Large-scale Solar Farms

James Gray Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dr Johnson]

I agree with my hon. Friend and thank him for supporting my calls for the Minister to ensure that the guidance is tightened up to protect our farmland. It is clear that developers are taking advantage of the absence of rigid and specific Government guidance to protect BMV land and proposing ever larger solar installations as NSIPs in unsuitable places. As one developer commented:

“That’s the neat thing about the NSIP process. You put all the powers you need into one consent and have relative certainty”

—certainly in their view—

“of the consent being granted.”

Although the upgrade of substations within the electrical network is intended to be a positive thing that enhances local infrastructure, in my area it has inadvertently attracted speculators looking to profit from the farmland. When substations undergo upgrades, a cluster of large solar applications tends to emerge nearby. The approach is cheaper for companies seeking to complete solar projects, but it does not mean they are being built in the right places. Unfortunately, the consequence is a shift from a few small, unobtrusive solar panels on brownfield sites, and smaller amounts on poor-quality farmland and fields here and there, to massive industrial installations in completely the wrong places based merely on grid connection. Such industrial projects significantly alter the landscape, sometimes entirely swallowing whole villages, transforming once green fields into sterile expanses of photovoltaic glass. The companies have no ties to the land and no stake in its preservation.

One issue that I have raised with the Minister previously —it was brought up by my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell)—is that developers are having the land grades analysed themselves. They appear to be finding that the land is of lower grade than DEFRA and others thought it was.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Surprise, surprise!

[Dr Johnson]

Surprise, surprise indeed. There is a clear incentive for a developer to report a lower grade of land in this context. The Minister has said to me that he would take steps to review that; will he update the House on what progress has been made?

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[Rachel Maclean]

I really enjoy hearing my right hon. Friend speak about the matter, because more than anyone else he has brought the concept of beauty and its impact on our wellbeing into public policy. I thank him for that.

I will deliberately move away from the concept of blaming people for being nimbys, because unless we understand how human psychology works, we will not be able to solve the problem of where to put things that nobody wants. There is another way to think about this. It is much easier and cheaper to install infrastructure on a virgin field, rather than to engineer it somewhere else in the built environment or on brownfield. That is more favourable, but it will take cash.

If anyone tells us that we can simply complete a project on brownfield for the same cost as on greenfield, they have no idea what they are talking about. Yes, I am looking at Labour, because that is essentially Labour’s plan for reforming the planning system. Why? Brownfield is brown for a reason: something else was there before. That something else needs to be removed and the site put back to a clean condition, which involves removing toxic materials and engineering problems.

That costs money, and that is why we have Government agencies and grants funded to the tune of £10.5 billion, in the case of Homes England, to do exactly that. However, that money is our money; it is taxpayers’ money. If we want more of it, we must spend more money on it, which means less money to spend on all the other things that voters want and the Opposition have promised, such as the NHS and so on.

By the way, Labour has repeatedly said that it wants to build on the green belt, or the grey belt, whatever that is. I will be honest: there is some merit in that argument, but that is because we are already doing that. It is Government policy, when it is done sensibly and in consultation with local communities and backed by Government funding. It is happening all over the country. Where it is not happening is in—surprise, surprise—Labour-run planning authorities, most notably London. Sadiq Khan is woefully behind on all his housing targets, even though he has been generously subsidised to the tune of 4 billion quid by taxpayers from around the country who are not lucky enough to live in London but are subsidising his frankly useless delivery record.

What is sad and shameful about this is that the need for housing and the cost of it is acute in London. The so-called housing crisis, which is just as much an immigration crisis as a housing crisis, is worse in London. In fact, if the Labour Mayor of London built enough houses in the capital, we could meet the annual national quota with room to spare and prevent speculative green belt development in the home counties and around the country, such as in the areas we represent. If we want a planning system that works with local people, we need to take a step back, look at our policy landscape and ask ourselves about the incentives that are driving these unfavourable outcomes.

Taking all the politics out of this, we are talking about human nature and behaviour. It is an illustration of the tragedy of the commons. Projects such as solar farms are needed to meet communal goals such as net zero, and most people agree that renewable energy is a good idea.

[James Gray]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about a strategic review. Does she agree that we need a national policy on solar farms? Do the Government want them to be on a large scale and out in the middle of the countryside, or do they want them to be on smaller sites? At the moment there is no national policy for the matter. Should one not be brought in with no further delay?

[Rachel Maclean]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend; he is completely right. I think most of us will make the same point, and I am sure the Minister will update us.

I want to briefly touch on environmental issues. We need to talk about the environmental agencies and the proliferating plethora of reasons for objecting to development on environmental grounds. We have a number of agencies, most notably Natural England and the Environment Agency, but we have not seen them do anything useful such as protecting farm land, our green space, our precious environment and nature or tackling projects that we are all concerned about in our local areas. What they are actually doing is inventing and coming up with ridiculous ideas like “nutrient neutrality”, which is holding up 100,000 much-needed houses across the country in areas where people are desperately screaming out for them. Guess who voted against the proposals we brought forward to tackle that? Of course, it was Labour. If they were serious about unblocking development and house building, they could have acted on that.

I accept that there is a need for regulation and enforcement, but we should direct our attention to the huge number of quangos and agencies indulging in mission creep, way outside what was originally envisaged. We have woken up and found that the European convention on human rights is now regulating on climate change for some people in Switzerland who have said that it is violating their human rights.

We believe in conserving; that is what the Conservatives do. But we should focus on conserving plants, trees, nature, wildlife, landscapes and the green belt. We should not ever be increasing highly paid bureaucratic jobs. These are people who just want to conserve their own organisation and its multitude of rules and regulations. We need to go back to our core Conservative values and ask why we have allowed the state to create so many of these laws. We cannot really blame people for using the protections we have given them. It is human nature. That is why we need to go back to the drawing board on how we are using our land.

