Solar Panels on Agricultural Land

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey]

The hon. Gentleman makes an absolutely correct point, and I will come to that, as will, I know, other Members. Once development of this kind is approved, the land is no longer available for its primary purpose of producing food.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

A clean-air solar farm is proposed near Beverley on some excellent BMV—best and most versatile—agricultural land. Given that such fantastic, high-quality land constitutes only about 40% of farmland, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is insane to allow solar to go on the best land when 60% of land that is widely available could have solar on it? The Minister would be well advised to tighten up the rules, because his solar strategy would then be far more likely to retain public support.

[Esther McVey]

Insanity is the right word, and that point has also been expressed by many of my constituents. At the most recent public meeting arranged by Rayna Jackson and the newly formed community group, Knutsford Solar Action, hundreds of local residents gathered, hoping to get some answers from the developer and the local council as to why the site had been chosen. Sadly, neither Aukera—the developer—nor Cheshire East council bothered to attend, so not even the most basic questions, such as why an environmental impact assessment had not been done for the site, could be answered.

The whole process has shown absolutely no regard for the local rural community. The truth is that the Government’s colossal rush to achieve their net zero targets is coming at the expense of our nation’s food security and destroying the UK’s farming land. Then again, we know what this Government think of farmers and farming—not a lot.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Energy (Michael Shanks)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, as always, Ms Jardine. I thank all hon. Members for coming to this debate. Obviously, many colleagues from across the House have raised concerns about projects in their constituencies. I understand entirely why, but given that those projects are subject to planning processes, I will say at the outset that I cannot comment on the positives or negatives, or the decisions through the NSIP—nationally significant infrastructure project—process, in relation to any of those particular applications. Those are rightly matters for the Secretary of State to make decisions on in due course.

I will touch on the general points that the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) made. First, we should recognise an area where I think we have common agreement: building infrastructure across our country is necessary but it should be done in sensible locations and take account of local impacts. I have said throughout that I find much of the nimby debate coming up in this a bit redundant, when we are actually trying to bring communities with us. But I have also said clearly that we need to build infrastructure as a country, and it is not possible to just build all of it “somewhere else”. Inevitably, in these debates, we often get back to the argument that people are in favour of the technology, but “just not anywhere near my constituency.” There has to be some common ground in the middle that recognises that we need to build infrastructure somewhere.

Solar is particularly important because it tackles our energy security issues, and is also by far the cheapest electricity generation to deploy in the country at the moment. With affordability at the forefront of all our constituents’ minds, it is right and proper that we try to deploy as much solar as we possibly can.

[Graham Stuart]

Of course, I had the Minister’s role just two and a half years ago. I think I agree with pretty much everything he has said so far, but there is a backlash because we are seeing so much high-quality land lost. We are seeing a cumulative impact, which, again, notionally, the Government say should be looked at, but they never seem to stop a project. There is also the issue of slave-labour supply chains.

I therefore invite the Minister to tighten up the rules on best and most versatile land, given that 60% of the land is not the best and most versatile. I also invite him to tighten up the rules so that there is real protection around cumulative impact, and to tighten up the rules on slave-labour supply chains. I think that he can still fulfil his ambition to see the infrastructure built and make sure that we have a system that is sufficiently rigorous so that communities are quieted. It will not stop every nimby everywhere, but at least it will give reassurance and show that there are real rules providing real protection, because right now that absence is causing scepticism right across this House and across the country.

[Michael Shanks]

I will come to several of those points. The right hon. Gentleman has always been more pragmatic than his party on many of these issues—I hope that does not do him a disservice—and I have always appreciated that. He is right that we want to try to find a place where we can build the infrastructure that we need but bring communities with us and not turn them away from the energy transition. That is really important.

I want to share some statistics, because individual applications often paint a picture of a much greater use of land across the country than is actually the case. At the end of September 2024—the latest set of figures I have—the land devoted to solar farms covered an estimated 21,000 hectares, which is around 0.1% of the UK’s total land. Even in our most ambitious deployment scenarios in the clean power action plan, we expect to get to 0.4% of deployment and 0.6% of agricultural land in the country. I recognise that there are local impacts from all these projects—I speak as a Member of Parliament from an area very close to some of the biggest onshore wind farms built under the previous Government—and that land use is a challenge across communities, but this is nevertheless a very small proportion of land across the country overall.

The right hon. Member’s second point was about supply chains, on which the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) rightly challenged us, and I will say two things. First, it was right that we accepted the amendment but also set up Great British Energy to not only be a leader in how we build supply chains, but to try to get a supply chain on solar panels here in the UK again and do due diligence on supply chains coming in from China. There is much more work to do and I do not pretend that the work is complete yet. Some initiatives, such as the solar stewardship initiative, need to go further to ensure that we get into the detail of supply chains.

Secondly, when we left Government in 2010, three companies were building in solar supply chains in the UK and, when we came back, there were none. That comes back to a really important point about re-industrialisation: if we want supply chain security, a line of sight on things such as human rights, and to create good jobs across the country, we need to invest in manufacturing capability. We need to nurture it and not let it go to the wall, which is where we get to particular risks.