Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Swire Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Earl Russell (LD)]

That is not my intention. I apologise for not being able to respond to the noble Lord’s email this morning. It is not my intention to give compulsory purchase powers. This is wayleaves, not compulsory purchase.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my probing Amendment 79A. They say that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. That could be extended to making the same point again and again and getting the same answer, which I have been doing over the past few months about burial and the different options for dealing with the great explosion we are going to witness of overhead power lines.

I am slightly nervous about the seeming consensus across the Committee this afternoon that nothing must stand in the way of the Government’s own date of 2030 for clean power, nothing must stop growth, and nothing must stand in the way of progress.

I fully concede that the Government have inherited a grid of which all Governments of every persuasion, over the last 20 or 30 years, have been neglectful. We have power being distributed in wrong parts of the country and shortages in other parts of the country, and the bearing loads of some of the grid are simply not up to the capacity that it is now required to meet. Additionally, we have an explosion in offshore wind, which has to be brought onshore, and that necessitates a great increase in the number of substations and, in turn, linkages to the grid.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I am sympathetic to what my noble friend Lord Swire just said. I think it is fair to say that it was actually the previous Conservative Administration who changed aspects of a policy statement that there be a strong presumption in terms of overhead distribution. I will not pretend otherwise. I did try and fight that at the time, but failed. It is fair to say that the cost comparison has actually fallen considerably. It is still about four or four and a half times the cost of doing it via pylons, but I think there is a lot to be said for what my noble friend has put forward.

I was somewhat relieved by the clarity brought by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, that he was not considering this to be compulsory purchase, given some of the issues that I have been contesting for some time. That is what has led to my Amendment 94FA—in the supplementary list—which provides for

“Electrical or communications cables under land in active agricultural use”.


I have shared with your Lordships before that I have quite a lot of experience dealing with energy projects and NSIPs, recognising the concentration of such projects on the Suffolk coast, and that is a theme that I will return to later. One thing that struck me was that, in consideration of getting the cabling underground because these projects were going principally through an AONB—I do not know if it is in legislation, but by default what has happened is that any cabling in an AONB ends up being underground—what was clear was a complete lack of understanding of what was there underground already. In agricultural areas, one thing that is significantly underground and is very sensitive infrastructure, which is not put in by the Government, water companies or the like but is actually put in by local farmers, is underground networks for water. Considering quite how much less water there is, particularly in the east of the country, these are critical in order to make sure that we can continue to have food being grown.

Something that is very important for water and other networks is the production of Christmas trees. Christmas trees are very hungry for water in their development, which takes some time. One thing that came to light in the consideration of the creation of various substations and cabling is the fact that the electricity companies had no clue at all about this important infrastructure that is just below the surface. Of course, there is no doubt that having the cables as close to the surface as possible is definitely an economic interest, but, candidly, it ends up disrupting the agricultural potential for a lot of this land. I do not think there is any chance that Christmas trees can be grown above electricity cables. Unfortunately, Redhouse Barn, a farm that I would recommend, grows a lot of Christmas trees—it supplied No. 10 Downing Street one year—and I know that the family there was concerned, but somewhat understood and accepted that sometimes these things happen, although I hope that the compensation they get for this is a lot more generous than they were initially offered.

Nevertheless, the Government should consider speaking a lot more to the internal drainage boards around the country. We do not have internal drainage boards in every part of this country, but I expect that, where a lot of the energy generation is happening and the initial connections through cabling need to go, there will be. They will have intricate knowledge of exactly what you need to navigate. One way to avoid having to do site-by-site surveys, which we have already been told cost a hell of a lot of money, and to do all this pre-consultation, is simply to make sure that, when cabling is put in place, those trenches go sufficiently deep that we can continue to have agricultural production as well as the benefits of the transmission of electricity.

That is why I hope that the Government, although I expect they will firmly reject my proposals, will at least start to consider what is happening in reality in our productive countryside when we are trying to have this rather complicated map of cabling, pylons and the like, in order to make sure that we continue, as far as possible, to keep farming our land as well as making sure that that land—of course I will give way.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

Has my noble friend heard about the possibility of growing tomatoes over these cables?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I am sure that the heat that my noble friend was about to allude to will make it attractive to certain kinds of rapid acceleration of growth. It is not the only thing that would benefit there, but it is more about trying to neutralise the impact of what seemed to be necessary infrastructure with the ongoing operations rather than disrupting those who are already farming our land for the food that we need for continued food security. With that, I put forward the benefits of my amendment.