I conclude by thanking the House for holding this debate. It is a complex and lengthy subject, but for the avoidance of doubt, I oppose the proposals in my constituency. I recognise that there are no easy, sound-bite answers, but my constituents deserve to be listened to, and I will be a voice for them. They cannot be denigrated for standing up for their local area and caring about it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) made the point eloquently that that is why they moved to the area. These people worked very hard, saved up to buy a house and moved to a desirable area. We are their voice and we will fight for them.

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[Greg Smith]

As ever, my right hon. Friend hits the nail precisely on the head. The risk to tenant farmers through the pricing mechanisms that we are seeing—through the sheer plain economics—is severely stacked against their interests. We must look at the volume of farms in this country that are tenanted rather than owned; the more tenant farms we lose, the greater the slide in domestic food security we will see, and the current figure of around 60% of self-sufficiency will drop very rapidly indeed. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right.

To achieve the set target of 75 GW from solar installations by 2035, more than 300,000 acres across the country would be required. It is no secret that the rural economy, under pressure from, for example, rising input prices and many other things, has already faced significant challenges in recent years. Left with no viable options, some people have been forced to sell or leave their land, in the process guaranteeing that it will almost certainly never return to food-producing status. Yet across all of those estates—the farms and all of that land—the barn roofs are empty and blank.

Smaller stand-alone solar is less impactful, quicker and easier to install, does not risk damaging the local infrastructure and provides an additional, reliable source of income for struggling farms. I am in no way saying that farmers with 10, 20 or 30 acres of unproductive land should not, in consultation with their local planning authority and local communities, be able to utilise land that is not useful for producing food any more. They should be able to put solar on their rooftops. But the fundamental point is that no amount of solar will revive the fortunes of some of the farms that are struggling —quite the opposite.

Time and again I hear the baseless argument from developers—this point has already been developed in this debate—that anything less than grade 3a land should be given over because they believe it to be incapable of growing food. I disagree. Grade 3b land can be very productive; I know that, because the bulk of my constituency that sits in the vale of Aylesbury sits on blue clay. That means the vast majority of it gets a grade 3b land rating, but it remains perfectly capable in many cases, having been nurtured, loved and looked after for generations, of producing 10-tonne-a-hectare wheat harvests. Many farmers in other parts of the country on grade 2 land or even grade 1 land would bite their right hand off to get such a yield at harvest time.

[James Gray]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time. He makes an extremely important point about the definition of grades 3a and 3b. Most people in the countryside know that one field might be half 3a and half 3b. I am told that Natural England does not have a map. It does not even have a clear definition of what is 3a and 3b. Does he agree with me that the worst outrage of all is that when these speculative solar farm developers come along, it is their surveyor—they pay the surveyor—who decides on the quality of the land? It is hardly surprising that they find in favour of it all being 3b.

[Greg Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right on that point. It is almost as if he had been looking over my shoulder and seeing what was on the next page of my speech. I was coming to precisely that. Overpaid surveyors, the so-called experts who come in with a clear mandate of what they have to do, have been hired to test soil quality. They do not even go out into the middle of the field. They do not go to the most versatile part of the farm where the crop actually grows. We have caught them red-handed in Buckinghamshire testing the headland, the very edge of the field, They will always get a lower score from that test if they have not gone to the bit of the field where the crop grows. They deliberately test the edge of fields and the headland to get the poorer quality result. This would not be a speech from me without mentioning this: it is the same tactic that HS2’s contractors use in other parts of my constituency to get similar results to prove similar points. It is not unique to solar developers.

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[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) has said it all in a most powerful and conclusive speech. It covered most of the ground superbly, and I congratulate him on it. Prior to that we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson). I congratulate her on calling this very important debate at an extremely important moment. The way she laid the case out was masterful. They really were extremely good speeches, and I thank my hon. Friends for them. I will try not to repeat what they had to say.

It seems to me that we are at a tipping point in this whole debate. Within the last few days, I have noticed a few very interesting remarks by the Government on the question of large-scale solar. On Tuesday, they answered a question from me, and my hon. Friend the Minister, who will reply to the debate, commented that he thought the question of large-scale solar was

“a very interesting topic, and one that we are listening to.”—[Official Report, 16 April 2024; Vol. 748, c. 153.]

“One that we are listening to” is an important thing for a Government Minister to say. May I congratulate him on having the courage and the conviction to come out on to Parliament Square a moment ago to see many of my constituents, who are out there complaining about the Lime Down solar farm proposed in my constituency? That demonstrates that he is ready to listen. I am sure that he will have noted how many Conservative Members of Parliament are here today, and how few from other constituencies. This is a huge issue for all of us.

That same day, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), who is now the Energy Minister—I congratulate him on his promotion—said during Question Time that

“solar projects should be directed to previously developed or non-greenfield land.”—[Official Report, 16 April 2024; Vol. 748, c. 149.]

That was a very straightforward remark from the Minister.

And then, at Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday, the Prime Minister said that we do not want to see more solar on greenfield sites. He said that it is the cheapest form of energy, but we want to see it

“on brownfield sites, rooftops and away from our…agricultural land.”—[Official Report, 17 April 2024; Vol. 748, c. 303.]

So in one week, we have seen three Ministers, including the Prime Minister, stipulating that they agree with the points we are trying to make in this room today. My instinct is that we are at a tipping point, and the Government have realised that what they have achieved is a huge concreting- over of our countryside in very largely Conservative-represented constituencies, such as mine. They are beginning to realise that that is an enormous political mistake.

Incidentally, I was very much encouraged by a recent report from the Planning Inspectorate on a planning application for a large solar farm in Bedfordshire. It said that the Secretary of State agrees that this solar farm would result in a large change

“to the character of the land which would impinge upon the openness of the Green Belt”.

