Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower

Debate between Richard Holden and Greg Smith

Friday 26th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I add my congratulations to you on your new role, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick), and equally, I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches in this debate. In particular, I join the hon. Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) in paying tribute to Craig Mackinlay, who was a superb Member of this House. As he makes his transition from being the bionic MP to being the bionic peer, I think I speak for the whole House in wishing him well.

On today’s subject matter, I want to be clear from the outset that we absolutely have to decarbonise and we absolutely have to defossilise. The challenge laid down to our great innovators and scientific minds is enormous, and those great minds are rising to the challenge, from electricity generation to the fuels of the future. But that is also why I am so frustrated by an approach to cleaner energy and cleaner fuel from Government that always seems to favour the first, but not necessarily the best or most sustainable, solutions for the future.

Let me start with the controversial topic of solar. Since I was first elected in 2019,

the threat of large-scale solar developments has caused significant concern for many of my constituents. Across my constituency and parts of my former constituency now represented by others, field after field and farm after farm have already been blanketed by solar panels, to the detriment of the surrounding community, food security, nature and landscape. Food security is national security, yet before any of us who were elected on 4 July had even sworn in, the new Energy Secretary had signed off 6,000 acres of solar installation, later admitting in his statement a week after that a land use strategy was yet to come. We simply cannot have this language of community consent when the decisions that are taken walk all over the views of the communities so badly affected. Smaller, stand-alone solar is less impactful, quicker and easier to install, does not risk damaging the local infrastructure, and provides an additional, reliable source of income for many struggling farmers.

It is not just the panels that consume vast amounts of our countryside. The infrastructure needed to carry the electricity generated through to the grid swallows up yet more. It is no coincidence that adjacent to the proposed Rosefield site in my constituency a battery storage facility is being put forward. In the ultimate manifestation of the tail wagging the dog, National Grid has come along and proposed another huge land take essentially to rebuild the east Claydon substation next door.

Let that be a warning to any community where solar is coming: it does not end with the panels. Solar has its place, but that is on our rooftops and not our fields. Research by the wonderful charity, Campaign to Protect Rural England, found that there is potential for 117 GW of renewable energy to be generated from rooftops and other existing developed spaces in England. We should be prioritising that, and not losing our agricultural land.

My solution has always been to propose nuclear as the option, and to look at small modular reactors. I have given this statistic in the House before, but I will do so again: we need around 2,000 acres of solar panels to generate enough electricity—on current usage and before everybody has two Teslas on the drive—for 50,000 homes. By contrast, just two football pitches are required for a small modular reactor that will power, again on current usage, 1 million homes. I fail to see how anyone can look at those two competing land uses and choose solar over the small modular reactor. It is simply not a good use of land to turn our farms into solar.

Let me move to another clean energy that I am particularly passionate about, and away from electricity generation to the future of fuel. The United Kingdom is already an international powerhouse in the field of synthetic and sustainable fuel, with companies such as Zero Petroleum innovating right here, and international companies such as P1 Fuels making huge investments in bringing the manufacturing of fossil-free fuel to the United Kingdom. It is a straightforward fact that there are 1.4 billion internal combustion engine vehicles on the road worldwide, and that is before we start counting agricultural and construction vehicles, planes, ships and so on. They are simply not all going to convert to electric, as some argue that they should. Green hydrogen mixed with atmospheric carbon capture makes a wholly man-made liquid hydrocarbon that works in everything we already have. After more than a century’s refinement on those engines, and this clean fuel will just work in them.

[Mr Holden]

On the point about synthetic fuels, is it also the case that for several types of vehicle, such as incredibly heavy vehicles or those that need to travel incredibly long distances, there is no battery option, and synthetic fuel as an alternative is exactly where we need to go?

[Greg Smith]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Certainly for heavier application vehicles, batteries just would not work. I saw a diagram at one of these companies that shows that if we were to try to make a 747 fly on batteries, the batteries would be bigger than the plane. Therefore, that is not a viable option going forward. Synthetic fuels are entirely man-made. There is no need to grow food to burn or recycle old chip fat, or for raw earth mineral mining for batteries; it is just clean synthetics. My ask to the Government, as they look to a clean energy future—that is the right ambition; where we disagree is on how we get there—is that they truly embrace synthetic fuels and make them mainstream. They need to be scaled, and in order to be scaled, manufacturers need confidence that the Government will permit that.

