Solar Farms: Agricultural Land

11:01:00

I beg to move, That this House has considered solar farms on agricultural land. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. We are addressing an issue of great importance: the proliferation of solar farms on our agricultural land. As many hon. Members know, I have dedicated much of my life to raising awareness about our ecological and climate crises. I have met people who are set to lose their entire countries to rising seas. Let me be clear: nobody can doubt my commitment to strong action on climate change. However, there are many ways to skin the climate cat, and I do not believe that solar parks on the scale of Cottam, Cleve Hill, Longfield, Mallard Pass, Gate Burton, Sunnica and the proposed Lime Down, in my own constituency of South Cotswolds, are the best way forward. I have received numerous messages from residents near the proposed site of Lime Down. Without exception, they are distressed about the proposal, and I share their concerns. They are not nimbys; they are thoughtful, environmentally conscious people, who, like me, agree that we need renewables but at the right size, in the right places and in the right ownership.

Like my hon. Friend, I am very keen on renewable energy. I am a Liberal Democrat, for heaven’s sake! However, I am also a pragmatist. In Washford, in my constituency, a massive solar farm is being built on particularly good agricultural land. Would my hon. Friend agree that we must be practical and put solar panels on commercial buildings and residential houses, rather than on farmland?

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I totally agree and will be coming to that point shortly.

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. I suppose the issue is twofold. First, the farmers who sign up to solar farms are committed to a long-term lease, and that will impact the family inheritance tax potential. The second point comes in relation to using land better for food production, as it should be used, so that only land that is of a lesser quality, or rocky land, would be more suitable for solar farms. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is the way forward?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I agree that that is the way forward. Let us consider the facts. Our agricultural land is dwindling at an alarming rate. We are down to 14.8 million acres of arable land, the lowest amount since world war two, and we are losing nearly 100,000 acres annually. We already import nearly 60% of our food. Do we really want to increase that dependency on foreign supply chains?

My hon. Friend is being super generous and I am grateful to her. She makes excellent points. We obviously have means by which we can control how those things happen, through the environmental land management payment scheme and planning law. Would she agree that, through both of those streams, we should be able to ensure that food security is at least as important as energy security, and that we should not be using productive agricultural land for solar farms when they can be developed elsewhere? Westmorland and Furness Council, for example, has used disused land to provide a solar farm of its own on non-agricultural land.

I agree with my hon. Friend that we should be prioritising locations that do not impact on our ability to meet our food security needs. The environmental benefits of solar farms are not as clearcut as some would have us believe. Yes, they produce clean energy, but at what cost? Large installations can alter local ecosystems, potentially contaminate soil and even increase local temperatures due to heat absorption by the dark panels—and let us not forget the human cost. Tenant farmers face eviction. Land values are skyrocketing, making it harder for new farmers to enter the industry, and we risk losing the very character of our rural communities that underpins local tourism and our national identity.

I agree with every word the hon. Lady has said so far. Does she agree with me that if we are to protect food security and give it equal billing with energy security and national security, not just solar installations are inappropriate, but the ancillary projects like those I am seeing in my constituency? For example, we have battery storage and National Grid coming along and saying it has to completely rebuild all of the substations on—guess what?—more agricultural land. This is a much bigger problem than just solar.

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member’s points. I am not against solar energy—far from it—but we need to be smart about how we implement it and all the associated infrastructure. Why not require all new homes to be fitted with solar panels, as proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) in his sunshine Bill? Why not use the vast roof spaces of warehouses, public buildings and car parks? These are sensible, minimally intrusive ways to contribute to our net zero goals.

I will confess that before being elected to this place, I spent 10 years in renewable energy finance. It is a common claim from certain activists and newspapers that we should put solar on commercial buildings. I do not disagree with that. The problem is the economics of it do not stand up from a finance perspective. Until the Government step in to guarantee a minimum amount of value for export, rooftop solar will never stack up. Neither will carport solar. That is why investors will always go for utility-scale. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we actually want to see a catalyst, if we want to see a change, if we want to see farmers growing crops and not solar panels, the Government need to step in and regulate the market?

