Cavity Wall Insulation

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is a privilege to see you in the Chair, Mrs Latham. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) for securing the debate and for telling us about the experiences of her constituents as well as the problems that they have had after having cavity wall insulation fitted to their homes. Some of the problems might have arisen from very poor ventilation as a consequence, and it is troubling to hear about that.

On the doorstep, I have come across constituents who have suffered from mould and damp. I have also talked to an employee of East Devon District Council who is responsible for the maintenance of social homes and who has said to me that some of the issues with damp and mould are linked to cavity wall insulation. Done properly, cavity wall insulation is a positive thing. It keeps people warm and saves money for the Government, taxpayers and individuals. It is one of those rare policy areas that is not just a win-win, but a win-win-win.

On the subject of heating, the End Fuel Poverty Coalition estimated that 4,950 people in this country died in the winter between 2022 and 2023 because they were living in cold conditions. Clearly, worries all of us. I know that the Government were also concerned, because they introduced the energy price guarantee. On the face of it, the energy price guarantee was a very popular policy because it reduced people’s energy bills by a very significant amount, although many of my constituents will not have felt it because their energy bills were still staggeringly high in that winter of 2022-23. The energy price guarantee was a subsidy from the Government—from the taxpayer—of £37 billion. The really sad thing is that had the Government continued to invest in home insulation measures at the rate they had been in 2012, a large proportion of the funding spent on heating people’s homes and subsidising their heating would not have been necessary.

The third win is, of course, in the reduction of emissions. Given the concerns that the Government might not reach their net zero target by 2050 and that the world might not meet the target of reducing temperature rises by 1.5^°, we absolutely have to be concerned about reducing emissions, too. Heating homes, saving money and reducing emissions are all things that can be achieved with cavity wall insulation done properly.

I want to look back at the last decade or so and at how much cavity wall insulation has helped some of our constituents. One million cavity wall insulations were carried out in Great Britain through the energy company obligation scheme between 2013 and 2023, 27% of all measures carried out under the scheme. The annual number of cavity wall insulations provided through ECO has fallen over time, from a peak of over 316,000 when the Liberal Democrats were in government in 2014 to a low of little more than 11,000 last year. The number of ECO measures installed overall peaked at three quarters of a million in 2014, but fell to just 159,700 in 2022—a fall of almost 80% and a figure 59% lower than in 2021.

There is no evidence that the UK is near the saturation point for cavity wall insulation. The Government have estimated that 71% of homes with cavity walls had insulation installed at the end of 2022. Some 3.8 million homes with uninsulated cavity walls were thought to be “easy to treat”, and the remaining 1.3 million were “hard to treat”. There is still much low-hanging fruit to progress with now that we know how cavity wall insulation can be done, and done well. If we think about not just Great Britain as a whole, but England, England has a lower percentage of cavity wall insulation: just 69% of homes have it, compared with 76% in Wales and 80% in Scotland. As for my region, the west country, the south-west got just 6% of all ECO spending, compared with 18% for the north-west. Clearly, the west country is dipping out again.

Again, the Liberal Democrats in government made sure that home insulation was a real priority, given the savings on heating, money and emissions. In 2012, we made sure that 2.3 million homes benefited in a single year. If the Conservatives had carried on insulating at that level, the average household would have saved hundreds of pounds per year on their energy bills and the taxpayer would have saved money, too, during the crisis that followed the invasion of Ukraine. It is reckoned that the failure to continue insulating at that level cost taxpayers around £9 billion under the energy price guarantee, because of the lack of insulated homes.

To finish on a cheerier note, some really good work is happening, including in my local area. In my constituency, the Blackdown Hills parish network has invested in an infra-red camera—a thermal imaging camera—that it offers to residents to use so that they can identify where their homes are leaking heat. The camera has also been lent to Sidmouth Town Council and the chair of the council, Chris Lockyear, is offering to help residents to save not just heat but money.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Solloway]

We are committed to making sure that consumers get a fair deal. That is why fuel retailers must remain transparent and not overcharge drivers. The Pumpwatch consultation will require all petrol stations to report prices within 30 minutes of their changing. That will enable tech companies to develop new ways for UK drivers to search for the cheapest fuel.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

In rural communities across Devon, people feel the pressure of high fuel costs. The cost of fuel in towns such as Honiton is almost 20p a litre higher than at petrol stations just 30 miles away. What steps will the Government take to ensure fairness, and to introduce rural fuel duty relief of the sort that we already have in some parts of north Devon?

