plastic of these solar farms. Not that the promoters and developers of such schemes as Rosefield in the Claydons, Callie’s near Owlswick, Bourton in Buckingham, Redborough in Ledburn and many others that I could mention, care about any of those points, of course.
And does it benefit our country? No, not when our food security is at grave risk of being severely compromised, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham has outlined, through the enormous loss of agricultural land that each of these developments represents when taken cumulatively.
No matter how big or small, all agricultural land repurposed is not only food lost, but livelihoods lost. This is land that would have been farmed for generations beforehand, often by tenant farmers, who are given no choice but to leave, without any meaningful say in the process or, indeed, any compensation.
Sir David Davis
My hon. Friend is making a brilliant speech and makes a very good point about tenant farmers. Is not one of the problems the way that we have set up the pricing of these mechanisms, in that it renders tenant farmers completely uneconomical? For some foreign investor with vast investments in the British countryside, it is in their interest to throw tenant farmers out in favour of this policy.
Greg Smith
As ever, my right hon. Friend hits the nail precisely on the head. The risk to tenant farmers through the pricing mechanisms that we are seeing—through the sheer plain economics—is severely stacked against their interests. We must look at the volume of farms in this country that are tenanted rather than owned; the more tenant farms we lose, the greater the slide in domestic food security we will see, and the current figure of around 60% of self-sufficiency will drop very rapidly indeed. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right.
To achieve the set target of 75 GW from solar installations by 2035, more than 300,000 acres across the country would be required. It is no secret that the rural economy, under pressure from, for example, rising input prices and many other things, has already faced significant challenges in recent years. Left with no viable options, some people have been forced to sell or leave their land, in the process guaranteeing that it will almost certainly never return to food-producing status. Yet across all of those estates—the farms and all of that land—the barn roofs are empty and blank.
Smaller stand-alone solar is less impactful, quicker and easier to install, does not risk damaging the local infrastructure and provides an additional, reliable source of income for struggling farms. I am in no way saying that farmers with 10, 20 or 30 acres of unproductive land should not, in consultation with their local planning authority and local communities, be able to utilise land that is not useful for producing food any more. They should be able to put solar on their rooftops. But the fundamental point is that no amount of solar will revive the fortunes of some of the farms that are struggling —quite the opposite.
Time and again I hear the baseless argument from developers—this point has already been developed in this debate—that anything less than grade 3a land should be given over because they believe it to be incapable of growing food. I disagree. Grade 3b land can be very productive; I know that, because the bulk of my constituency that sits in the vale of Aylesbury sits on blue clay. That means the vast majority of it gets a grade 3b land rating, but it remains perfectly capable in many cases, having been nurtured, loved and looked after for generations, of producing 10-tonne-a-hectare wheat harvests. Many farmers in other parts of the country on grade 2 land or even grade 1 land would bite their right hand off to get such a yield at harvest time.
James Gray
My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time. He makes an extremely important point about the definition of grades 3a and 3b. Most people in the countryside know that one field might be half 3a and half 3b. I am told that Natural England does not have a map. It does not even have a clear definition of what is 3a and 3b. Does he agree with me that the worst outrage of all is that when these speculative solar farm developers come along, it is their surveyor—they pay the surveyor—who decides on the quality of the land? It is hardly surprising that they find in favour of it all being 3b.
Greg Smith
My hon. Friend is absolutely right on that point. It is almost as if he had been looking over my shoulder and seeing what was on the next page of my speech. I was coming to precisely that. Overpaid surveyors, the so-called experts who come in with a clear mandate of what they have to do, have been hired to test soil quality. They do not even go out into the middle of the field. They do not go to the most versatile part of the farm where the crop actually grows. We have caught them red-handed in Buckinghamshire testing the headland, the very edge of the field, They will always get a lower score from that test if they have not gone to the bit of the field where the crop grows. They deliberately test the edge of fields and the headland to get the poorer quality result. This would not be a speech from me without mentioning this: it is the same tactic that HS2’s contractors use in other parts of my constituency to get similar results to prove similar points. It is not unique to solar developers.
Dr Johnson
Has my hon. Friend compared the land results proposed by the surveyors with the maps that DEFRA produces of what it expects the land to be and noticed the differences?