My hon. Friend makes some very interesting points that I look forward to exploring further with him in the future. I agree that we need Government to intervene to adjust the incentives so that we can meet our energy needs with the lowest cost to our countryside.

Part of the barrier to public acceptance of large-scale solar farms comes from a need to see a joined-up approach and that we are balancing food security and energy security. What people want to see—for example, in my constituency with the large proposed Kingsway solar farm—is the much promised land use framework and the strategic spatial energy framework, so that they know where the 0.1% should go and that it is going in the right places, that there is a joined-up approach, and therefore that reasonable people can support it where necessary.

I am sure we are all waiting with bated breath for the long-awaited land use framework. The National Farmers Union is well aware that British farmers host about 70% of this country’s solar generation capacity, but it is urging the Government to recognise that small-scale energy needs to be prioritised on brownfield sites and lower quality land first. Let us not forget about other nature-based solutions such as rewilding or planting 60 million trees per year. That would not only help to absorb carbon, but restore valuable habitats. We do need to increase our use of renewables. However, it must be done sympathetically to the environment and should provide, as a priority, community energy to homes, schools and businesses. We have a real opportunity with the land use framework to define our national priorities for the long-term future, emphasising ways of multi-purposing land with ideas like intercropping, living roofs and rooftop solar. We absolutely need cross-party consensus. The question of meeting future energy needs while not trashing the climate, our countryside or food production is too important to become a political football. The English countryside is currently at risk of being exploited for financial gain by profit-making companies—a corporate wolf dressed in green clothing. We must not allow that to continue unchecked.

11:10:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) on securing this important debate and the number of interventions she received in such a short period of time reflects the strength of feeling. Before I set out the Government’s approach, I reassure the hon. Lady and her constituents that we agree on most things in this space. We agree that we should be using renewables—whatever they are, wherever they are—in the best way possible. We agree that we need to look at our responsibilities in terms of the climate, agriculture, the countryside and food production. The Government take all those responsibilities very seriously and look them at very carefully. We agree that if we are building solar panels, for example, we should build on brownfield sites first. If we cannot, we should build on areas of lower-quality land first. We agree that food security is enormously important for this country. In the global conditions we find ourselves in, where there is more uncertainty—as we saw with the war in Ukraine and what followed with our energy prices—we need to be mindful of those things. When it comes to the principles, we agree. I will set out the Government’s overall approach to our clean power mission, which might help to put the debate in context. We, like the hon. Member for South Cotswolds, have been clear from the start that the only way to tackle climate change, secure our energy supply, bring down bills and drive economic growth is through clean energy. The rapid deployment of clean energy infrastructure is essential for our future security and economy.

Is it not the case that the Government are just plumping for the technology that is available right now, in the form of thousands of acres of solar, when we need 2,000 acres of solar panels to produce enough electricity for just 50,000 homes on current usage? A small modular reactor needs just two football pitches for 1 million homes. As I have said many times, why on earth are the Government messing about with solar given its impacts on food security, which the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) mentioned?

The previous Government messed around with solar quite a lot—we are building on what the previous Government did, up to a point. The answer is to look at all the technologies that are available to us. SMRs are enormously attractive in lots of different ways, and lots of colleagues have been talking to us about them. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there is a process for the development of SMRs. We need all the tools in our armoury and we need to make sure we are using the most modern technology available. He makes a fair point on that front. Sustainable power generated here in Britain will reduce our contribution to the damaging effects of climate change and our dependence on the volatile global fossil fuel market. It is already creating thousands of highly skilled jobs and will continue to do so. Instead of delaying the inevitable, we have set ourselves a target to push to clean power by 2030. The clean power action plan, published last month, sets out how we will get there, including the likely technology mix required. It is clear that solar will play a major role.