He believes that there would be

“a significant adverse effect upon both the spatial and visual qualities”

of the greenfield, and that development on the site would be

“visible in the wider landscape…harmful to purpose”

and encroach on the countryside as defined under planning law.

It seems to me that the Planning Inspectorate as well as Ministers are beginning to realise that this is going wrong. I very much welcome the NPPF, broadly speaking, but did not quite follow the arguments with regard to large-scale solar. The Minister may have to consider redesigning the NPPF in some detail after this debate and the other debates we are about to engage on. There are about 40 colleagues with large-scale solar farms in their constituencies, and I am ready to work with them on a national basis. However, as other colleagues have said today, there is nothing wrong with being a nimby.

I would like to make some brief remarks about a new application in a place called Lime Down in my constituency. Incidentally, can we please tell the public relations spin doctors who work for these developers that using names like “Lime Down”, “Poplar’s Ash” or “Birds’ Lea” to disguise the fact that they are industrialising the countryside will not work? In my constituency, they have used the name “Lime Down”. That application—many of my colleagues have spoken of similar experiences today—includes some 2,000 acres of panels, a further 2,000 or 3,000 acres that will be blighted because they are between different patches, and a 30-mile connection down the road to the substation in Melksham, which is the nearest bit of the grid we can get to. It will be 3 million panels—just think of the HGVs required to get them into the middle of the countryside. We are talking about a bit of countryside in the Cotswolds that runs down the historic Roman Fosse way. Some of the finest buildings, farms and landscapes in the land will be blighted by this application. We are totally opposed to it.

I called a public meeting the other day in Malmesbury town hall. I was delighted that 750 people came; not many of my colleagues can remember a meeting with 750 people turning up. People are extremely angry about what is being proposed for the so-called Lime Down area. I was delighted that they took the trouble to come to the meeting that evening. This is a huge issue in my constituency, and we must see what we can do to stop it.

If I may differentiate myself slightly from some colleagues, we in Wiltshire are already taking our fair share of solar. Eight of the largest solar farms in England, and I suspect in Europe, are in Wiltshire; most of them are in my constituency in the north half. All told, we have 54 solar farms in production already. The target for the county is 570 MW; we are already doing 590 MW, so we have exceeded our county target. We have two or three very large-scale ones, such as Lyneham, with 250 acres, and RAF Wroughton, with something like 200 acres of solar farm. We are already making a huge contribution to the national effort towards solar. The 2,000 acres proposed for Lime Down would bust the target entirely and would be wholly unacceptable to people in my area.

As colleagues have mentioned, people are particularly upset because this is not an environmental matter or some effort to save the globe. It is funded by Macquarie, an Australian funding house—the so-called kangaroo vampires. Macquarie was most recently responsible for Thames Water—not a great success—and the fact that it is behind this proposal demonstrates that it is simply about money. The compensation proposed for farmers alone is £80 million, and we estimate the cost of getting the links through to the substation to be a further £25 million, so it will have spent £100 million before one panel is built.

We are talking about a multibillion-pound investment with very substantial returns for the Wall Street spivs who stand behind it. I do not think that the people of Wiltshire should allow that. The people behind it are not there for environmental reasons at all, although they may claim to be. They claim to be biodiversity-friendly and all that stuff, but it is absolute PR spin and total nonsense. They are there because there is an enormous amount of money in it. I do not see why we should compromise our environmental principles by allowing those people to come into our countryside and do what they propose.

Most of the salient points have already been made by colleagues. One reason why we do not want these proposals is the landscape: nothing could be finer than the south Cotswolds in my constituency. That landscape must be preserved. Several hon. Friends have spoken passionately about food security, and they are absolutely right. We are a very productive agricultural area—mainly beef and sheep, but also pigs and quite a bit of arable. Why should we give that up in favour of solar, when the contribution that solar makes to energy security is extremely small? I think 3% of national electricity is produced by solar.

[Dame Karen Bradley]

Another choice needs to be made when it comes to solar, which relates to the use of slave labour in the production of many solar panels and the materials that go into them. We should not have to make a choice between being environmentally friendly and respecting human rights by ensuring that forced labour is not active in supply chains.

[James Gray]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. If I remember rightly, we heard on the Floor of the House earlier this week that it is believed that Uyghur slave labour is being used in China for the production of those panels. They are then being shipped here on huge ships, and then they go on to lorries. They are extremely environmentally unfriendly in their production.

I will tell the House another thing that is extremely environmentally unfriendly. Macquarie says that in 40 years’ time the solar farm will no longer be used, that it will be demolished and that the land will be returned to agriculture. There are two or three things I want to say about that.

First, the chances of Messrs Macquarie still being here and living up to that promise are extremely remote. The farms are sold week after week, from one financial house to the next. The chances are zero that some nice company will come along in 40 years’ time and say, “Thanks very much, North Wiltshire: you’ve done your stuff and now we’re going to take these things away and return it to how it was.” It cannot happen, particularly because it is likely that the technology will move forward in the meantime. These things will very probably be out of date in five or 10 years’ time. Who will then remove them? Who will remediate the land? Nobody. There will be no such person.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

My hon. Friend is making a good point about the obsolescence of products over time. Does he have any electrical appliances in his home, or is he aware of any, that have lasted for 40 years and are still useful?

[James Gray]

There is some very interesting correspondence in The Daily Telegraph at the moment about household items that are surviving for 40 years, but there are precious few. And then what happens? How do we dispose of them? That is the other great problem: even if the land is restored after 20 or 40 years, there is no known means of disposing of the panels under national planning policy. Do they go to landfill? What happens to them? Nobody seems to know. There is no known solution.

Our descendants will curse us for covering the countryside in these vast vanity mirrors with no known means of remediation. When we are long dead and our children and grandchildren are inheriting them, what a mess that will be. What will happen, incidentally, is that some planner will say, “It’s a brownfield site now, so we’ll turn it into a new town or factory,” or something else that we do not want. The way these things are created is worrying. The point about Uyghur slave labour is extremely important, and the question of disposal has not yet been answered.