Greg Smith
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Yes, time and again we see a differential between what the developer’s surveyor and consultant come up with and what we believe the land to be. Much of my constituency sits on a blue clay base, so we expect a lot of it to be 3b. However, I come back to the point that I made: 3b land can be very good productive land producing the sorts of yields that I talked about. It is how that land has been farmed, often for generations, that dictates how good it is for production, not other things.
I made this point earlier: 60% of farms in the UK are tenant farms. However, beyond that, it is not just the farmers, the tenants or those employed on the farms who are hurt when that land is taken away from food production, but the packing plants, the equipment suppliers and the distributors. A huge part of our rural and national economy is hit when food production is diminished.
For the surrounding communities, the loss of farmland by no means starts or ends with solar panels. In the Claydons, for example, my constituents have suffered hugely from large-scale construction already, including a number of big housing estates, East West Rail and the ultimate destroyer, HS2. It is a daily struggle for them to get to work, school, the hospital, the GP or the shops without coming up against the obstacles of endless road closures, broken stretches of road that have become dangerous after the movement of thousands of HGVs, drivers travelling to and from nearby compounds, and severe light pollution during the winter months. That will be the same all over again with the construction of the huge solar farms. A solar farm of 2,100 acres is not built overnight. They are all put on concrete bases. There will be piling in places. The construction impact on local communities is considerable.
After all the disruption that my constituents have already taken—and are still taking—from those big national infrastructure projects, this once quiet corner of Buckinghamshire is now expected to take, in the case of Rosefield, a 2,100 acre development, which would dwarf the amount of land that High Speed 2 has taken in Buckinghamshire. Given the extent of the proposed site, it is not unreasonable to expect to see yet more of the same disruption that has plagued the Claydons for years. All of that comes without any commitment by the promoters to fix any of the damaged roads, which already have to be patched by the council, even though other people have broken them. It is simply not fair for my constituents and areas such as the Claydons to foot all that pain all over again.
It is not just the panels that consume vast amounts of countryside. The infrastructure needed to carry the electricity generated through to the grid swallows up yet more. It is no coincidence that adjacent to the proposed Rosefield site, there is a proposed battery storage facility, with the equivalent of 90 shipping containers of battery storage right next door. That is more food-producing land being sacrificed, and the facility itself poses a major fire risk in an area where the emergency services are already struggling, in the face of such disruptive amounts of construction work, to get to any emergencies that occur.
Let that be a warning to any community where solar is coming. It does not end with just the solar panels. Of course, there is no community benefit whatsoever from solar development, whether large or small. As has been said, there is no cheap electricity for local residents or businesses, and no support systems in place for those impacted by construction. There is no recourse for anybody affected.
I have spoken a lot about Rosefield, but I will briefly talk about some other large-scale solar developments in my constituency. In the south, we have seen an equally blatant tactic—admittedly, on a slightly smaller scale—of significant ground-based solar installations being installed or proposed just metres from each other. Let us take the proposed solar installation near the village of Kimblewick on the eastern side of the village of Ford, and Callie’s Solar Farm on the western side of Ford, which combined, would be the second largest land take in my constituency after Rosefield for ground-mounted panels. We have seen that tactic time and again; it puts community and local authority resources under strain, in turn diminishing their influence over the whole planning process. We have to find a way to ensure that the cumulative impact of solar farms is taken into account.
Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate; I was speaking in the Chamber. I will therefore not make a full speech, but I am grateful to be able to comment. My hon. Friend describes the exact situation that my constituents in Rownall face, with multiple applications being made for adjoining pieces of land, all of which are small scale and therefore to be decided by the local district council rather than the Secretary of State. They feel that that is an abusive way of putting in solar farms that will cumulatively be a very large development. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to pause the granting of all applications of this variety and urge district councils to have the appropriate training to identify and measure fully the cumulative impact of these developments?
Greg Smith
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that intervention, and I agree. There should be a fundamental pause on any solar application that would take land used for food production. As the new national planning policy framework was being negotiated concurrent to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, I was pleased to be able to persuade the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to change the NPPF from the old language of “best and most versatile” to a straightforward definition of “land used for food production”. It was hidden in a footnote, but it was still there. If we can leverage that as the test that planning authorities now have through the NPPF, coupled with the sensible points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) made about going up in a helicopter to review all land being used and pausing any decisions, that would bring a lot of relief to communities—certainly mine in Buckinghamshire, hers in Staffordshire and many others as well.
