Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 92 in my name. The amendment is simple and straightforward: it recognises that solar farms have a role to play in our energy security, but that that must be balanced with an effective use of our best farmland for food security. I observe that the lack of Labour Party Back-Benchers here says more than we need to about their views on farm and food security.

This amendment would not prevent or fetter the development of solar farms on the poorest quality land or restrain smaller proposals on the best land which command the support of the local planning authority. However, where large-scale solar proposals come forward that include the best and most versatile land, my amendment would mean that the nationally significant infrastructure project—NSIP—process would not and could be engaged. To be clear, this would not be an absolute ban on large-scale solar farms on the best land; it is just that, if those proposals were to come forward, they would need to be determined locally by the planning authority.

It is said that modern society is no more than three meals away from breakdown. In the hierarchy of needs, food in the belly is the number one priority. When the chips are down, you cannot eat a solar panel. Last year, the national wheat yield was down by 20% on account of wet weather. This year, the yield impairment is similar but because of dry weather. Just as there are no guarantees about the weather, we cannot be careless with our food supply.

I have recently heard encouraging noises from Defra Ministers who belatedly realise that the risks of food security are greater than they have ever been and that the best land should be reserved for food production, where inputs can be used most productively. The poorest and least productive land can be harnessed for other uses—environmental, amenity or economic. I welcome this sinner that hath repenteth and I venture that there is now common ground between people like me, who appreciate and value food security, and the Government. That should make acceptance of my amendment easy to achieve, so that the right balance is struck between heating and eating.

I will not go into quite so much detail as my noble friend, but let us talk about what I mean by the best and most versatile land. The Library tells me that, under the 1966 agricultural land classification process, grade 1, 2 and 3a land comprises 42% of the cultivated area of Great Britain; by difference, therefore, the substantial majority, 58% of the agricultural land, is in the poorer grades 3b, 4 and 5. Now, this would still be available for large-scale solar energy under my amendment, and there are millions of poor hectares to go at. That is land the size of 12 Norfolks or two and half times the size of Wales—noble Lords will note that I do not use the football pitch analogy.

Last year at the Dispatch Box, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, explained that, in the case of a recently approved Sunnica proposal in Suffolk, the proposal did not include some of the best and most versatile land. I will not criticise her for an honest mistake, but I regret to tell the Committee that there was plenty of the best land, including grade 2 land, in that proposal—land that is now lost to food production for a generation. On so many levels, the Government’s rhetoric is at odds with the reality. They have lost control of the numbers, and in so doing are imperilling our food security, which is national security.

In Lincolnshire, the county that more than any other puts bread on our tables, already 2% of that county is under threat from solar. Worse, thanks to my noble friend Lord Frost we learn that the majority of the Heckingham proposal is predominantly the best grade 1 land under the 1966 rules.

In an Answer to a Written Question last November, the Government reported that 1,400 hectares of land in Norfolk were currently under NSIP applications. But the reality was that it was 7,500 hectares, and now the number is greater still. We know from Great British Energy—I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in his place—that there just is not the grid capacity to accept all the solar that is being promoted.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, surely the point about the Bill is that it is enabling us to put the structures in place to actually get the grid capacity up and running.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

True. The noble Lord makes a good point, and so I sense even further a degree of consensus on both sides of the Committee on this matter. If we take the fact that the grid capacity is not there to accept all the solar that has been promoted, because it is diurnal and seasonal and comes in very big flashes which can overwhelm the grid, and that capacity to absorb is limited, only a fool would disagree with limiting the proposals to the poorest land first.

I have heard it said that we need not worry about this and that only the amount of land currently used for golf courses is being used for solar—something like 0.5% of all land—but that is simply not true. It is the 19th hole tale that has grown with the telling. The Government’s land use framework contemplates that 9% of all land will be used for environmental and energy schemes. Let me say straight away that agri-solar is starry-eyed, greenwashed fantasy. The solar panels are taller, so they are even more visually intrusive, with even more chemicals used to bash the weeds so that they do not shade the panels or wrap their tendrils around the steel stanchions.

The principle of controlling solar development aside, this amendment is important because it seeks to remove the loopholes and abuses that we have seen flow from the misuse of the NSIP regime for solar applications, including artificially stringing together many disparate smaller schemes, some miles apart, to get over a hurdle threshold. Where I live, a local proposal comprises a dozen different blocks of land spread out over a canvas more than 15 miles wide and eight miles tall as a device to get over that NSIP threshold. That is an abuse.

I can see that it is in the farmer’s private interests to sign up for solar. On normal arable economics, a farmer would do well to earn £200 an acre from the fruits of his labours, having investing millions in plant and equipment and subjecting himself to the risks of weather and the market. By contrast, solar developers are offering him the chance to sit on the beach with an index-linked £900 or more. Landowners of really quite small holdings which have been aggregated together have given tenant farmers notice to quit so that they can enjoy those inflation-linked payments of over 40 years at many times the rent. But our tenant farmers are among the most entrepreneurial growers, not having had the benefit of inheriting land, and we cannot afford to lose their dynamism.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer my strongest possible support for Amendment 90 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, to which I have attached my name, and some slightly qualified support for Amendment 177, which we have just heard about from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale.

Coincidentally, and entirely without prompting from me, I started the day—rather a long time ago now—speaking to a senior civil servant. They said to me that they thought the great malaise of the UK was people’s lack of a sense of agency—a lack of ability to step up, take control and change what is around them and the direction of the country. This amendment, starting with the local and saying, “Here in your community you can democratically work through your council, local authority and combined authority to decide how to deliver your energy” is the perfect way to start to address those issues.

