Large-scale Solar Farms

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dr Johnson]

My right hon. Friend and, as he mentioned, constituency neighbour is absolutely right: it is very important that we look at the cumulative effect of the applications and the industrialisation of our landscapes. Again, this is—

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Johnson]

Of course. I will get the next sentence out eventually.

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend has now heard from the proud counties of Lincolnshire, for which she also speaks on this issue, Durham, Shropshire and Nottinghamshire, and she will now hear from Bedfordshire. I gently point out that every single Back-Bench Member of Parliament present is a Conservative. There is not a single Labour Back-Bench MP here—or Liberal, for that matter—to talk about the impact of large-scale solar farms.

Small-scale solar farms in my constituency have been welcomed by local communities, because the developers have spoken to parish councils and worked with local residents to ensure that the siting is appropriate. It is these large-scale financial vehicles, which masquerade as solar farms trying to help us to achieve net zero, that have caused consternation. I am afraid to say that that includes the East Park Energy development proposed in my constituency.

[Dr Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. I am also expecting to hear from Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire, Suffolk, Yorkshire, Redditch, the south-west and more from Lincolnshire—I do not want to miss anyone out.

The Attorney General, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), and the Solicitor General, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts), are unable to speak today, while my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) is unwell. Alongside Rupert Harrison, the Conservative candidate for the new Bicester and Woodstock seat, they are actively campaigning against the Botley West solar farm in Oxfordshire. If it is approved, they tell me that it will be the size of Heathrow and the largest solar plant in Europe. It will encroach across four parliamentary constituencies in Oxfordshire. A project of that scale poses a disproportionate threat to agricultural land, much of which is of best and most versatile status, and will result in the loss of swathes of open countryside. In another part of the country, my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler) is concerned about the massive solar application on productive farmland between Rosliston and Drakelow, and the food security implications of the loss of such good farmland.

The ramifications of putting our best agricultural land out of use for 40 years could be incredibly destabilising. Arable land in the UK is declining. It is currently at 14.8 million acres, which is the lowest since world war two, with 100,000 acres being taken out of cultivation annually. Massive-scale solar plants—I call them plants specifically, because they are not really farms—withdraw hundreds of hectares of urgently needed farmland from UK food production. If such projects are allowed to go ahead, agricultural products will have to come from countries where the environmental and animal welfare standards may be less rigorous than ours, at a greater economic and—due to transportation and other things—environmental cost.

I will move on to land use strategy. Solar must take its appropriate place in the many conflicting demands on land: agriculture, housing, calls from some people for rewilding, health, and conservation. It does not trump all the others. We simply cannot have it all; we must make intelligent use of our finite resources of land and balance what some see as conflicting priorities.

Some people say that the land underneath solar panels can be grazed by livestock, but from practical experience, that is absolute nonsense. I challenge anyone to look under the ground-mounted solar panels already in place and see how often they find animals grazing there. The Government need to develop a comprehensive, carefully thought-out land strategy to ensure that our best farmland is not put at risk in this way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller]

I am intrigued by the literary references from both my hon. Friends the Members for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) and for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson). However, I want to draw my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch’s attention to the economics. She will be aware that the strike price for solar power was £47 per megawatt hour and at the last auction was going to go to £61 per megawatt hour. Underpinning farmers’ decision that they should perhaps give up their land is that the economics of farming are finding it difficult to compete with the economics of the pricing at those auctions. Does she agree that if it is the case, which I believe to be true, that the Government now have four times the amount of solar production capacity on offer compared with what they actually require, there needs to be an economic answer to both the pricing of solar power and support for our farmers?

[Rachel Maclean]

My hon. Friend has made some excellent points. He is right that commercial pressures and the legislation we signed up for—I was happy to vote for that to reach net zero—are driving this between them. We have a lot of unintended outcomes from the policy; it was introduced for laudable aims, but it is time to pause things and look at the matter again.

People have talked about nimbys. It is a really interesting issue, because people will ask, “Where would you put the solar panels instead? Where would you put the additional ones required to fulfil our solar capacity targets?” Our British energy strategy includes ambitions to have 70 GW of solar capacity by 2035, and we are at something like 15.7 GW as of January this year. I believe that if we oppose something and do not like what is in front of us, we should suggest what should be done instead. We should be constructive. We should not just oppose things and not come up with a solution; that is what Labour does, and that is not my style.

On the subject of Labour, by the way, it is unclear to me and local residents what Labour’s position locally is on the solar power project. It should not really surprise anyone that locally Labour is sitting on the fence—or on the solar panel, if I may stretch the metaphor—on the issue. That is what Labour does on every issue: says one thing and does another, or changes its mind every five minutes. It is certainly doing that locally.

People will probably say to me, “Aren’t you just a nimby?” Maybe I should ask myself that as well. As some Members may know, I had the great privilege of serving as the Housing and Planning Minister, and I am familiar with these debates. However, I say to my hon. and right hon. Friends that that is the wrong question and the wrong way of looking at the problem. I will briefly explain why. Deciding where to put infrastructure, whether it is housing, roads or solar farms, will always be controversial. We need to build these things. Nobody wants them next to them and, certainly to my knowledge, nobody has ever campaigned for more development next to them, be it housing or infrastructure.

It is therefore often said that those people must be nimbys and their views should be pushed aside in the interests of progress. There is no easy way around this, even if we prioritise the views of local communities, because the idea that there is anywhere else in the country where somebody will not object to something being built is a fantasy. It is idiotic to divide people into two camps of nimby and not nimby—unless they are Liberal Democrats, of course, who are bananas. That stands for “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone”—that is their policy.

I have the greatest respect for the yimby movement— I really do; it is doing some good things. However, I suspect that were those people to move to a different area, out of the city and into the countryside, next to a development site or into the green belt that was about to be built over, they might change their view. I speak as someone who has a little understanding of the area; I think all of us MPs do. We understand human nature, and we know that people will deceive themselves and others. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but the evidence in front of me strongly suggests that I am right. It is pointless and wrong to attack nimbys when everyone essentially feels the same about our landscape and our area.