Large-scale Solar Farms

Thérèse Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Henderson, in this important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) on securing the debate and being wise enough to persuade the Backbench Business Committee to devote an entire three hours to it, recognising the strength of feeling that right hon. and hon. Members have. I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) on his previous work, never mind on his speech today, because I know that he has been pivotal in trying to ensure that aspects of planning policy are adapted, recognising the impact on the land we have today.

Why are we in this situation? Quite a considerable discussion has already happened about different classifications of land and the return on land. Ultimately, as a Conservative Government and a Conservative party, we want to ensure that we achieve net zero and recognise the balance that we need in our energy mix, which will continue to need the use of fossil fuels for many decades to come. We must ensure that we are on that sustainable journey to electricity generation both locally and nationally in that regard. It is important that solar has a role to play in that but, as has been accurately pointed out, one of the aspects that understandably concerns people is that all too often the economics of some of the plans that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and its predecessor Departments set off on lead to quite a different outcome from that expected.

It goes back to the Labour Government: in trying to encourage people with feed-in tariffs to go on to roofs, they massively incorrectly calculated what would happen. That led to Chris Huhne, the then Lib Dem Energy Secretary, having to basically curtail the plan—I think it may have been the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) who actually killed it off entirely—because frankly the budget had already been blown. That is important in some of the considerations that we need to think about, and that is why it is really important that the Government have an agile approach to understanding how different offers are taken up. We must recognise the financial impact but also the disproportionate way in which the policy intentions and outcomes are delivered.

Why do people want this wonderful agricultural land to be used instead for solar farms? Access to sun is one of the good reasons—the sun is there to grow food, and it is great for power. However, probably the key element at the moment is the guaranteed return that farmers get which is, on average, still about 8%. That is considerable. Many of us would love to have such a guaranteed return.

The other element at the moment is tax relief, which is really important for agricultural land. That tax relief, to be passed on from generation to generation, was intended principally for farming, to make sure that agricultural land was passed on instead of being sold off. Here, because the leases are done in a particular way, we are seeing that such land does not get excluded from the passing on of tax relief. That is an important financial calculation that people make.

[Sir David Davis]

My right hon. Friend makes a brilliantly important point, which I had not thought of before, on this question of tax relief—basically, inheritance tax relief. That has meant that vast quantities of the countryside of Britain are owned by people for a single purpose—to avoid inheritance tax—which actually drives the financialisation of the countryside that has driven this policy.

[Dr Coffey]

I think the policy on tax relief is a sensible one. Just recently, I lobbied to get aspects of nature, such as the edges of fields, to be included in that. Farmers and landowners were suggesting that they could not participate in the environmental land management schemes because they would not get that relief, unlike the solar farms just down the road that covered entire agricultural elements and could still participate. There is a balance to be had. The impact on tenant farmers has also been pointed out. The return, and the pricing of land, is a key element. It is concerning for those of us who represent rural areas in particular, and for those trying to make sure that the sums add up.

There has been quite a lot of discussion about the classification of land. I think it is fair to say that the maps are quite old and do not differentiate between grades 3a and 3b. When I went back into DEFRA 18 months ago, as Secretary of State, I asked what we could do, bearing in mind the fact that we had been tasked with producing a land use framework. I was told it would take several years to redo those maps, which was somewhat disheartening. I will not pretend that I put any more energy into that, at that time, in the preparation for a land use framework.

There was quite a lot of discussion between me and the previous Secretary of State. The analysis indicated that the estimates were that about 1% of the land being used for agriculture would be consumed by potential conversion to solar farms. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister what that proportion is right now, including the land used for connections that have already been granted by National Grid.

National Grid talks about capacity; it says it has tons of solar, compared with what can actually be connected. That leads to the concentrations that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) mentioned. Even now, National Grid continues to keep offering connections in areas where a substation or a converter station is going to be built, rather than for many of the other applications that would cost too much money and would not be economical to connect to the grid. It is a concern for me that, all of a sudden, we get energy islands, not deserts, right in front of our eyes. The purpose of these areas, as part of the natural countryside, producing food and other elements of benefit to our country, is all of a sudden being turned into these energy islands.

I should say that there is plenty of grade 4 and grade 5 land in my constituency that gets used for food production. I know that DEFRA is keen to improve the productivity of land and that is why there have been a series of grants in that regard. However, I think it is critical that between DEFRA and DESNZ they start to match up, in the Ministers’ considerations of the NSIP plans, what is happening in that regard about the food security element. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister committed to having a food security index, to be produced annually, and I think the use and projected use of land is critical in that element.