Solar has its place, but that place is on rooftops and not in fields. Across my constituency are farms and industrial sites where the roofs of barns and warehouses are devoid of solar panels. My constituency adjoins both Bicester to the Oxfordshire side and Milton Keynes to the north-east. There are the rooftops of many thousands of distribution centres and warehouses, and these big sheds that are going up as logistics hubs everywhere, vibrantly adding to our economic development, but with no solar on the roof. If we just got the solar panels on those roofs instead, we would find more than enough space to ensure that we are delivering on the volume of solar-generated energy that we need.
CPRE research found that
“there is potential for…117 gigawatts”
of renewable energy
“to be generated from rooftops and other”
existing “developed spaces” in England alone, which is substantially more than the master target. Rooftop solar systems have to be the priority for Government, and I urge the Minister to find a way of ensuring that our solar strategy is a rooftop strategy, not an agricultural land strategy.
As she opened this debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham made a point about small modular reactors. She cited a statistic that I have used, which goes to the nub of this debate; it is the clearest argument I can make about a sensible land use strategy. The small modular reactors that we have seen companies such as Rolls-Royce develop need virtually no land to deliver significantly more power. She was kind to quote me, but I will repeat the statistic because I am quite fond of it: 2,000 acres of solar panels produce, on current usage, before everyone has two Teslas on the drive, 50,000 homes-worth of electricity. A small modular reactor is the size of two football pitches and can power 1 million homes. That surely has to be the more sensible use of land in this country to power people’s homes and businesses. Nuclear can deliver that in a clean and wonderful way while still protecting our national food security. Those numbers must speak volumes to anybody that cares about both the energy security and food security of our wonderful country.
My asks are clear. First, we simply must diversify our national energy security strategy to promote less land-intensive schemes, which come at the expense of our food security, and promote the development of more reliable, sustainable and less impactful schemes that we can actually deliver every day of the year. Secondly, we must put in practice the provision of the new language in the NPPF and encourage local authorities to use it. Thirdly, we must incentivise the use of existing rooftop space for stand-alone solar installations on sites that already have a grid connection and reform the grid to ensure that many more can as well. Let us get this right and stop the solar destruction, build our energy security on nuclear, protect our food security and save the great British countryside.
Oral Answers to Questions
Greg Smith Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Justin Tomlinson
My hon. Friend has a long-standing record of making powerful suggestions on behalf of his constituents and neighbouring constituencies on this important issue. The ESO’s recent study considered a total of a nine alternative options for transmission routes in East Anglia, including three predominantly offshore options and two hybrid onshore and offshore options. It is important that we try to work with communities.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Claire Coutinho)
I would first like to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), who served this Government for eight years, including as Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero since 2022. He will be missed in the role for his expertise. He attended his first COP in 2005 and was instrumental in our achievements at COP28 last year. He helped the UK to halve its emissions, which is an extraordinary achievement. We are the first major economy to do so. He also worked with the Net Zero Council, protecting families through the global energy crisis and backing 200,000 British oil and gas workers. He leaves a legacy of which he can be very proud. I would also like to welcome the Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), a tireless campaigner who I know will continue this Government’s world-leading work.
Since I last updated the House, families are benefiting from a drop in the energy price cap worth almost £250 a year to the average household. I have set out plans to reform tariffs, saving bill payers up to £900 a year, and invested £750 million in nuclear skills as part of my plans for the largest expansion of nuclear in 70 years.
Greg Smith
The consultation on renewable liquid fuels from September is welcome, but the recent survey by the Future Ready Fuel campaign showed that 88% of respondents from off-grid households actively want the option of switching to a renewable liquid fuel. Will my right hon. Friend work with me to ensure that we can get consumers the choices that they actually want, and not the heat pumps that many do not?
Claire Coutinho
I thank my hon. Friend. I know that he is a fantastic champion for people living off the gas grid. We are supporting off-grid homes to transition to heat pumps or biomass boilers through the boiler upgrade scheme, with grants of up to £7,500. Renewable fuels such as hydrotreated vegetable oil have the potential to play an important role in heating off-grid buildings, and we will be issuing a consultation on that role by September, in line with commitments made by Ministers during the passage of the Energy Act 2023.