Farming: Financial Sustainability

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I thank the hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) for securing this important debate.

I welcome the Minister to his place. His natural passion and enthusiasm for this vital sector is evident in the zero parliamentary mentions he made of farming prior to his appointment, despite his having been elected in 2017. Nevertheless, I wish him all the best. For the good of the sector, I hope that he gets out and engages with the farming community more than his predecessor, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle).

This debate is about financial sustainability for the farming sector. Over the past two years, this Labour Government have continually pulled the rug out from under our farmers. We have had the sudden and unannounced closure of the SFI scheme, the rapid acceleration of delinked payments, the introduction of the family farm and family business tax, the jobs tax and, soon, the fertiliser tax. The result? Record farm closures under this Labour Government, and greater food insecurity than we have seen before.

Our farmers are fed up, worried and increasingly concerned about the future of their farming businesses and their livelihoods. I know that because, unlike the Government, the shadow DEFRA team and I have been out and about, travelling up and down the country, attending agricultural shows and speaking to farmers across the United Kingdom. We have been to the Royal Highland Show, the Royal Cornwall Show, the Royal Cheshire Show, the Lincolnshire Show, the Essex Country Show, the Balmoral Show in Belfast, and Cereals—just to name a few. The locations may vary, but the same theme comes out again and again: devastating cash flow challenges as a result of the fiscal decisions made by this Labour Government.

Unlike in other professions, income from agriculture can be volatile. Farm businesses are price takers, and the determinants of the prices they receive are out of their control. By the time the crops or livestock reach the market, prices may have dropped, but goods must be sold anyway. Income schemes such as the SFI are so important—but not in the Government’s eyes, with their chop-and-change approach. Under this Government, the schemes are not providing any reassurance or support to the majority of farmers. Last year, the Government closed applications for the SFI scheme with no warning, and yet again they have announced a budget that does not meet farmers’ requirements.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

Would my hon. Friend agree that another uncertainty is coming down the path? The Climate Change Committee is asking farmers to reduce livestock numbers by up to 40%. That would devastate and make unviable so many farms—complete madness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his reminder of the Conservative party’s record of failing rural Britain. I am very happy to take away the action he suggested. If we are to deliver our road map successfully, it will require lots of cross-Government working, and I am very committed to making that happen.

Let me address the fertiliser issue; I appreciate that major input costs are real source of worry for farmers. We are very conscious of the increases in fertiliser prices that have occurred because of the middle east conflict, and we are working actively to monitor the impacts on the agricultural supply chains. We have regular communication with domestic fertiliser suppliers, commodity traders and farming stakeholders, including the National Farmers Union, and we have been clear that we are committed to ensuring that markets function fairly.

We continue actively to monitor developments in the middle east, as well as other impacts on our food and farming sectors, including through ongoing engagement with industry leaders. My Department is aware that there are signs of some pressures easing but that prices still are above pre-conflict levels.

We recognise that these costs continue to be a significant issue for farmers; that issue was raised with me on my first day in this role, when I met with the NFU. The pressures that it is imposing are absolutely worth considering further. Whether through more effective use of technology or the adoption of more sustainable farming practices, we can better equip our farmers and growers to produce good food in a more resilient way, and this Government stand ready to help farmers to do that.

[Greg Smith]

Does the Minister accept that it is a choice made by this Government—maybe not by DEFRA, but by the Treasury—to bring in the carbon tax from 1 January? The Government cannot change events in the middle east, but they could choose to delay or scrap that tax.

[Stephen Morgan]

I remind Members that we currently have a good supply of fertiliser and are keen to support domestic production. The Government are live to the other issues that the hon. Gentleman raises; I will take them back to the Department, and am happy to write to him on his concerns.

The Government are also sharing information and guidance to support farmers to diversify sources of nutrients to reduce reliance on artificial fertilisers and strengthen long-term resilience by managing more effectively. DEFRA’s new nutrient management planning tool is already supporting our farmers by matching nutrients to crop and soil needs. That enables farmers to make the most of nutrient sources and to reduce their reliance on artificial fertilisers. More than 500 farms have used the tool since it was launched.

DEFRA has launched a consultation and call for evidence to inform how the Government modernise fertiliser production and the regulations around it, which will further improve future fertiliser supply options. We will continue to work with farmers to ensure that they become more resilient, through our innovation funds and equipment grants or our continued shift from area-based subsidy to environmental land management schemes.

