Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I do not think the Minister fully appreciates just how much communities threatened by large-scale solar up and down the country feel that they are having things done to them and not with them. The No. 1 complaint that I have heard from campaign groups represented by Stop Oversized Solar up and down the land, including some in my constituency, concerns the threat to food security. When they try to engage, they keep being given this bogus figure of 1%, but if we carry on in the direction the Government are going in, by 2035 an area the size of Greater London will be covered in solar. That is equivalent to nearly 2,000 farms capable of producing 2 billion loaves of bread. When are we going to get the truth about the threat to food security from solar?

[Michael Shanks]

This is just the most absurd nonsense from the Conservatives, who I see are now crowdsourcing their energy policy on Twitter. It is not surprising that they come up with that sort of nonsense, when that is the information that they use. Even in the most ambitious deployment scenarios, all the statistics suggest that 0.4% of UK land would be occupied by solar. The Conservatives come to this House time and time and time again calling for bills to be brought down, but their policy would put them up and turn away the investment that is driving jobs and opportunities across the country. They had no answers in energy policy for 14 years, and they have learned absolutely nothing in opposition.