In thinking through what is happening in my own constituency, where there have already been solar farms, I am not going to say they are all bad. They are not. The issue is the growing cumulative effect, the acceleration and the almost blank cheque that is being given to many of the developers and is enticing farmers and landowners. I want to single out Friston. My hon. Friend the Minister will know of my ongoing battle with National Grid about aspects of energy infrastructure in my constituency. By the way, none of it includes a single pylon; we are not talking about pylons here, but there has definitely been a pile-in on the people of that village, and National Grid has now offered two further connections to solar farms of just under 250 MW.

Where do we go from here? I am conscious that the national policy statement for renewable energy infra- structure, EN-3, covers a lot about solar. It does not even exclude grade 1 land from consideration, but it is up to the developers to show that they have considered brownfield sites and I think, Minister, we need some strength and confidence that that really is being done. I know that the Planning Inspectorate provides advice to Ministers to make the final decisions, but it has to be a far more transparent process than what people experience today. It feels like a tick-box exercise; it feels like a rubber stamp. That may not be the intention of the Minister or my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, but it is critical that we address that.

The Secretary of State spoke last October about wanting to make it easier to cut, I think, up to £3 billion of costs a year by trying to get more solar on brownfield sites. It would be helpful to understand from the Minister what, since the Secretary of State’s speech and the direction of travel that she, he and the Prime Minister have set, has happened with the applications for not only planning, but connections. Have we seen that change happen, or have we continued to see more and more solar farms being proposed instead of agricultural production?

The Government have done other positive things. My hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, leading this debate, questioned some of the grants that were being given for barn solar, as I think we christened it at the time. That was deliberately intended to provide grants to help farmers to generate electricity for use on their farms; it is not designed in any way then to be connected anywhere. I think that is a sensible use of taxpayers’ money from the £2.4 billion, on average, that is distributed in England every year. It is absolutely key that we try to help farmers with their resilience, but we should not be doing that on the basis that taxpayers’ money will be used to fuel higher returns from not actually producing food or looking after livestock.

When it comes to thinking through what the next steps could be, I have already asked the Minister a few questions—I appreciate that he may not have all the information to hand today, but I, like others, am seeking a moratorium on connections until there is a steady state of understanding what is happening in this fair and beautiful land. I am not in DEFRA anymore, so I do not know which of the various stages the preparation of the land use framework is in, but a vital issue is the use of energy and that balance versus of course housing and other elements, because we can actually have multi- faceted land, productive in more ways than one.

It is important that we take this opportunity without trying to get away from the target that we have set of getting to 70 GW by 2035, but let us not go at breakneck speed and end up breaking our necks in this regard. It is important that we try to ensure that there are sensible routes forward from National Grid on connections. Right now, I get the impression that it is just approving or dishing out connections to anybody at all, without necessarily thinking through what the impact will be on food security or on our countryside.

[Gordon Henderson (in the Chair)]

I am expecting the Minister to take about 15 minutes, so out of fairness I will give the Opposition spokesman the same amount of time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bowie]

My hon. Friend makes a specific point about his constituency, on which I cannot comment, but I am sure that his concerns have been heard. They are certainly not new concerns; they have been raised with me in the past. As I said, we are genuinely and clearly listening to those concerns in the entire process.

[Dr Coffey]

The Minister is right to talk about how NPS EN-3 refers to the planning application process. One of the points that I made was about the connection process. Connections are being offered left, right and centre. Communities then see that as happening automatically in future, and indeed National Grid is building its infrastructure around the connections it is giving out, regardless of future planning applications. I appreciate that the Minister might not be able to reply today, but he and the Department need to look at the connection process. That is why I called for a moratorium on anything further.

[Andrew Bowie]

My right hon. Friend knows that I am no longer the Minister responsible for the network or the national grid, but I will ensure that her concerns are passed on to the relevant Minister. Ofgem and the electricity system operator are engaged in a considerable review of how connections are offered across the country, because there is a problem with that system. That is recognised and is being addressed.

Let me briefly touch on community benefits, which have also been raised. It is important that communities can participate in and benefit from the deployment of new low-carbon energy technologies in their local area. However, the Government do not have a formal role with regard to community benefits for solar and other large-scale renewable energy projects. We believe that those are best agreed at a local level, between the renewable operator and the local communities, so that they can be tailored to each community’s individual needs. They cannot be taken into account and, I am afraid, are not relevant to the planning decisions. A number of solar developers already provide community benefits on a voluntary basis. We are working with Solar Energy UK, the industry body, to provide further guidance and advice on community benefits for solar developers and communities and to develop a more consistent approach across the country that is fair to all parties.