Planning and Solar Farms

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and John Hayes

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Nokes and to respond to what has been a genuinely interesting and thought-provoking debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) on securing the debate and thank all hon. Members who have participated this afternoon.

Last year was the UK’s warmest on record and one of the sixth warmest ever recorded globally. The record-breaking temperatures we experienced last summer, including our first ever 40-degree day, caused an unprecedented number of heat-related deaths, wildfire incidents and disruption to infrastructure. Yet the occasionally severe weather we experienced last year is only a foretaste of what is to come, unless our country plays its full part in decisively slowing the rate of global heating to prevent it reaching catastrophic levels. On that, I think the room is ostensibly agreed.

The science, as we all know, is unequivocal. Bold action is required and it is required now. However, when it comes to the UK’s net zero emissions target, the Government have consistently been long on aspiration but short on tangible progress. The UK’s nationally determined contribution requires emissions reductions of 68% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels and the Government’s sixth carbon budget requires them to be slashed by 78% by 2035. Yet in their June 2023 progress report, the Climate Change Committee states plainly that its confidence in the achievement of both targets

“has markedly declined from last year.”

Put simply, the overall pace of climate delivery under the Government remains woefully inadequate.

If our country is to meet its interim targets, reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and lower energy bills for consumers, the Government need to do far better, including when it comes to the domestic deployment of established low-cost technologies such as solar. Having over recent years subjected solar to a series of erratic policy changes and reductions in support, including slashing rates for the feed-in tariff scheme in 2015, the British energy security strategy published in April of last year finally provided a welcome measure of certainty, committing the Government to a fivefold increase in solar deployment by 2035 and taking levels from the current 14 GW of capacity, the bulk of which is ground-mounted, to 70 GW.

The Government have also been clear as to the scale of solar deployment likely to be necessary to meet the UK’s wider net zero targets, with a technical annex to the “Power Up Britain” policy paper published in March suggesting that approximately 90 GW of solar will ultimately be necessary. Yet last year saw just 0.7 GW of new solar deployed, in a rate of installation that falls well short of what is required to meet the Government’s target. As the Climate Change Committee has stated in its 2023 progress report,

“The deployment of solar capacity is significantly off track to meet the Government’s target of 70 GW by 2035.”

To get on track for that target, the committee makes clear that the Government need to facilitate the delivery of

“An average annual deployment rate of 3.4 GW”.

This House can debate what the precise split should be between large and smaller-scale projects, what types of land should be prioritised for solar deployment and how we best maximise the efficiency of land that is utilised. However, the only fundamental question is precisely how we markedly drive up solar deployment rates, not whether we need to. Moreover, every hon. Member who is engaging with the debate today in good faith needs to at least have an answer as to how the extra 3.6 GW of annual solar capacity implied in the Government’s target should be accomplished.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Surely he recognises that by far the best way of doing so is to put solar on buildings. Every public building, warehouse, agricultural building, office and industrial estate could have and should have solar. The advantage of that would be to bring energy production and consumption into closer union and reduce transmission and distribution costs that make up about 15% of every energy bill.

[Matthew Pennycook]

The right hon. Gentleman has a lot of expertise in this area, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. He pre-empts a point that I will come to. We think the Government should be far more ambitious and creative about rooftop solar, which we think can meet the bulk of our solar needs.

As the House is aware, the Labour party has committed to delivering a zero emission power system by 2030—five years ahead of the Government’s target date—and we assess that honouring that commitment will require us to triple the deployment of solar by the end of this decade to up to 50 GW of capacity. We are under no illusions: we know that is a stretching target, but it is essential to achieving zero carbon power by the end of the decade, and a Labour Government will do what is necessary to meet it.

Our plans are premised on a significant uplift in solar photovoltaic deployment on rooftops, which analysis suggests could provide the bulk of the 50 GW of capacity that we want to be installed by 2030. I think hon. Members are broadly in complete agreement on that point. As I said, we want the Government to be far more ambitious and creative in how they do that.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and John Hayes

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to the new clauses and amendments in my name and those of my hon. Friends. It is two weeks and two significant concessions to large groups of disgruntled Government Back Benchers later, but it is a pleasure to finally be back in the Chamber to conclude the Report stage of this Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) made clear on day one of Report, in 27 sittings over a four-month period, the Bill was subject to exhaustive line-by-line consideration. Such was the appetite to participate in the Committee’s proceedings that not only was it formally adjourned to allow new members to take part, but we enjoyed appearances from seven different Ministers, some of whom even had more than a passing familiarity with the contents of the legislation.