Another issue raised in today’s debate was about fuel. Farmers have told the Government how important manageable fuel prices are to the financial sustainability of the farming sector and food security, and we have listened. While the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), worries about his selfies for social media, we are focused on taking decisive action to support farmers by slashing the fuel duty rate on red diesel from 10.18p to 6.48p per litre—its lowest rate in 20 years. That means that red diesel now benefits from an 88% tax discount, saving farmers more than £300 million a year.

We have also extended the 5p fuel duty cut until the end of this year, keeping taxes at a 16-year low and saving the average driver £120. My Department will continue to work actively with others to monitor developments in the middle east, including their impact on the supply and price of red diesel. We are committed to ensuring that the market functions fairly, and will continue our discussions with industry leaders, including the NFU and farming stakeholders.

There are real, recent issues that need to be addressed; I have heard from the stakeholders I have already met that additional pressures are affecting farmers. The Government are well aware of the impact of climate change -related extreme weather on the financial sustainability of farms in recent years—this week’s heatwave is a reminder of that. We are committed to working with farmers to deliver long-term solutions to the risks associated with extreme wet or dry weather, and to increase profitability, because farmers being able to run profitable businesses is good for the whole economy and vital for food security. That is why we are investing in farming schemes and grants to make farming more resilient to economic and environmental shocks, and to safeguard our long-term food security.

We have allocated a record £11.8 billion over this Parliament to sustainable farming and food production. Overall, farmers and land managers will benefit from an average of £2.3 billion a year through our farming and countryside programme.

Farming Road Map and Profitability Review

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds]

It is kind of the hon. Lady to think that I am so powerful that I could have a hand in that. One person in the House wants me sacked, but I am glad that she thinks I have that power. I do not have that power, but I do want to see the summit take place. I agree that it is really important to reduce the costs and the bureaucracy that we were left by the last Government.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

Farmers have been innovating since the dawn of time, and they really do not need a word salad document to tell them that it might be a good idea. I have listened carefully to the Secretary of State’s answers on fertiliser, both in terms of the current price shock and the impending additional shock, made by this Government, of carbon taxes on fertiliser. Surely, while there is lofty ambition for long-term innovation, there needs to be a direct answer and relief now on the shock that is going to come in January.

[Emma Reynolds]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at fertiliser prices, he will see that they have levelled off.

Thames Water

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds]

As I said in my statement, customers are at the front and centre of my consideration of this serious issue. The Environment Agency will continue to investigate any pollution incident and any breach of statutory obligations of any water company, including Thames Water, and will continue to take enforcement action against those companies, including the imposition of fines.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I have a huge list of complaints about Thames Water across Mid Buckinghamshire, and I am sure it is identical to that of the Secretary of State next door in Wycombe, so I add my voice to my hon. Friends’ calls for real detail about the plan, rather than just ambition. In the meantime, there is something that is causing Thames Water and every other water company to chase their tails: their inability to have a proper voice in the planning system. When a village such as Ickford in my constituency, which already has its sewage pumped away by road in tankers because the system just cannot cope, is told that it has to connect another 90, 100 or 150 properties, it is never going to work. Given the huge demand for house building and data centres in Buckinghamshire, what action will the Secretary of State take to ensure that the water companies can have their say and say no when they cannot connect areas?

[Emma Reynolds]

I thank my constituency neighbour for his question. Like him, I have had complaints about Thames Water in my constituency. With regard to his broader question, I reassure him that when we bring the clean water Bill to the House, there will be provisions for more intense regional planning, which involves water companies, local authorities and other stakeholders, so that we can avoid the sort of situation that he talks about.

Water Companies

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Emma Hardy]

My hon. Friend is right to be angry at the service that many customers have faced for years, and at the broken model we have had for a very long time. We need a fundamental reset—we have already made a huge number of changes since coming into government, and we as the Labour party should be proud of all those changes. As I have mentioned, we are looking at a transparent process for whether requests to move to a new model should go ahead, but that is for models such as not-for-profit.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I have many criticisms of the operating practices of Thames Water, but further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed), I am very concerned about the total dysfunctionality in how the planning system interacts with water companies. This is a problem now, even before Buckinghamshire is wrongly asked by this Government to build 95,000 homes. We have seen a lot of development in recent years—in the village of Ickford, for example, the wagon to pump sewage out and take it away by road has already become the norm. Does the Minister agree that if the Government are determined to build all these homes, water companies should get statutory consultee status for all planning applications? Otherwise, they are going to be chasing their tails rather than fixing the problems we already have.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I commend him on his interest and his insight. He is absolutely right, and we are learning from past SFI iterations and from what we are hearing from farmers to improve the SFI for all farmers and to ensure we can give better guidance and that everyone can have a share of the pie. We are also looking into a new local advice and collaboration offer, as well as considering how we can get the best environmental outcomes from the money we are spending.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