I have two or three asks of the Minister about matters on which we need laser-sharp attention to detail. The first relates to the quality of land that is allowed to be used for solar farms. About two years ago, the then Secretary of State for DEFRA, my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee, and I pressed him on the point. He said that 3a and 3b would definitely not be used for solar. I asked him three or four times, and he reiterated that answer. As the Secretary of State, he made it absolutely plain that 3a and 3b may not be used for solar.

Unfortunately, my right hon. Friend had to write to me a couple of weeks later to say that he had made a small mistake, which his officials had picked him up on, and that he now realised that only 3a would not be used. None the less, the fact that the Secretary of State for DEFRA thought that it was all grade 3 land is itself important. We have talked about the fact that the land is being surveyed by people who are paid by the developers. It is hardly surprising that they find in favour, and the fact that they go around the headland rather than the productive centre of the field is extraordinary. Anyhow, 3a and 3b are both productive agricultural land, and we must find a way of examining precisely how that is defined and what exactly the mapping is. I am told that Natural England does not have a map of 3a and 3b land. It should. It does not even have a clear definition of what it is. We need a laser focus on the kind of land that we allow solar farms to be on.

Secondly, I want to hear from the Minister on the cumulative effect of solar farms. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) said, there are many small applications that, together, come to a very large one. I slightly disagree with her: I would rather my district or county council were deciding on the matter, because at least then it would be local. If it is a vast one decided by the Secretary of State, we have no way of countering it. However, my right hon. Friend was quite right to say that when we put all the applications together, they come to a much bigger thing than any of them is individually. The Government might therefore like to give some thought to the cumulative effects of solar farm applications, so that they strengthen the presumption against the totality coming to more than they would otherwise allow.

Thirdly, I would like a comment from the Government on grid capacity. I am told that in the south-west and Wiltshire particularly, the grid is already near its capacity; there is no more room for solar farms to go into it. None the less, speculative developers apply for planning permission and then sell their options to other speculators, despite the fact that the grid cannot take the electricity. This is financial shenanigans: it is fiddling around with money. People say, “We’ve got planning permission on these 2,000 acres in North Wiltshire and we now want to sell it to you, the next financial shenanigans individual.” They may say, “You never know—maybe down the road, it will work,” but they know perfectly well that there is no capacity in the grid. The Government ought to pay some attention to whether grid capacity could be a pertinent factor in considering these applications.

I know that the Minister is in a quasi-judicial position and cannot comment on any individual application or any particular site, particularly during the purdah in the lead-up to the local elections. I very much respect that, but I hope that he has understood the strength of feeling on the issue among all Conservative colleagues, including many who are not here today. Many of them are Ministers and may feel constrained. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) feels equally strongly about the Lime Down application; of course she cannot say so publicly, but I did clear it with her beforehand that I could mention that in passing. A great many colleagues feel very strongly indeed about the issue.

I hope that the efforts that have been made in the past couple of weeks will have brought home to the Minister what a very important issue this is and how very strongly the Conservative party and Conservative Members of Parliament feel about it. I hope very much that, in the next few months available to him, he will find ways of bringing about some of the changes that have been discussed today, whether they be on cumulative effect, on land supply or on the general principle of solar. I hope he will find ways of bringing in nudges to the inspectorate to say, “These are the things that Ministers believe should or should not happen,” so the inspectorate will be more inclined to turn a thing down, rather than being inclined to accept it, as happens at the moment.

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[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.

[James Gray]

On a point of order, Mr Henderson. Am I not right in thinking that it is normal in such debates for a spokesman from the other main parties in this Parliament to respond to the debate? The Liberal Democrats believe that they feel strongly on this issue, yet there is not one Liberal Democrat Back Bencher or shadow Minister here. Is that because they do not like the policy, because they cannot answer the debate, or because they were not invited? Why are there no Liberal Democrats here?

[Gordon Henderson (in the Chair)]

The hon. Gentleman will know that that is not a point of order. He has made his point, so I will call Dr Alan Whitehead.

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[Dr Whitehead]

Yes, indeed. As the right hon. Member will know, solar is now not looking for subsidy from the Government in the way that, as the right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal mentioned, it was a number of years ago. It might be that we ought to look at how we can direct the best use of land and facilities for solar, by reintroducing incentives and disincentives that can go into solar development for the future. I would emphasise that that is all in the gift of Government to bring about, in terms of changes to how planning, underwriting and frameworks are organised. We mentioned the land use framework, which has still not come forward from DEFRA. All those things can play a much more substantial role in getting the balance right about where we put what is an imperative to develop for the future.

Some of the questions that have been raised are about not so much solar itself, but, among other things, the cumulation of particular sites in particular places. Of course, there is not anything in planning arrangements that can easily deal with the question of cumulation. Again, that needs to be put into the context of a wider land use planning arrangement for the future. I am from a constituency that has one farmer, although we are not allowed to recognise who that farmer is in the census because we are not allowed to record one farmer in the census return; it has to be two farmers or no farmers. However, I do understand that it is a real issue when there is a cumulation of a number of these things in rural constituencies, and they can see no benefit of that cumulation for their local populations.

Again, it may be within the gift of Government to mitigate that problem by enabling local communities to benefit from the output of the particular farms in their area. Notwithstanding that, it is certainly the case that cumulation has come about not just because of developers’ lust for very large schemes, but because at the moment those are some of the only places where they can get decent connections in the near future. For example, Lincolnshire was the site of two power stations—Cottam and West Burton—which have now closed, but it still has good, high-level grid connections.

Therefore, there are schemes that might come forward in other parts of the country that do not have such good connections, which are being put on the backburner just because developers can get particular connections right now. That is also in the gift of the Government to sort out. They should get the connections in the country on a regularised basis so that the people bringing forward their solar developments actually have a choice of where to put their connection based on the best site for their development, rather than just looking at the economics of getting a connection right this minute.