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) and for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher) and the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for so ably scrutinising in Committee the many technical and complex provisions that the Bill contains. The new clauses and amendments that we have tabled for consideration today are almost identical to a number of those we discussed at length in Committee. That deliberate choice reflects not only the importance we place on the matters that they relate to, but the lack of anything resembling robust and convincing reassurances from Ministers in Committee in respect of the concerns that they seek to address. Indeed, if anything, the debates that took place and the responses provided by successive Ministers served only to harden our view that a number of the measures in the Bill relating to planning and the environment would almost certainly have adverse impacts.

Our hope, perhaps a forlorn one, Madam Deputy Speaker, is that the new ministerial team may have used the almost 50 days since their appointment to further interrogate the potential risks posed by those measures in the Bill that are controversial and to reflect on the wisdom of proceeding with them.

Part 3 of the Bill deals with a wide range of issues relating to both national planning policy and local and neighbourhood planning. Many of the clauses that this eclectic part contains are unproblematic, but others are contentious, and we raised detailed concerns in Committee about several of them. Amendments 78 and 79 seek to address arguably the most disquieting, namely clauses 83 and 84, concerning the future relationship between local development plans and national planning policy given statutory weight in the form of national development management policies. We welcome the fact that new section 38(5B) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 in clause 83 provides communities with greater confidence that finalised local plans will be adhered to and any safeguards they contain respected. However, we believe that new subsection 5C in clause 83, in providing that anything covered by an NDMP will not only have legal status but will take precedence over local development plans in any instance where there is found to be a conflict between the two, represents a radical centralisation of planning decision-making that will fundamentally alter the status and remit of local planning in a way that could have a number of potentially damaging consequences.

I must make it clear that our concern in relation to the effect of this subsection would exist even if the Government had published the national planning policy framework prospectus and provided hon. Members with an overview about what NDMPs are likely to cover. The fact that they have not and that we therefore still have no idea precisely what these new statutory national policies will eventually contain—coupled with the fact that clause 84 of the Bill makes it clear that NDMPs can cover any policy area relating to development or use of land in England and can be modified or revoked without any form of consultation if that is the wish of the Secretary of State of the day—merely heightens our concerns.

We know that there is significant anxiety across the House about the future implications of NDMPs, and rightly so, because legislating to ensure that they overrule local plans in the event of any conflict does represent a radical departure from the status quo. As we argued in Committee, what is proposed is a wholly different proposition from the current application of the NPPF, and our fear is that it will lead to the erosion of local control in a way that threatens to transform what is currently a local plan-led system into a national policy-led system.

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman must recognise that the local plan process has been distorted by the imposition of housing targets driven from the centre. Indeed, individual planning applications have often been skewed because local authorities, even where they do not want to accept the application, feel they cannot reject it because they would lose on appeal if they are not meeting the national housing targets. Surely he would welcome the Government’s sharp turn in that direction.

[Matthew Pennycook]

That is slightly separate from my point about NDMPs, but the right hon. Gentleman gives me an opportunity to respond to the Government’s announcement on housing targets. The problem he identifies ultimately resides in the Government’s lack of strategic planning and effective subregional frameworks for housing growth. There is a case for reviewing how local housing targets operate, but to render them effectively unenforceable without a viable alternative, in the middle of a housing crisis, is the height of irresponsibility. We do not know the extent, but it will cause damage by reducing housing supply, with the economic growth impact that implies. We regret that the Government have backed down in the face of their Back Benchers on this point.

[Sir John Hayes]

I have not heard the hon. Gentleman perform at the Dispatch Box before, but he clearly knows his subject well and delivers his case effectively. There has long been a misunderstanding that housing is entirely about supply, as it is also about the fluidity of the housing market. He might want to add to his considerable stock of knowledge an understanding that, according to the Empty Homes Agency, there are 750,000 empty homes. That number is persistent, and no Government of any colour have managed to adopt policies to bring those homes into use.

[Matthew Pennycook]

There is a point to what the right hon. Gentleman says. It is partly about the distribution of who can buy the houses that come online, but it is also partly about supply. The Minister has confirmed that the 300,000 annual target remains Government policy. It remains an aspiration, yet the Government, by removing the enforceability of local housing targets, have made their job of boosting supply far harder, and they are not meeting the target as it stands.