On the Minister’s comments about the Government’s announcements in December and the subsequent announcement by the National Energy System Operator about moving forward rapidly with renewable energy, and in relation to East Park Energy, which is a proposal in my constituency whereby 74% of the land used would be best and most versatile land, in neither the December statement nor the January announcement by NESO was there any reference at all to the criterion on use of best and most versatile land. Can the Minister just affirm that that criterion is still used in the assessment of which projects the Government will move forward?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I cannot comment on the individual case in his constituency, of course. But of course when developers are applying for planning permission, they go through a series of criteria and have to adhere to a series of criteria, whether that is for the development of smaller solar plants, where it goes through local authorities, or whether it is through the nationally significant infrastructure project process. The solar taskforce is looking at all these issues as well. We are making sure we are mindful of all of the range of issues that we need to consider when we are looking at bringing infrastructure into communities. I will come to this later, but it is really important to say that we want to do this with local communities—with consultation of local communities and with consideration of what other options are available to us as well. That will continue. Solar is one of the cheapest sources of power available to us, which is an important consideration when we are looking at the full range of options that we have between us. We are setting a target for around 45 GW to 47 GW of solar power by 2030. That is up from the 17 GW that we have today and it is a substantial increase. I want to tackle the issue that a number of Members mentioned—the rooftop versus ground-mount issue. The hon. Member for South Cotswolds is right to talk about how we need to be going further to make sure we are putting solar panels on our roofs, and to ask what Government can do to encourage that. We are bringing in new building standards to ensure that all newly built houses and commercial buildings are fit for a net zero future. We expect those standards to encourage the installation of solar panels on new developments. We are issuing later this year a call for evidence on the construction of solar on outdoor car parks. The reconvened solar taskforce is focusing on rooftop solar, and further actions to increase deployment will be set out in the road map this spring. I was talking to one of our big mayoral authorities yesterday about the power purchase agreements that people could potentially have in this space. If people look at public sector roofs and the collaboration they could have across some of our transport infrastructure and some of our public sector infrastructure, they could do more ambitious projects when it comes to solar, and of course we want to push that as much as we can. If we can put solar panels on rooftops, that is what we want to do. But we consider that we need a mix of both: we need ground-mounted and rooftop panels to get to the numbers that we want to see. Let me turn to the planning system. All proposed solar projects are subject to a rigorous planning process, which considers the interests of local communities, as I said to the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller).

In my constituency of Huntingdon, a new solar farm of 1,900 acres is proposed. It spans from my constituency across into North Bedfordshire, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) represents. The local population have spent a lot of time liaising with both me and my hon. Friend with regard to the impact that it will have and the lack of consultation that they have experienced. They have been told that realistically, they will receive no real benefit from the solar farm’s being there. They will certainly not receive directly cheaper energy bills for having it built right on their doorstep. What would the Minister say to those constituents, and the constituents of the other Members in this room, who are in effect having nationally significant infrastructure projects foisted on them and who do not feel that they have a say or any real ability to push back on that?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He expresses a concern that local Members of Parliament will always have when constituents come to them with issues. Look, we are balancing an issue when it comes to solar. At the moment, about 0.1% of all our land in the UK—and, it turns out, about 0.1% of all agricultural land as a proportion as well—has solar on it. Even if we were to reach our targets or go beyond them, it would still be less than 1% of land. We have to look at that statistic, but we also have to look at the local situation, which is where we absolutely accept that we are asking people to have infrastructure in their communities that will affect them. It could change their view, change their roles or change the jobs that are available; it has an impact. Through our clean power action plan, we are looking at the community benefit systems that we need to put in place. I cannot speak to the hon. Gentleman’s particular case because it is going through a process and it would not be right for me to do so, but I am mindful of what he says about the need for communities to feel like they will have some direct benefits and to understand why we need some of this infrastructure. The reality is that we have not kept up to speed with infrastructure developments in this country over the past couple of decades, and we need to move faster. Whether it is our grid system, renewable energy or our transport systems, we need to build these things for our children and grandchildren to have the future that we want to see. Of course we need to be mindful of the impact and how local people feel. That is why, for the nationally significant infrastructure projects, there is still consultation and strong engagement with communities. That needs to get better, and we are looking at that through our clean power action plan. I am mindful of the time. I want to move on to food security, which the hon. Member for South Cotswolds mentioned. Food security is national security, and it is very important for this Government. We need a resilient and healthy food system that works with nature and supports British farmers, fishers and food producers. That is why the Government will introduce a new deal for farmers to boost rural economic growth and strengthen Britain’s food security.