After the elephant in the room that is the farm-destroying family farm tax, the No. 1 issue that is raised with me by Mid Buckinghamshire farmers—not least at the Bucks county show last week—is the uncertainty over the future of the SFI. I do not think it is going to cut it with farmers to say that further details will be provided in due course. They need certainty and they need it now, so will the Minister come to the Dispatch Box and put a firm date on when farms will have that certainty, as well as assuring them that the new SFI will have food production at its heart?

[Daniel Zeichner]

The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that we will be making announcements on this very shortly. [Interruption.] We are picking up a disastrous mess inherited from the previous Government—this is absolutely true—who were quite cavalier about the way in which these schemes were run. We are having to clear up that mess, but I absolutely sympathise with farmers, who should not have been put in that position in the first place.

Independent Water Commission

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

I agree with my hon. Friend; it is a shame that no Reform Members have turned up, although perhaps it is not surprising because they did not bother mentioning this issue in their manifesto either. We did hear at the weekend that their leader, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), wants to hand £50 billion of taxpayers’ money to the owners of water companies. If we add that to its existing £80 billion of unfunded commitments, it comes to £130 billion. By my reckoning, that is almost double the amount that Liz Truss bet and lost on the economy when she crashed it and sent mortgages, prices and rents skyrocketing. Reform wants to double down on the bad bet.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I am genuinely all ears for any practical steps that can be taken to build on the Environment Act 2021 to clean up our waterways, but may I pick up the Secretary of State’s comments on the role, as he put it, of citizen scientists and local communities? In my constituency, water heroes like Doug Kennedy, who I joined in Nether Winchendon testing the River Thame a few weeks ago, have decades of real local knowledge on our waterways, as do the volunteers of the River Thame Conservation Trust. That powerhouse of local knowledge will be replicated up and down the country. Rather than just involving them as consultees, will the Secretary of State reflect on how they can get properly locked into local solutions to clean up our waterways?

[Steve Reed]

I support what the hon. Gentleman says about the Environment Act, which is a worthwhile piece of legislation passed by the previous Government. I also support what he says about ensuring that people have more involvement at community level. I will certainly take that on board as we work through the consultation.

Driven Grouse Shooting

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. Like the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I draw the House’s attention to the fact that I, like many hundreds of my constituents, am a member of both the Countryside Alliance and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, and I have been for many years, pre-dating my election in 2019. Likewise, I draw attention to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, largely from the previous Parliament.

It is a huge pleasure to speak in this debate. Mid Buckinghamshire does not have grouse moors, but shooting is important to us locally. From conversations with many of my constituents who shoot, I know that they travel to shoot grouse in Scotland, North Yorkshire and other moors around the country. Equipment—ammunition, cartridges and so on—will be purchased in our superb gun shops, such as the Oxford Gun Company, which, despite its name, is actually in the village of Oakley in Buckinghamshire, and that directly supports our local economy, too. I want to place on the record my firm support for grouse shooting in principle, not only as a traditional sporting pursuit, but as an activity that delivers measurable environmental, social and economic value to our countryside.

I will address the heart of the matter: the moorlands themselves. Over 75% of the world’s heather moorland is found in Britain. As the hon. Member for Strangford said, this unique landscape is our equivalent of a rainforest: fragile, irreplaceable and internationally important. These are not wild, untouched places; they are shaped and safeguarded by generations of active management, much of which is centred around grouse shooting.

Opponents of grouse shooting often speak of the uplands as if they are best left alone, but the science and the lived experience of those who work this land tell a different story. Controlled heather burning, rotational grazing and predator control are not just practices for the benefit of grouse but the very tools with which we maintain habitat for countless other species. Ground-nesting birds such as curlew, lapwing and golden plover, all of which are red listed for conservation concern, are between three and five times more abundant on managed grouse moors than on unmanaged land.

Moreover, grouse moor management is vital in the fight against wildfires. Controlled cool burns remove the tinder-dry heather that fuels devastating wildfires, which in recent years have destroyed vast swathes of peatland and released hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. The Government’s own figures show a sharp rise in wildfire incidents in 2025, with 48 reported by spring alone. Managed moors act as fire breaks. Unmanaged ones become kindling.