We are the most centralised polity in western Europe: power and resources are overwhelmingly concentrated here in Westminster. We have almost universal agreement that we have to have an energy transition. This is a major infrastructure element in all our lives, as we have been discussing this evening. We also must have a just transition, so that no community is left behind. Every community needs the opportunity to make plans for its energy future, and that is exactly what Amendment 90 seeks to achieve.

I note that a great deal of work and resources have been put into this over a long period of time. The Centre for Climate Engagement at the University of Cambridge, funded by Innovate UK under the Net Zero Living programme, is building on the work of the Skidmore review—we are talking about cross-party approaches across all Benches—which emphasised the importance of local government, leadership and place-based actions in dealing with the climate emergency.

This goes back a very long way. Green councillor Andrew Cooper, who was working through the European Committee of the Regions, got the UN COP process to acknowledge locally determined contributions. Everyone has heard of nationally determined contributions, but that was about locally determined contributions. Of course, the energy system is only part of this, but it is a very crucial part that impacts people’s lives and communities and on what they look like.

Your Lordships’ House has, in a very long wrestle with two successive Governments, finally got an acknowledgement of the importance of community energy. What I think we would see going forward is local authorities and combined authorities being very keen to encourage and support community energy. That of course is where we can see public support and financial returns growing. This is not about some giant multinational company coming and landing on your community, but about your community saying, “Right, how do we want to generate our energy?” That has to be the foundation.

I am broadly in favour of Amendment 177, but my question is around the weight and shape of the word “guidance”. We are talking about local energy plans, and anything provided from the centre should be support and not—as we see, for example, in planning and with housing allocations—direction. If it is indeed guidance, Amendment 177 is pointing us in the right direction. Together, these two amendments are crucial and I can see no reason for the Government not to accept them.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, to which I have added my name. I am also very sympathetic to the amendment tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Russell.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, raised a very interesting question about the centralisation of this country. In one sense, this Bill is about further centralisation when it comes to major infrastructure projects, which are so crucial to our growth. In essence, in the housing agenda, as well as with a lot of energy infrastructure projects, local government has not been very helpful and has been obstructive. If we believe that growth is a strategic aim of government, as I believe it to be, stronger central direction is vital. The question, however, is whether it can be complemented by local initiatives, which do indeed give local people ownership. That is where I agree with noble Baroness, Lady Bennett: community energy schemes are a fantastic way to leverage support from local people for the kinds of changes that we want to make to our energy infrastructure.

The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, obviously speaks with great authority as an energy expert, but he has also played a hugely important leading role in the Midlands Engine. He chaired the Midlands Energy Security Taskforce, which of course strongly supports local area energy plans.

When I was a Minister at DESNZ, I became very much aware of the potential of local community-based energy projects. I remember one visit to my own city of Birmingham, under the auspices of Footsteps: Faiths for a Low Carbon Future, when I met a number of local groups that were dedicated to community green energy projects but were seeking support from agencies at the centre to deliver something tangible. Interestingly, the MECC Trust, based in Balsall Heath, is hosting the launch by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, in a couple of weeks’ time, of Birmingham’s first net-zero retrofit demonstrator community hub. The potential of hundreds of projects such as this, up and down the country, is very clear.

The amendment that the Government brought to the then Great British Energy Bill, which added projects involving or benefiting local communities to the crucial objective section, was very important. Great British Energy has made it clear that it will work with local energy groups, councils and mayors to fund and support community-led energy projects.

Noble Lords will be aware of recent decisions by some local authorities to roll back commitments in relation to net zero. Ironically, this is taking place as the scientific evidence of the impact of climate change becomes ever clearer. I do not think we can let this go by default. In essence, the noble Baroness asked: what does guidance mean? I think you really have to put the two together. I take the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, to be a statutory requirement on local authorities to encourage and develop local energy plans. I think that is really important now, in the light of some decisions being made by local authorities. Then, it seems to me, the guidance that we are suggesting fits into that structure.

I hope that the Government will be sympathetic to the need to make sure that local authorities do not pass up the opportunity to support local community energy groups.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments relates to the development and implementation of local area energy plans. The proposals raise important questions about the role of local authorities in our transition to a decarbonised, secure and efficient energy system. We have heard some thoughtful contributions about the tensions between local and central government, but also of the enormous potential when the right balance can be struck between the two.

Let me begin with Amendment 90, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, which would require all local authorities to prepare and publish local area energy plans. These plans would outline current and future energy needs and the decarbonisation pathways to meet them. The underlying intent here is one we can all recognise. The energy transition cannot be delivered only centrally; local authorities must have a clear understanding of their energy demands and the means to meet them sustainably. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, made a number of good points, reinforced by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, on which we might all agree in principle.

However, while we acknowledge the ambition behind this amendment, we would caution against placing an additional statutory duty on all local authorities, particularly at a time when many face stretched resources and competing priorities. A blanket requirement risks creating a burden of compliance that may prove challenging for councils already struggling with core service delivery. We must ensure that our expectations of local government are realistic, proportionate and backed with adequate support.

Amendment 177, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, seeks to define the consultation and approval process for local area energy plans and mandates the provision of guidance to assist local authorities in their preparation. We recognise the positive intention here to provide clarity, consistency and technical support to authorities seeking to engage with this important agenda. This amendment also aims to widen the uptake of such planning and to define better the role of local authorities in delivering the future energy system. Those are commendable aims. While we must avoid onerous procedural hurdles or risk diverting local effort away from practical delivery into process-heavy reporting, we hope the Minister will consider this amendment carefully.

In conclusion, these amendments rightly draw attention to the importance of empowering local authorities in the energy transition. I welcome the debate and the ideas put forward, but urge a cautious, pragmatic approach. I look forward to the Minister’s response and any reassurances he can give on the Government’s direction in this space.