[James Gray]

There is a perversity here, of course, which is that the further away a site is from the input into the grid, the bigger it has to be. Because Lime Down, the one in my constituency, is 30 miles away from a link into the grid, it has to be at least 2,000 acres, probably more, in order to pay for the connection.

[Dr Whitehead]

That is certainly true, but a much wider issue is the fact that connections in this country are pretty much available on a lottery basis. At the distribution network operator level, most of the capacity in most DNOs is taken up, and at the national grid level, the connections are entirely dependent on where the lines go. They do not necessarily go to where people want to connect up, and they are also very much at the limit of their capacity at the moment. A national plan to enable those connections onshore to be distributed equally across the country would go a long way to facilitating much better distribution of the wind and solar projects that we want to see for the future.

Although I do not represent a rural constituency myself, I have great sympathy with the problems of accumulation with solar development. The solution, however, is not to throw solar out; it is to do a number of the things that I have mentioned this afternoon—to reach our target and secure the equitable deployment of solar across the country to manage our electricity future positively.

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[Dr Whitehead]

I think the hon. Lady will forgive me for not being the Government right at this minute. It is not my responsibility to set out what the Government would do for the future; it is my responsibility to respond to this debate as the Opposition.

I have already said what we want to do in terms of planning land use and arrangements for the deployment of solar in a much more methodical way, and bringing forward arrangements that can, for example, make rooftop and brownfield solar much more achievable, to alter the balance of advantage and disadvantage for deployment across the country. That is probably all the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham can expect me to say about what we will do in government, but I would add that the Government could do that today, so I hope the Minister will tell us what he will do in terms of that balancing to get solar deployed in the future.

[James Gray]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way a second time. I have been listening very carefully to his extremely interesting speech, but I must admit to being a little confused about what Labour party’s policy is on these matters. Let me ask him straightforwardly: will the incoming Labour Government —if there is one—be in favour of large-scale solar farms in the countryside or against them?

[Dr Whitehead]

That is a really interesting question. It is not necessarily the case that there will be an incoming Labour Government, but it is nice to hear the hon. Gentleman declare that there will be; that is really helpful. Should there be an incoming Labour Government, we will want to ensure we reach our targets of solar deployment equitably for the country as a whole. If that means bringing in new legislation, guidance and rules to allow that distribution to take place equitably, that is what we will do. As I am sure he will understand, the detail would take about three quarters of an hour to unpack, so we will have to leave it for now. I am very happy to have a cup of tea with him in the not-too-distant future and set all that out in some detail if he would find that interesting.

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[James Gray]

We had an extensive consultation in Wiltshire, and I went along to all the meetings with the PR people who have to do such things. I said to each of them, “Will you take account of the fact that most people here do not want this thing to happen at all? We want to stop it. We want to keep the green fields.” They said, “No, we can’t consider that. All we can consider is the design of the solar farm.” The consultation process is bogus.

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 16th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bowie]

Unlike the Opposition, we like to work with and listen to communities around the country. We believe in local consent for projects. It should be up to local communities to decide whether and how much onshore wind they want in their area. The Opposition do not like to talk about this, but we must remember that in 2010, a pitiful 7% of electricity came from renewables—that is up to 50% under this Government.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

7. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of solar farms on local communities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Andrew Bowie)]

As with any new development, solar projects may impact communities. The planning system considers all perspectives when balancing local impacts with national need. It is important that local areas benefit from hosting net zero infrastructure. Many developers already offer community benefit packages.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

If the Minister had wanted to see the impact that a massive solar farm, such as the so-called Lime Down carbuncle in my constituency, will have on local people, he should have come to Malmesbury town hall last week, where 750 people were protesting against this appalling plan in North Wiltshire. It is going to be 2,000 acres of panels, 3 million panels, 5,000 acres blighted, and 30 miles to the nearest connection down at Melksham. It is an absolutely disgraceful proposal. It comes at a time when Wiltshire has eight out of 10 of the largest solar farms. We already have enough, vastly exceeding our county target for solar production. Will the Minister consider the cumulative effect of all these solar farms? Will he ask the National Infrastructure Commission to take into account the cumulative effect of solar farms when considering such applications?

[Andrew Bowie]

I very much thank my hon. Friend for that question. He raises a very interesting topic, and one that we are listening to. The project he speaks to is at the pre-application stage. An application is expected to be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate between January and March 2025. Due to my quasi-judicial role in determining applications for development consent, it is not appropriate to comment on any specific matters. I am aware that some of his constituents are coming to Parliament this Thursday and I will be happy to meet them to discuss their concerns.

Planning and Solar Farms

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dr Johnson]

As ever, my right hon. Friend is right and has read my mind—I was going to move on to talk about food production.

I am particularly concerned about the use of good agricultural land because farming is a cornerstone of my constituency. It does not just form the backbone of the economy in my constituency, but it has evolved to underpin the area’s very culture. The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have revealed the fragility of the global food market, so it is more important than ever that we make strides towards becoming agriculturally self-sufficient.

I am informed by the Greater Lincolnshire Local Enterprise Partnership that Lincolnshire alone produces 30% of the UK’s vegetables and 18% of its poultry, and is responsible for 12% of the country’s total food production—all from a county covering less than 3% of the UK’s land mass. Lincolnshire, without a doubt, has some of the UK’s best and most versatile farmland, yet it seems to be particularly targeted by large solar farms.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler) is not able to take part in this debate today, but she told me that she has similar issues in her constituency, and is particularly aggrieved by the loss of good agricultural land. I am aware of the concerns of Members of the House of Lords, too, including Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who told me of his concerns about the use of good-quality agricultural land local to him for solar farms.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is quite right. The national planning policy framework has a presumption against the use of good quality agricultural land, but that is not the problem—3a land is exempt from solar. The problem is slightly less good quality land, 3b in particular. In the old days the Government said solar was banned from 3b, but they have now changed their mind and are allowing 3b to be used. It is slightly less than good land that we are looking at.