Some have raised concerns about moor burning and peatland drainage, but again the evidence shows that modern grouse moor managers are leading the charge in peat restoration. In the last decade, they have blocked nearly 3,000km of outdated agricultural drains and restored over 27,000 hectares of bare peat. Those actions actively sequester carbon, improve water quality and reduce downstream flood risk.

Let us not forget the human element. Grouse shooting underpins fragile rural economies. Across England and Scotland, it supports around 3,000 full-time equivalent jobs and injects over £52 million into moorland management annually. Hospitality businesses, equipment suppliers, game dealers and transport firms all benefit, often in communities where few other industries operate outside the tourist season. Socially, the benefits are also clear. Thousands of people participate in grouse shooting each year. It brings communities together, sustains rural traditions and keeps local schools, pubs and shops viable in areas that might otherwise face depopulation and decline.

What of the hen harrier, the emblem of those who seek to see grouse shooting banned? In 2023, a record number of hen harrier chicks fledged, the majority on managed grouse moors. That is not an accident, but the product of targeted conservation partnerships, predator control and habitat stewardship. BASC and others are funding brood management, habitat creation and even southern reintroduction efforts. Gamekeepers are not the enemy of the hen harrier; they are its strongest ally in the uplands.

Let me be clear: wildlife crime, including raptor persecution, is abhorrent and must be stamped out. We enjoy the red kites above Buckinghamshire, and I have yet to meet anyone who would even think of trying to harm one of those beautiful birds. Anyone who seeks to do so should be brought to justice.

[Olivia Blake]

I just feel that the hon. Gentleman is putting his head in the sand. Yes, there are more fledglings, but does he know what happened to them?

[Greg Smith]

The evidence is very clear that populations are up. I think all those who oppose grouse shooting, and who wish to see this petition as the gold standard, really should look at the evidence of the overall numbers in this country, which are up.

To return to the point about raptor persecution, this crime is not systemic; it is the work of a lawbreaking minority, and shooting organisations have rightly adopted a zero-tolerance approach. Anyone convicted should face the full force of the law.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman has red kites in his constituency, but we have sea eagles on the south coast. They have recently been reintroduced but sadly there have been cases of them being poisoned. Given its rural nature, I was somewhat surprised that my constituency of West Dorset had one of the highest numbers of signatories to the petition. I know the point has already been made about the need for legislation to protect the environment, but if people had more confidence in rural police prosecuting criminals who attack sea eagles, red kites or other wildlife, might not the PR battle for grouse shooting be a little easier to win?

[Greg Smith]

There are different pictures in different parts of the country when it comes to prosecution. I am very lucky in Buckinghamshire to have Thames Valley police, which takes this incredibly seriously—particularly its rural crime taskforce, which does a lot of good work in this area. However, I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point that the picture across the country is mixed, as in any walk of life, and that some forces need to do much better.

To ban grouse shooting would be to impoverish our uplands environmentally, economically and socially. This debate is not simply about sport, but about the stewardship of some of the most iconic landscapes in Britain. Grouse shooting is not the problem. It is a key part of the solution. As this debate has shown this afternoon, with voices not just from the official Opposition, but from the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the DUP quite clearly setting out the case for grouse shooting on all of those fronts, I think it is pretty clear where we stand.

Sustainable Farming Incentive

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner]

I hear the hon. Gentleman, but the fact that we have so many people in agreements, and so much land being farmed within them, shows that many people in this country have absolute confidence in what we are doing.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

How on earth does the Minister correlate his statement that he wants to work with the sector with the Government last night giving just 30 minutes’ notice to the NFU—the sector—of this shameful cut to the SFI budget? What does that say about DEFRA’s previous commitment to transparency, co-operation and co-design?

[Daniel Zeichner]

This process has been going on for five years now. Perhaps the hon. Member should have looked a bit more closely at what was about to happen.

Climate and Nature Bill

Greg Smith Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bowie]

I would never seek to argue with my hon. Friend, but actually the Bill does not do that. What the Bill does is set a limit at 100 MW, which even the largest solar farm does not quite reach, so there would still be a presumption in favour of large solar park developments. Shotwick solar park on the Welsh border, for example, is the largest in the country, and it is at 72.2 MW, so it would be automatically approved. That again speaks to the contradiction at the heart of the Bill: we cannot say that we want to protect farmland and the great British countryside while seeking to approve at pace large-scale renewable projects that would do the exact opposite.