The Minister is being very generous; I am grateful. The concern is that farmers are often pushed into things that they would not choose initially—such as giving over productive agricultural land for stuff that is not food production. Because of the perversity of Government funding changes, perhaps the most egregious thing in the Budget was the 76% cut in the basic payment for farmers this year, which will make many of them feel that their hand is forced to go down a direction that they do not want to go down. Might the Minister have a word with the Treasury to see whether that cut could be taken away?

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s point. The wider point about farmers being pushed according to EU or local subsidies over the years is of course right, and we need to get the balance right. I will speak to the numbers again: we are looking to go from 17 GW to around 45 GW, which is a trebling of the current land use of 0.1%. We are talking about small numbers, although I appreciate that in some constituencies, such as that of the hon. Member for South Cotswolds, it will feel much bigger because there are more of these products coming along. Of course we need to get our system right for farmers. I am a Member of Parliament in Croydon, where we do not have many farmers, but I am incredibly grateful to them for their role and the work that they do, and we need to make sure that we support them. Where it is necessary to develop agricultural land—and we need to start with the basics of using other land first where we can—we do not think it will have any significant impact on food security because of the numbers: less than 1% of the UK’s agricultural land will be occupied by solar farms. We do not believe that will have an impact on our food security.

Will the Minister give way?

I will finish my point, because it is connected to the point made by the hon. Member for South Cotswolds. The biggest threat to British farmers in the countryside is not solar farms; it is the impact of climate change, and we are already seeing the effects in the floods and droughts that are threatening their livelihoods. We have to be mindful of that when we are trying to tackle climate change and increase the use of solar.

I appreciate the principles that the Minister is setting out, particularly on the impact of climate change on food security. Every model of net zero energy that I have seen includes a greater role for renewable energy on land, but is there not a risk that without a clear land use strategy that shows how we will achieve a resilient food supply while meeting net zero targets, decisions about where solar farms are located will end up getting made on a piecemeal basis, rather than the basis that the Minister is setting out?

The hon. Gentleman has predicted that I was about to talk about the land use framework. He is right. The Government recognise that England has limited land, and the use demands on it include our vital clean energy infrastructure. The Government will deliver our manifesto commitment by introducing a land use framework so that we can consider how to balance competing demands and transform how we use land. That will support economic growth and deliver on the plan for change that the Prime Minister outlined last month. The framework will work hand in hand with the strategic spatial energy plan, which we have commissioned the National Energy System Operator to devise. The hon. Gentleman is right that we have to understand the whole before we make piecemeal decisions, and our criticism of the previous Government is that those overarching plans were lacking.

On that point, would it therefore be right to consider not overruling the Planning Inspectorate just now, in the build-up to receiving the land use framework and the strategic spatial energy plan from NESO, before making these big infrastructure decisions? We would take the public with us if they understood that we will decide where solar farms go once we have the land use framework and the strategic spatial energy plan.

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. We already have a planning system that enables us to look at individual projects. The new Government will set those strategic frameworks, but we have to allow the legal processes to continue while we do that. We will see an increase in the push to 2030 and beyond that. We want to see, through good government, a proper national framework that puts these issues in place. I want to touch again on the community benefits, which hon. Members have raised. I cannot stress enough that communities hosting clean energy infrastructure are doing a service to our country, and they need to benefit from that. It could be argued that we will all benefit in the long term as energy prices come down and we have more energy security, but there are many ways that communities can directly benefit, including through community funds, direct payments and community ownership. We are exploring all the options, and we will have more to say about that soon. In the meantime, Great British Energy will support community energy schemes, helping communities to unlock opportunities through the local power plan, which will support local authorities, community energy groups and others to deliver small and medium-scale renewable energy projects. It could develop up to 8 GW of clean power by 2030. I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds for securing the debate, and other hon. Members for their very thoughtful interventions. The Government remain committed to balancing the urgent need for renewable electricity with considerations of land use, food production and community benefit. We want to take people with us on this journey, which will see us going into the future with a mix of renewable energy that delivers the lower prices that we all want to see. Question put and agreed to.

11:28:00