[Dr Johnson]

My hon. Friend is right. However, what I have seen across local applications is that in some cases the application does contain land that is of a higher grade, but two things are happening. One is that the companies tell me they are going to re-analyse the land to check that it really is of that grade. After all, it might be of a much lower grade if they re-test it. The fact that they are marking their own homework concerns me as well. Secondly, speculators have explained to me that they are told that if their application contains mostly lower grade land, and they have demonstrated that there is no other land locally that they can use or is available to them, or that it is in a corner or surrounded by panels, they can use the higher grade land, too. So it is not just land below grade 3a that is at threat.

The Heckington solar farm in North Kesteven promises to power 100,000 homes, but there are only 45,000 homes in the entire area of North Kesteven. It is unfair to expect that area, which already punches well above its weight in food production, to also provide much more than its fair share of electricity. After all, the National Farmers Union estimates that the total land use for solar farms at present is no more than 20,000 hectares. If the 12 proposed farms in Lincolnshire all went ahead, they would cover 9,109 hectares, increasing the land used in the whole country by almost 50%.

The impression is given by some—this comes back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray)—that class 3b land is not particularly good for farming, but that is not true because 3b land can support a wide variety of crops. In Lincolnshire such land is often flat, relatively easy to cultivate and accessible by roads. As we face continual food inflation and a growing global population—by over 40 million so far this year—that land is needed more than ever. Now is not the time to be increasing our carbon footprint by importing yet more food.

An argument I have heard in favour of large solar farms is that they are occasionally used for grazing sheep or beekeeping, but I am concerned that those are mere token gestures that do not compensate for the damage done to the wider environment. Transitory animals such as deer have their routes blocked; that would not be such a problem if a solar farm covered only one field, but one proposed site in my patch covers 1,400 hectares or 5.4 square miles. Birds and bats that mistake glass for water can be killed when they land on the hot panels. Worst of all, the presence of solar panels limits the potential for biodiversity due to the persistent shadow cast and the set channels created by rain water run-off without proper dispersal.

I am not against solar power in principle, but I am desperately concerned that the character of our beautiful countryside could be completely altered by continual rows of glass panels, sometimes stretching for miles and miles. I am also concerned for my constituents, who did not seem to have been given an adequate say in projects that ultimately affect them the most. There is a great deal that we can do to transition to green energy, but surely there is a better alternative to industrialising our countryside.

In the UK, 600,000 acres of south-facing industrial roof space is currently unused. Prioritising industrial, residential and brownfield land for solar farms is a step in the right direction. The large Bentley factory in Crewe, its roofs coated in solar panels, is a brilliant example. It produces an average of 75% of Bentley’s daytime electricity demands—equivalent to demand from more than 2,300 homes—a year, all without using as much as a square metre of productive and beautiful agricultural land.

It is perhaps fitting that the proposal near Aubourn and Thorpe on the Hill looks like someone standing and throwing a shot putt, since it will drive a wrecking ball through the area if Ministers do not stop these applications going ahead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Foord]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that point. We have heard that nationally there are 600,000 acres of roof space on which solar panels can be put. That is an excellent point to make. Certainly, for some of my constituents, it can feel like the solar panels are concentrated in some small areas.

When approval is sought for renewable energy projects—not just solar but onshore wind—they can hit a roadblock and get stuck in limbo. That is why this process can drag on and become a real scourge on our communities, as the developers and the local people battle it out.

Anyone buying a new Ordnance Survey map today will see something they would not have found 20 years ago: many new solar farms. I am not a big fan of the term “solar farm”, because to me a farm is for producing food, not electricity. Solar and wind are two of the quickest and cheapest forms of sustainable energy. If we are to reach net zero, we need a joined-up plan for connecting our existing power grid to renewable sources of energy. Solar accounts for just 5% of total electricity output, compared with about 27% for wind.

Between them, the solar schemes awaiting construction would generate 15,000 MW per day, which is enough to power 1.9 million homes. An enormous number of solar schemes are in the planning stage but have not yet been approved, and some of them could affect people in my part of the world. One enormous solar farm between Talaton and Whimple, near my constituency, would power 12,000 homes.

As people increasingly transition from heating their homes with oil to heating them with electricity, we need to think about not only power generation but insulation. In 2012, the Government were insulating 2.3 million homes per year, whereas now they insulate fewer than 100,000 homes per year. Let us think about not only how we can generate more but how we can conserve electricity.

Two of the main challenges in respect of advancing plans for solar are, first, how we plug into the national grid and, secondly, how we address the concerns of local communities. I hear the point about how prized agricultural land can appear to be lost under solar panels. The effect on local communities relates not only to the site—people sometimes get a little bound up with what solar panels look like—but to the sustained level of heavy goods vehicle traffic, because a lot of traffic goes back and forth to maintain the panels. We have to properly address local communities’ concerns to ensure that we do not hold up all solar panels and all solar renewable energy in this country.

[James Gray]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s extremely interesting speech. Will he clarify whether the Liberal Democrats in general are, and he in particular is, in favour of solar panels on agricultural land or opposed to them?

[Richard Foord]

The Liberal Democrats in general are, and I in particular am, very much in favour of renewable energy, and I am happy to put that on the record. On solar in particular, some of the proposals for solar farms, as they are called, are too large; we need to distribute and disperse such renewable energy projects so that they do not take up vast tracts of land, as they do in my constituency.

[Richard Foord]

I am certainly in favour of more and more distributed solar energy generation. I am not in favour of some of the enormous solar complexes, including in my part of Devon, where an enormous amount is foisted on sometimes very small communities.

