Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 20th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, in supporting these amendments, I must first declare my family farming and land-owning interests for the purposes of Report on this Bill. I should say in this context that we have both food production and some land—less good land, I may say—with a solar array on it.

Normally, in the past, I have stood up and said on these land use decisions that we should wait until we get the land use framework, which we are told is imminent, any minute now. But I have had a conversion. First, I am not quite sure to what extent conformity with the land use framework is going to be mandatory for local planning authorities or indeed for Secretaries of State. Having been chairman of the Land Use in England Committee, I have had a glimpse of what the Government’s response to the consultation is likely to be. I am not disclosing any secrets here but they seem to be saying that, when it comes to solar arrays, merely—I underline that word—that lower-quality agricultural land is preferable to higher-quality agricultural land. That is seriously not good enough. We should take this opportunity to ensure that our best food-producing farmland is legally protected for the long term.

I firmly believe that good food production should be sacrosanct. Whatever the land use framework comes up with, now or in any future iterations—there no doubt that it is going to change as demands change over the decades—there is no doubt in my mind that the long-term defence of our realm depends crucially on our ability to feed ourselves, more so than on the number of regiments we have, frankly. Indeed, so does the peace of our realm. I think it was over 10 years ago that I first mentioned in this House that we are only ever nine meals away from total anarchy. At the time, I had to explain exactly what I meant by that phrase; nowadays, I think people take it as read and know exactly what I mean by that phrase.

Whatever the passing needs of our energy requirements, our best food-producing land should remain constantly sacrosanct, and the flexibility of our land use should never include or usurp our best food-producing land. There is, after all, as the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, said, lots of other land all over the country, often south-sloping hillsides, that is less than optimum for producing our food and which therefore can be used for solar panels.

There is no doubt in my mind that in every local planning authority and every county, maybe every year, there are going to be lots of people trying to produce solar panels. As the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, just asked, who is going to be monitoring this? We need somebody to monitor what is going on, because every year we are going to be whittling away at our capacity to feed ourselves. I do not believe we should allow that to happen, so I strongly support Amendments 43 and 45.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly. I cannot match the eloquence of other speakers, or the length of their speeches for that matter, but I want to support my noble friend Lady Hodgson’s Amendment 45. The reason I want to support it is that I want, as has just been said, some clarification about the Government’s position regarding the use of agricultural land for solar panels—and, I suppose, for battery storage plants, which are equally a concern to an awful lot of the public at present.

In Yorkshire, at the moment, we have a plethora of applications, all speculative, without apparently much resource behind them, and all hoping to get permission from local planning authorities, being just below the 50-megawatt limit that would require them to have more strategic consideration. There are so many of them at present that the planning officers are quite undermined in their work and unable to deal with them—but they will do. The problem we have is that, unless the Government are a little clearer on their view about the use or misuse of very good agricultural land, lots of these matters will proceed much against the wish of agricultural experts, farmers and local rural communities in particular.

I therefore urge the Minister to make it quite clear not just that the Government prefer that we do not utilise grades 1, 2, 3 and 3A agricultural land for solar panels, and that it should be used for agricultural purposes—preferably the production of food—but that this will not be allowed. They should tell planning officials that that is the view of the Government, because otherwise, simply preferring something is absolutely pointless.

The only other point I wish to add is that every single one of these speculative operators that seem to have come on the scene, certainly in Yorkshire and I believe elsewhere, try to placate local communities by saying that this will be only for 40 years—that in 40 years everything will be put back to its present state, or improved for that matter. I do not think I shall be here in 40 years, and I do not think most of the speculative companies will be. Without a proper bond in place, showing that they are worth the resources that they claim they are, this is a totally useless and pointless statement. The Government should point that out at all opportunities.