[Greg Smith]

It is slightly worse than that. We heard the debate earlier about the word “and”. Many of these large-scale renewable energy projects such as battery storage are surrounded by such severe fencing that local nature—for example, deer runs—is severely disrupted or destroyed.

[Andrew Bowie]

My hon. Friend knows that I am in complete agreement on that, given that a significant number of renewable energy projects, battery storage facilities, substations and pylons have been proposed for my constituency as a result of the plans brought forward by the Government. He is, as ever, absolutely right.

The Opposition obviously cannot support the Bill. It would see jobs lost and moved abroad, and it would see decisions taken out of the hands of democratically elected politicians and placed into those of judicial activists and vague, unaccountable bodies. However, I am sorry to say that the lack of seriousness and the inconsistencies in the Bill, including a lack of understanding of how government works and an ignorance of energy markets and of how an increasing reliance on imports is bad for us not just economically but environmentally, mean that we cannot afford it.

The Bill would do great harm to British industry, undermine parliamentary democracy and consign future Governments to goals that are not unachievable but would be achieved on the back of devastation to our energy, food, national and economic security. It would also not protect the great British countryside. Despite the laudable and admirable aims of many right hon. and hon. Members who support the Bill, that is why we cannot support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

All too often in this place and in politics at large, what divides us is not necessarily the end result—in this case reducing emissions, halting the decline of nature and supporting nature’s recovery—but the means by which we get there.

I have some serious issues with the Bill. I say clearly and categorically for the record that I spend most of my time in this place and in my constituency arguing against the very things that cause nature’s decline in the beautiful Buckinghamshire countryside. I spend most of my time arguing against the unnecessary greenfield housing developments that concrete over our countryside and destroy nature. I argue against the massive industrial solar installations, battery storage facilities and substation upgrades that take away the farms next door and have fencing around them that disrupts the deer runs and is harmful and dangerous to nature. So many in this House have argued that those things are the solution to some of the challenges we face, but I do not accept that at all, and I do not accept that the Bill will help us get to the end goal that I think the vast majority of people want to see.

I am grateful to constituents who have lobbied me in favour of the Bill, such as the Speen Environmental Action Group. I sat down with them over the summer and we had a good discussion. I do not think we agreed on everything, but we absolutely agreed on the need for the right sort of action and measures that will get us to where we want to go.

From a legislative perspective, I would argue, as the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), did in his excellent speech, that we already have a legislative framework in which we can work. We have the Environment Act 2021. Almost five years ago to this day, in the previous Parliament, I stood somewhere on the other side of the Chamber and delivered my maiden speech on the Environment Bill. It is now an Act of Parliament, and it has a section explicitly about halting the decline in species populations by 2030 and increasing populations by at least 10% to exceed current levels by 2042.

We have the legislative framework. We now have to allow our great innovators to come up with the real solutions—ones that do not bring about the destruction of our countryside and nature. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), who has left his place, give an impassioned defence of an ancient woodland. It is, in fact, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew), but it was a good defence none the less. I thought to myself, “It’s quite rare that I agree with him, but I agree with him on this point.” But then I thought about my own constituency, and I thought, “Hang on.” There is a project that has destroyed many ancient woodlands, not just in Buckinghamshire but up and down the entirety of phase 1: High Speed 2. The vast majority of Members of the 2017 Parliament—the Labour Members, the Liberal Democrat Members, although there were not so many of them then, and the Members of other parties—all went through the voting Lobby to vote for the destruction of ancient woodland in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire. It is a position that we all have to reflect upon. As I said at the start, we can disagree with the means of getting somewhere, but I invite every right hon. and hon. Member to reflect on what they themselves have proposed or supported in the past, and the impact that has had on the nature challenges we face.

I will touch briefly on some of the issues with the targets in the Bill, which would have severe unintended consequences. My hon. Friend the shadow Minister set out many of them in detail, but it is worth double underlining that if British industry is forced too far, too fast towards targets it cannot meet, that will simply drive those businesses, those jobs and those innovators overseas. It will not combat any global challenge; it will just move it somewhere else in the world. I cannot believe that the sponsors of the Bill, or anyone else, actually want to see that happen.

Fossil fuels will be needed for decades to come. I have been a vocal advocate of de-fossilisation, both in my time on the Transport Committee in the last Parliament and in this Parliament. My argument is that we have the technology out there, but Government regulation, not just in our own country but worldwide, is preventing us from enabling it to grow. We will need fossil fuels. We will need something to power the 1.4 billion internal combustion engine vehicles that will still be on the roads worldwide after the ban on new petrol and diesel engines in this country. I put it to the House that the solution is the synthetic fuel industry: making fuel literally out of air and water, using the Fischer-Tropsch process.

