Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Twenty Fifth sitting)

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. While I have no actual technical or financial interests to declare, for the sake of transparency, as we are going to talk about agriculture, I declare that my wife’s family are farmers. Conveniently and coincidentally, they are located in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk, who is sat next to me.

Some 90% of my constituency’s 335 square miles is agricultural land. Day in, day out, we see massive competing demands on that land, from the Agriculture Act 2020, with the environmental land management scheme and demands on farmers for rewilding and various other uses that take land out of agricultural use, to the thousands of acres of solar farm developments being brought forward, the housing demands, and state-sponsored infrastructure projects such as, in my constituency’s case, 19 miles of High Speed 2. As a result, when it comes to food security, we have seen our self-sufficiency declining over recent decades. We currently sit somewhere around 60%.

Within the national planning policy framework, there is a presumption to protect the most versatile and productive agricultural land, but I am certain that we in Buckinghamshire are not alone in seeing planning applications approved on said land, be those for housing, solar farms or other projects that I have listed. In the spirit of new clauses 12 and 13, in my name and that of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), it is high time we locked into the planning system a legal requirement for planning authorities—indeed, any public authority that considers these matters—to take food security into account when determining those applications.

I think that would take us to a place that is far stronger than the current NPPF presumptions that we see being overlooked and not enforced up and down the country. It would get us to a position that is good for our farmers, where they are not losing hundreds, if not thousands, of acres of their land and can get about their business—the way they make their money—growing crops or raising cattle, sheep or other livestock. It would improve our food security at a time of global pressures, which I need not take up the Committee’s time describing, not least the appalling war in Ukraine. It would also give the countryside back its very definition—that it is there primarily for food production. It is there for farmers to work the land to produce the food that we need as a nation.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech; there will be much sympathy for his argument in South Suffolk, where his family reside on a beautiful farm. Was he reassured by suggestions in one newspaper that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is looking at the classification of new solar? At the moment, we are using farmland that could still be productive; we should, potentially, be tightening those rules.

[Greg Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I am reassured that the Government are moving to a place where productive farmland will not necessarily be used for solar in future. However, as it stands, we are trapped in a position where it has become very attractive for land to be taken over for solar use. We see the glossy planning consultants’ documents that show sheep grazing underneath the solar panel. That is all very well in year one, when there is still some grass underneath the glass, metal and plastic that form those solar panels, but when a field has been covered so comprehensively in those materials, the grass will not grow, and it becomes very difficult to graze a sheep underneath those panels in year two and beyond. We should call out and challenge the assumption that those planning consultants make when it comes to solar farms in particular.

New clauses 12 and 13 are not specifically about solar, housing, infrastructure or whatever; they are about taking the principles and precedent in the Environment Act 2021, which places a duty on planning authorities to take into account environmental concerns such as biodiversity gain, and extending them to include a requirement to take our nation’s food security as seriously as we take environmental concerns, energy security and national security.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Twenty Sixth sitting)

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lee Rowley)]

I thank the hon. Member for York Central for putting forward the new clause. She powerfully made her point about the importance of church properties and church land at the centre of our communities. We have all recently seen buildings that have brought communities together for decades and centuries, very sadly, no longer able to continue in the way that they have previously, and they may be released for other purposes. I accept that; we all regret it and many people in the communities regret it. I have an example in my constituency: there was a long-standing campaign for St Andrew’s Parish Church in Barrow Hill, which concluded only a few months ago. It was an early version of a church built along the lines of the arts and crafts movement. It has significance, and yet it looks as though it will leave ecclesiastical aegis.

I completely understand the hon. Member’s sentiment and she has made a cogent case for the new clause, but the challenge—and why I will ask her to withdraw it—is that the assets of community value scheme allows local communities to make applications to retain community assets where they think it is reasonable and proportionate. On balance, while I accept her point, it would be better to allow local communities to continue to make those decisions. When the challenges that she highlighted arise, I hope that communities try to ensure that churches are protected as much as possible.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

This is an issue dear to my heart.

It is a very good new clause. I cycle every year in Suffolk churches’ “Ride and Stride” to raise money to protect their incredibly expensive infrastructure. We have wool churches in South Suffolk, which are very beautiful, but whether beautiful or not, they are very important to their communities.

In 2015—I think—we had the church roof fund, which was used where there was very serious degradation. We then had a spate of lead theft, which further undermined churches. We may be rejecting new clause 47, but are the Government considering specific measures, and perhaps working with the Church of England, to see what more we can do?

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right that, historically, we have attempted to address such issues, both through the continuation of the asset of community value process, which allows local communities to try to intervene should they feel that appropriate, and the community ownership fund, which is £150 million of taxpayer subsidy that supports communities to save at-risk assets.

Although I accept the point made by the hon. Member for York Central, my personal preference, and that of the Government, is that local communities reserve the right to request assets of community value and to go through that process. Automatically designating churches as assets of community value may not be appropriate in all circumstances. I ask that the hon. Lady kindly withdraw the motion.