An important point to finish on is that the carbon at tailpipe when these fuels are burned is the same volume that is then recaptured to make the next lot of fuel. They are net zero. It is one volume of carbon in a perpetual circle. I congratulate the Minister on his appointment, and ask him to take the message back to the Department that we need to embrace synthetic fuels as part of the clean energy revolution that he claims at the Dispatch Box to want to see.

High Speed 2

Debate between Richard Holden and Greg Smith

Monday 18th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holden]

There is no question of this Government abandoning the north. We have put in huge amounts of funding, including on buses and new roads. I was in Preston a few weeks ago to open the new Preston Western Distributor road. The Government are hugely investing in the north of England—on rail, on roads, and indeed on our important bus network. As I said earlier, Ministers will continue to update the House regularly on HS2, as we have done throughout.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Even when this project had arms and legs and eyebrows going across the whole country, it was always accepted that the business case was very weak and that, as a nation, we cannot really afford it. I hope the Government do scrap HS2 north of Birmingham and save many more communities from the human misery that my constituents endure every day of the week from the construction. If they do scrap it, it would leave the quite literally legless stump from outside central London to outside central Birmingham. Will my hon. Friend take the message back to his colleagues and to the Treasury that we cannot afford it and that what is left of phase 1 should be scrapped as well.

[Mr Holden]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Spades are already in the ground for HS2, with over 350 active construction sites, and with high-speed services between London and Birmingham Curzon Street due to start between 2029 and 2033. However, I will pass on his comments to Treasury colleagues, as always.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Richard Holden and Greg Smith

Thursday 13th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Yesterday, I chaired a roundtable with the freight sector, looking at the growing problem of theft from lorries in overnight lorry parks and service stations, which is costing the economy hundreds of millions of pounds a year. What is my hon. Friend doing with the sector to ensure that for the extortionate fees freight companies are charged, they get secure parking overnight?

[Mr Holden]

I thank my hon. Friend for his work in this area and across a number of areas in transport. We are looking in depth at driver welfare, including providing extra lorry parks and more secure facilities, and grants are due to be announced in the summer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Richard Holden and Greg Smith

Thursday 20th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holden]

I had a meeting with the DVSA on this matter earlier this week, and we will continue to take steps to block cancellation services from accessing the booking system. There has been a significant drop in traffic to those services because of the DVSA’s successful work in identifying booking apps and bots, but there are some driving instructors who book slots for their own use. In the hon. Lady’s constituency, in Isleworth and Tolworth, the waiting times in February were 8.5 weeks and 7.3 weeks respectively, well below the national average, so there is no need for people to use the bots as they can book a few weeks in advance.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I have received correspondence from a number of constituents struggling to get driving tests in my constituency in recent weeks. For example, a constituent reported that the nearby Bletchley testing centre has nothing available for six months. On top of the question from the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) about the growing purchasing of tests by third parties, will my hon. Friend consider changing the point at which tests are released? I am led to believe that it is 6 am on a Monday, which enables those third parties to get in and book them all up quickly rather than leaving them open for the genuine public, most of whom are probably not at their computers at that time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Richard Holden and Greg Smith

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holden]

My understanding is that in Shetland, the average waiting time is 18 weeks, but in Orkney the waiting time is significantly less. I do not understand the discrepancy between us, so I shall write to the right hon. Member about that. I was surprised that he did not also welcome the £26.7 million that has just been announced today for transport funding for the Shetland Islands Council for the Fair Isle infrastructure project, showing how much this Government are investing in his constituency.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Notwithstanding the answer that my hon. Friend just gave, multiple constituents have written to me this week about the inability to get a driving test. One said that despite logging on daily, they cannot get a test at all in nearby test centres at Bletchley, Leighton Buzzard, Aylesbury, Banbury or Northampton. For rural communities like those I represent, the car is essential for people, young or old, to get anywhere, so when my hon. Friend talks to the DVSA, will he prioritise test centres for rural communities to get back on track?

[Mr Holden]

I also represent a rural constituency, although in a different part of the country. What I would say to my hon. Friend is that we have made big progress in recent years, with more than 300,000 new slots available due to the extra 300 driving examiners we have hired since the pandemic. Waiting lists are coming down for driving tests, and rapidly, and we hope to achieve pre-pandemic levels within the next few months.