[James Gray]

I am sorry to keep pressing the point, because I am using up the hon. Gentleman’s time. Am I right in thinking that he is talking about a great many more solar farms, albeit smaller ones? If so, will he send a message to Devon County Council that he would welcome a large number of smaller—up to 200 acres, perhaps—solar farms in his constituency, rather than the bigger ones that the county proposed? Is that what he is saying?

[Richard Foord]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for again seeking clarification. I will not be writing to Devon County Council, because that is not the local authority charged with planning, but certainly the local authorities in my patch that are charged with planning know that, in general terms, I am in favour of renewable energy generation, but that I am not in favour of the concentration of solar farms that we are seeing in particular parts of my patch.

My final point is that we need to think about the lifespan of these projects in the planning process. We are seeing enormous technological development. Solar photovoltaics and battery technology have moved on staggeringly in recent decades. We must not handcuff ourselves to technology that becomes out of date very quickly; instead, we must ensure that when these things are built at a small scale, they use the latest technology and are built in such a way that, if new technology comes along, we can retrofit to ensure that our methods are the most efficient means of producing renewable electricity possible.

In summary, if we are going to invest in schemes such as solar farms, their lifespans must not be too long and we need sustainable renewable energy solutions that work with farmers and local communities so that we can take people with us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Derek Thomas]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. I wanted to come to that, which is why I was hesitant about appearing to take a view different from the rest of the room. That is the thing: it is not just the suppliers that drive out the smaller-scale solar installations but the planning process. I am told that the cost of going down the NSIP route to get permission could be £10 million. If someone is going to spend that kind of money on a solar farm—I agree that the term is dreadful—I can understand why they go for a huge solar installation. The cost of that route makes the installations so concentrated and on such a scale. It would never be delivered in Cornwall.

Currently, a site is limited to, I think, 50 MW under what I would describe as the traditional route of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which is much healthier for local communities to engage in—it is easier for them to have their say and for the right solution to be reached. I therefore suggest that consideration be given to reforming that traditional route to allow slightly bigger sites to be used without having go down the NSIP route. I say that because land-use planning is key to everything. A lot of work is happening in the Lords and in the Government, with lots of conversations about how we plan land use for housing, transport, growing food, producing energy and caring for the natural environment, but that work must accelerate. It is the best possible tool to deliver the energy and food that we need and to enhance the natural environment, while doing it in a way that works for communities and in everyone’s interest.

[James Gray]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the more of these things that can be decided at the local level, the better it will be. First, we are talking about sites of up to 200 acres, which is quite large, particularly in places such as Cornwall. Secondly, the fact is that if Government policy has a presumption in favour of solar, and if counties like Cornwall or Wiltshire have targets that they must achieve, local authorities will have to have a presumption to allow solar farms, because they will know that if they turn them down and get an inspector, the inspector will allow them. Therefore, having the local authority decide this is not necessarily a solution.

[Derek Thomas]

I hear that. We were and perhaps still are hopeful that the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill will address some of the opportunities relating to the inspector. The call for proper reform and understanding of where solar fits into the whole of land use planning is key. I absolutely agree that we need a proper plan for how land is used and what kind of land is available for what kind of purpose.

The elephant in the room is grid capacity. When we consider planning and solar installations, surely it is better to look at where there is good grid capacity and where land can be made available, and to prioritise those areas. We are all committed to moving away from fossil fuels, and we all recognise that we must have energy security and reduce the cost of energy. We can do that through renewable energy. We have shown that in Cornwall; for a long time, we were the leading county for onshore renewable energy. That position has been stolen from us, partly because of grid capacity. The clever move is to understand not only what land use is about and how we identify what should be on that land, but where the capacity is, including grid capacity and the quality of land.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I have been a passionate environmentalist for most of my adult life and most of my time here in Parliament. I went to the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro as a special adviser in 1992, and since then have been involved in almost every aspect of environmental discussion in this place.

For that reason, I am passionate about the necessity to achieve net zero by 2050. We must do it; there is no question about it. I spent a lot of time travelling in both the Arctic and the Antarctic, and I have seen the effects of global warming. There is no question about it: we must do this thing, and renewable energy is of course the way we must do it. We should not come away from our commitment to the use of renewable energy to achieve net zero. I am also absolutely convinced that solar supplies a very large part of that. It is by far the cheapest, most effective and most efficient way of producing renewable energy, so I am a passionate supporter of solar energy, too. That is how I should perhaps preface my remarks.

However, I have a number of concerns, and the first is about solar energy itself. The planning permissions that have been granted are for 40 years. The technology is developing at breakneck speed, and I do not believe that the solar farms across Wiltshire—incidentally, Wiltshire is the second largest solar county in Britain—will still be there in 40 years’ time. They will be removed, and those sites will then be brownfield sites and will be replaced by something equally obnoxious. It is extremely unlikely that they will go back to being productive farmland.

That is perhaps compounded by the fact that much of this activity involves, as some of my hon. Friends have said, complex financial shenanigans. Wall Street and Chinese financial companies are investing in this business, because they know it is enormously profitable. They could not care less about renewables. They could not care less about agriculture. They could not care less about Britain. They do care about making a substantial buck out of it. We have to look into the way in which these things are funded; we have to look into these companies. Who pays for these things and who is getting the profits from that? It is an important point.

[Alicia Kearns]

On exactly that point, Canadian Solar, the company that I mentioned earlier—I am sure that the Foreign Office Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), will report back, now that he is here—needs to be sanctioned urgently. It is not Canadian. In fact, it is a Chinese company—Chinese run and based in China—pretending to be Canadian. I wonder why it would not choose a Chinese name for the business. Can my hon. Friend help me?

[James Gray]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend; she is of course quite right.