[Luke Taylor]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the number of Liberal Democrats in this place; I think that we were a very effective method of de-fossilisation on 4 July. On the point about synthetic fuels, does he agree that the measures in the Bill, particularly the ones to encourage sustainable aviation fuels and alternatives for internal combustion engines, will spur investment in those technologies exactly as he wants to see?

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. On his first point, all I will say is: not in Mid Buckinghamshire. They tried, but they got 25% of the vote.

To answer the hon. Gentleman’s serious point, I do not see anything in the Bill that challenges the zero emission vehicle mandate. The ZEV mandate is obsessed with testing at tailpipe rather than whole-system analysis, which gets in the way of developing synthetic fuels and greenlighting the great innovators in this country and worldwide to get on with developing that technology. If we put a synthetic fuel through an internal combustion engine, there is still carbon at tailpipe, but it is the same volume of carbon that will be recaptured through atmospheric carbon capture to make the next lot of fuel. It is carbon neutral. It is one volume of carbon in a perpetual circle, yet I see nothing in the Bill that will enable those great innovators to move ahead and get—as some of them claim they can—cost parity with the fossil fuel equivalent within a decade.

[Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)]

I would like to challenge the hon. Member. This Bill sets a very clear direction for what this country wants to achieve, and that will help innovators and businesses to know where to go, which they were not sure about under the last Government. I would like him to think about that.

[Greg Smith]

I hear the point the hon. Lady makes, but I fundamentally disagree. We already have the direction—it was the last Conservative Government who were the first in the western world to legislate for net zero by 2050 and who passed the Environment Act. The answers to the challenges we face in the development of synthetics do not sit in the Bill before us today. They sit in other legislation, which I admit I voted against in the last Parliament, but it is the ZEV mandate that gets in the way, because it fails to look at whole-system analysis. Who else wants to have a go?

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

Businesses and car manufacturers said that the previous Conservative Government’s chopping and changing on car manufacturing made it really hard for them to achieve those scientific and technological innovations.

[Greg Smith]

The hon. Lady makes a point about the change that happened in the last Parliament, but she is allowing the facts to get in the way of a good argument. The reality out there is that car manufacturers are finding that, aside from fleet sales, they cannot sell electric vehicles. Consumer demand for them is through the floor—nobody wants them. That is part of the fundamental problem. If we take the solution that this Bill wants to speed up and put on steroids, the innovators get blocked, and everybody simply jumps on the technology that is available today, which is sometimes not the best technology to achieve the climate and nature goals that we in this House all want to see.

The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) spoke of the value of nuclear, which is another great example. We should look at the damage that grand-scale solar and battery storage cause to nature. We need 2,000 acres of solar panels to produce enough electricity for about 50,000 homes on current usage, but we need only two football pitches for a small modular reactor that will serve 1 million homes, so why are we messing about with solar? That is the fundamental point we should all reflect on when we think about the Bill. We must think about the legislative framework we need to achieve these goals and then look at more practical solutions.

Storm Bert

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

It was a great pleasure to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency and meet firefighters and other emergency responders so that, together with her, I could thank them personally for the work that they always carry out in circumstances like these. She has referred to the duty that may be required of the fire service and other emergency services to respond to such circumstances. Currently, there is a power but no duty. I will be engaging with colleagues in the Home Office to see whether we need to put in place such a duty. I will be sure to keep my hon. Friend updated as those conversations progress.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

A couple of weeks ago I held a roundtable with some Mid Buckinghamshire farmers on the measures required to mitigate flooding, especially after extreme weather events such as Storm Bert this weekend. At the top of the list was the point that my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) made about dredging and river capacity. On top of that, however, communities in Buckinghamshire such as Calvert Green and Fleet Marston are being flooded for the first time in decades as a result of some of the big infrastructure that is being built, particularly HS2. It seems that HS2 will concrete over a field, completely unaware that that will have a knock-on effect on farmland next door. Will the Secretary of State commit to working with the Transport Secretary and, I suggest, the Deputy Prime Minister, given their plans to concrete over the countryside, to ensure that where construction takes place, there are proper—and I really mean proper—flood mitigation measures?

[Steve Reed]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We need to look at dredging and other means of mitigating the risk of flooding, and he is quite right that that needs to be done across Government. We will have those conversations and will ensure that measures are taken to protect communities as much as possible from the more severe weather events that we are seeing as a result of climate change.