Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Fourth sitting)

Olly Glover Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Holmes]

From a sedentary position, the Minister says, “Just”, under his breath. It was not me who went to the BBC and leaked a report saying that the Government were going to give more money than they are now proposing; that has been reduced by his amendment, so, yes—“just”.

Furthermore, the Government have abandoned a number of reforms, including a review of the presumption in favour of overhead lines, stronger protection for prime agricultural land against large solar developments, and enhanced safety measures for battery storage facilities. Expanding and improving the electricity system is necessary, but it must be done in a way that balances affordability, reliability and community concerns. We are concerned that the clauses in the Bill remove this transparency and add costs, but will not deliver the streamlined or more rapid benefits to the system that the Minister outlined.

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I rise to speak to new clause 19. First, the Liberal Democrat members of this Committee support a lot of what the Government are proposing in this part of the Bill. Creating electricity grids of the future is a critical route to decarbonising and has the potential to reduce consumer bills.

It is much to the UK’s credit that we are making good progress in efforts to decarbonise our electricity generation. Wind and solar in particular account for a growing share of our power generation. However, the transition from one-way transmission of electricity from a small number of very large power stations to a more distributed and multi-directional movement of power creates some challenges. We are going to need major upgrades of our electricity grid to accommodate the growing number of solar installations, as an example, more of which my hon. Friends and I would like to see on new and existing buildings. Making further progress will help our national energy security and reduce consumer bills at a time when energy inflation and the cost of living are still significant problems.

There are examples where cost and/or process have acted as barriers to the ability to feed surplus solar energy into the grid, or to the commissioning of new clean and renewable electricity production. Local energy grids have the potential to benefit communities and use the energy much closer to its source of generation. Therefore our proposed new clause would go further than the Government in the current Bill. It requires the Secretary of State to, within three months of the passing of this Bill, lay before Parliament a plan for how the Government will facilitate the creation of local energy grids and deal with the cost and time of grid connections. I hope the Minister and hon. Members on the Government Benches will embrace this amendment as a way to help continue our country’s journey towards becoming a clean, renewable energy superpower.

[Michael Shanks]

I will first respond to a few points in the debate generally. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East—across the Clyde from my constituency—made the absolutely right point that sums up what this connections reform process is all about: the absence of reforming the queue is driving away investment. Reform is critical for investment in our generation capacity and for how we connect demand projects that will be so important for unlocking economic growth. With more than 750 gigawatts currently in the queue to connect in the UK, the truth is there is no scope for that to happen without some radical reform of the queue. The Conservative party, when in government, recognised that that was a challenge and had already set about some reforms to make that happen.

We think we need to go even further. The shadow Minister, in a ray of honesty, said he was glad he was not the shadow Energy Minister. Based on the script on net zero, I think we are all fortunate that he is not the shadow Energy Minister, frankly, but it is the same script we are hearing from everyone at the moment.