We are concerned about the technology; it will not last. We are concerned about the 40-year planning permission that has been granted. We are concerned about who stands behind this. I am also very concerned, in a technical sense, about battery storage units. These solar farms are no use at all, because the use of energy fluctuates during the day and therefore there have to be very substantial—and hideously ugly—battery support units to make them work. These things are ugly, huge and dangerous—many of them burst into flames spontaneously. A very large question exists with regard to their technology. We must be very careful indeed about the way in which we use this stuff, for that reason alone.

Secondly, my hon. Friends have made a very important point about food security. Post Ukraine, we are deeply worried about who will feed us in Britain and who will feed the world. It strikes me as morally quite wrong to be covering good agricultural land—3b is good agricultural land—with vanity mirrors being paid for by overseas investors. That seems to me to be morally unacceptable; morally, it simply cannot be sustained.

The food production versus energy security argument is a potent one, and of course the very simple answer to the energy security question comes, as my hon. Friends have said, from putting solar farms or solar panels off agricultural land. I am proud that in my constituency I have RAF Lyneham, which has the largest solar farm in Europe. It is huge—absolutely enormous—but cannot be seen by anybody. It is on former military land. The same applies to Wroughton, just outside my constituency, where, again, one of the largest solar farms in Europe is on entirely unproductive land. That is absolutely fine, but why are we having a spate of applications right across North Wiltshire for 200-acre or 300-acre sites on grade 3b land that has been used for years for the production of wheat and of grass? Indeed, in the west country, those crops are very important with regard to dairy. It has been used for donkey’s years to do that, but all of a sudden, because it is 3b and these companies are going round proving it is 3b, somehow there is a presumption in favour of them getting the application.

That brings me to my final point.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[James Gray]

I am rather short of time. My hon. Friend will have time to reply in a moment.

That brings me to my final point, which is on the planning system. Wiltshire, as I said, is the second largest county in England, and we have hundreds of these applications right now. We have found that the Government have laid down targets for the county and therefore the planning officers very correctly say to the planning committee, “If you turn this down, as you may well want to turn it down, it will without question go to appeal. The inspector will without question allow it. And the barristers’ fees for the public inquiry will be down to the county.” Therefore, having a target for renewables on the county means that there is a huge presumption in favour of the local authority allowing this. That must be turned round.

I would like to see two things in the national planning policy framework when it comes forward later this year. First, I would like to see a return to the days when there was a presumption against using 3b agricultural land. That was the case. When my right hon. Friend George Eustice, whose constituency I cannot remember—

[Caroline Nokes (in the Chair)]

Order. We do not name colleagues.

[James Gray]

If I may say so, Ms Nokes, that is precisely why I said that I could not remember his constituency—I was hoping that I would be assisted. [Interruption.] He is my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice).

[Caroline Nokes (in the Chair)]

Or “the former Secretary of State” would suffice.

[James Gray]

My right hon. Friend appeared in front of the Environmental Audit Committee, on which I serve. He made it plain that, in his view, 3b land was included in the presumption against and it would be in the NPPF when it came out. He then had to write to me to correct that; officials made him correct that particular point.

We need to see, first, a reference to 3a and 3b. Secondly, we need to find some new way of applying the planning law so that there is no longer this presumption in favour of the developer. We must find a way of presuming against the developer and presuming in favour of preserving our green and pleasant land—presuming in favour of food security rather than energy security—and a way of putting these solar installations not on agricultural land but on large-scale industrial land and on previously used military land of the kind that I have described. We are in the process of concreting over our countryside for these things, covering it in totally unproductive mirrors in a way that will never be reversed. We will not go back to that agricultural land. We risk saying to our future generations, “We did this to your countryside; blame us for it.”

[Caroline Nokes (in the Chair)]

That brings us to the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bowie]

This useless Government who have delivered 43% renewables on to the grid! I would much rather take our record on renewables than the Labour party’s any day of the week. The consultation on national policy statements closed, as the hon. Gentleman knows, on 23 June, and the Government remain on track to present them to Parliament and bring them into effect by the end of 2023.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Local authorities have a presumption in favour of solar, and quite right, too, but should they not also consider the cumulative effect of solar farms? Wiltshire is the second largest county in England for solar farms. If the new Red Barn project at Kington St Michael is added, it will be one of the largest solar farms in Britain. We are covering our good agricultural land with solar farms in counties such as Wiltshire. When the forthcoming planning policy guidance is reconsidered, will the Minister undertake to include a presumption against solar farms on grade 3a and 3b agricultural land?

[Andrew Bowie]

Food security is incredibly important, and we will, of course, prioritise less productive land for the deployment of solar farms. Our reforms aim to ensure that infrastructure developers consider, at the outset of their programmes, how projects can address the legitimate concerns of affected communities, engaging regularly with them throughout the pre-application phase and beyond. Engaging with statutory consultees early during the pre-application stage will also benefit local communities and farmers through high-quality applications.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s enthusiasm for the greening of British steel, as it is at the base of UK manufacture. I am sure he welcomed the “Powering up Britain” proposals, which I presented to the House just before the recess. Our plans for £20 billion of investment in carbon capture and pushing forward with the £240 million fund for hydrogen are exactly the measures we need to decarbonise British industry, and we are global leaders in that respect.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am sure the Minister will agree that one of the best ways we can contribute to achieving the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change targets is through outstandingly good British Arctic science and polar science in general, as we have through 78 universities and the British Antarctic Survey itself. Does not the Minister agree that it was disappointing, when the Environmental Audit Committee visited the Arctic over the Easter recess, that we found that the British base up there, 400 miles from the north pole, is only manned part-time? Perhaps I should say “only personned” these days. Is it not time that we had a permanent research base at Ny-Ålesund in the far north of Svalbard?

[Graham Stuart]

I do not believe this strictly comes under my portfolio, but my hon. Friend has, as ever, brilliantly put this matter on the record and I will ensure others on the Treasury Bench are aware of the remarks he has made.