[Amanda Solloway]

Pumpwatch will help with those things, but it is unacceptable for any fuel retailer to overcharge drivers. That is why the Secretary of State held a roundtable in December with fuel retailers to make it clear that we expect them to pass on savings to consumers when prices fall.

Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Richard Foord Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 20th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

Most people in this country accept that we need energy security, that we must move away from fossil fuels to more sustainable energy sources, and that we must seek to reduce our carbon emissions to meet the challenges posed by climate change. They see the effects of climate change every day. Recently in my corner of Devon, the communities of Feniton and Cullompton showed me what it was like to experience flash flooding. It has caused terrible damage to constituents’ properties and destroyed some of their most treasured possessions. Flooding will only get worse and more frequent as the UK continues to suffer the effects of climate change.

We in the UK have shown leadership in this area. We should be setting an example to the rest of the world on the need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, but also crucially on the economic benefits that the UK can enjoy as a result. The Government claim that by mandating the North Sea Transition Authority to run regular bids for new oil extraction licences, they will protect the UK’s energy security, but that simply does not add up, because 80% of the oil is exported, so there will be no material difference to people’s energy bills, and we will still be reliant on imported liquefied natural gas. We saw that in the second invasion of Ukraine in 2022; it caused huge spikes in oil and gas prices and left consumers facing spiralling energy bills. They would not have been nearly so badly affected by that if we had continued to invest in onshore wind in the way we were doing in 2015, or if we had continued to insulate buildings in the way we were in the coalition years.

It is not UK-produced oil that would have mitigated those price rises, but UK-based renewable energy and demand avoidance, encouraged by a more progressive Government than this one. For example, Octopus Energy notes that £5 billion could have been saved by consumers if onshore wind had continued to be developed at 2015 rates, but the Conservatives were left to govern alone, and that prospect vanished.

The UK Energy Research Centre said of this Bill:

“A fixation on new licensing…is a distraction. It offers comfort in the possibility of conserving oil and gas production…rather than grasping the challenge of a rapid transition.”

To put it bluntly, this is the approach of a Government who are too scared to embrace the future and make the fundamental changes that we need to build a better future for our children. Many on the Conservative Benches have highlighted the challenges of phasing out oil and gas as we transition to renewable energy, but there are not only challenges. There are also opportunities to support new home-grown, clean energy that will power our homes and create a swathe of well paid jobs. We cannot cling to the past because we are too scared of the future.

There is an analogy here from over a century ago, when Great Britain first embraced oil. Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty in a Liberal Government. He took office in 1911, a key point in the Anglo-German naval race. There was a big decision on his desk when he took on the role. How should Great Britain power its ships? Until that point, coal had been the Royal Navy’s dominant source of fuel. It was produced at home in Britain, and the saying “carrying coals to Newcastle” reminds us that there was an abundance of coal in Britain, but that did not make Churchill determined to exploit the abundant reserves of that fuel, which was powering the world’s largest navy of the day.

Churchill signed an order for the Royal Navy to be powered by the innovative energy source of the 20th century, which happened to be oil. Oil was more efficient and allowed ships to travel faster, further, with less fuel. It also allowed for the innovative design of new ships. By this Government’s logic, Churchill should have put that cutting-edge energy source on the back burner and stuck to coal. The arguments made in favour of coal then were similar to those being deployed in favour of the Bill today. Churchill believed in looking to the future and seizing the opportunities that arose, so he took the fateful decision that all new ships in the surface fleet would switch to the more innovative, more energy-efficient fuel source. As a result, the Royal Navy continued to dominate the seas and hampered Germany’s international trade and, later, its war effort.

Today, China is working on zero-emission shipping. The California-China Climate Institute at Berkeley is looking at 21st-century innovations that will power the leading economies of this century. If China tunes into BBC Parliament and sees us in our 19th-century surroundings, it would think it quaint that we are debating which 20th-century energy source we should cling to.

Churchill’s decision in 1911 put Britain at the forefront of innovation and design, allowing Britain and British talent to reshape the character of the 20th century. Do Conservative Members disagree with Mr Churchill? Are they daunted by the prospect of seizing the opportunity presented by new sources of energy, including renewable energy, to power the UK in the 21st century? Why are they seeking to take these short-term, short-sighted decisions that fly in the face of our climate commitments?

This Conservative Government already offer subsidies to the oil industries, and they are already indifferent to the price of renewable energy being tied to the price of gas. It is time for a rethink. It is time to focus on improving the national grid, boosting home-grown green energy and investing in the technologies of tomorrow.

Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Richard Foord Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 22nd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome). It was slightly less of a pleasure to listen to the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson); I want to say a few words about the case that he made. It reaches new depths to suggest that the poorest people in the country will somehow be better off if we continue exploiting more oil and gas when clearly new and existing oil and gas are so expensive. He cited a comment by Siemens about the expensiveness of renewables, but that is precisely because they are linked to the price of gas. That is why we need to reform the totally out of date electricity and gas system that we have in this country.

It tells us all we need to know about this cynical and failing Government that the legislation they chose to debate first in 2024 was a Bill to mandate the annual licensing of oil and gas products in the North sea; not legislation that rises to the immediate challenges that we face as a society—from the cost of living scandal, which sees families unable to meet their basic needs, to the planetary emergency rapidly unfolding before our eyes—but instead a Bill that is frankly no more than a political stunt at home, yet at the same time a very dangerous signal to other countries abroad of a UK doubling down on the fossil fuel economy.

The reality, as many have said, is that the Bill is entirely redundant, with even the North Sea Transition Authority expressing its “unanimous” view that it is not needed. As the Minister knows perfectly well, there have been annual licensing rounds for most of the past decade, driven by the frankly obscene duty to maximise the economic recovery of UK petroleum. Despite the hundreds of licences that have been issued in that time, a paltry 16 days’ worth of gas has been produced. As others have said, it has been estimated that, between now and 2050, new licences would provide the equivalent of just four days’ worth of gas each year, so it is hardly the energy security that we have been promised and that we have heard so much about from the Conservative Benches over the past three or four hours. Of course, any oil and gas, which is extracted, will be owned by companies and sold on the international market to the highest bidder—unless the Government, unbeknown to us, have in mind the renationalisation of energy, which would be a very interesting conversation to have, but when I last checked, that was not their policy.

This oil and gas in the North sea does not belong to the Government and it will not bring down bills. Let us not forget either that 80% of UK oil is currently exported, as was the equivalent of more than 60% of gross gas production last year.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. One such example is Gazprom International UK, which continued to produce gas from the North sea last year. This subsidiary company paid a €1.7 million dividend in June 2023. Does she not think it hypocritical of this Conservative Government to talk about this Bill in terms of national security, while, simultaneously, allowing a Russian energy giant to extract gas from the North sea and pay taxes in Moscow?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Member for his point and it is incredibly well made. I shall say a little more on that subject very shortly.

Essentially, this Bill is nothing more than reckless political theatre. It is nothing more than a cynical attempt to stoke yet more division and weaponise much-needed climate action in some misguided sense that, somehow, this will save the Prime Minister’s skin.

While the Bill serves at home to highlight the impotence of the Government, sadly its international impact is far-reaching. Despite the Prime Minister’s fairly evidence-free claim at COP28 that the UK is leading by example, the reality is that creating a climate culture war, scrapping vital policies and issuing new fossil fuel licences is the very opposite of climate leadership. The Bill sends a dangerous signal and undermines global efforts to address the climate emergency by hampering diplomacy and legitimising extraction in other countries. As Lord Deben, former chair of the Climate Change Committee, said:

“How can we ask other nations not to expand the fossil fuel production if we start doing it ourselves?”

It is frankly a scandal that the UK is among just five countries in the global north that are responsible for more than half the planned expansion of new oil and gas fields up to 2050.

While Ministers like to claim that, even with continued licensing, production from the UK continental shelf is projected to decline at 7% annually, what matters is not whether we are producing less relative to some previous time but whether the oil and gas that we are producing now is compatible with our climate goals. Clearly it is not, with the UN production gap report warning that Governments already plan to produce far more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting heating to 1.5°. The Government’s defence of the Bill, and of the continued licensing of more oil and gas in the North sea as a whole, implies that somehow the UK operates in a vacuum, and domestic decisions have no bearing on our ability to meet our international climate targets. That clearly is not the case. It is no surprise, then, that Professor Piers Forster, the interim chair of the Climate Change Committee, has said:

“UK oil and gas consumption needs to fall by over 80% to meet UK targets. This and Cop decision makes further licensing inconsistent with climate goals.”

When talking about inconsistency with our climate goals, we could also talk about hypocrisy. Since a climate emergency was declared in this very Chamber in 2019, no fewer than 17 new fields have been approved: Laverda, Barnacle, Cadet, Sillimanite, Blythe, Elgood, Southwark, Evelyn, Abigail, Jackdaw, Tommeliten, Talbot, Teal West, Murlach, Alwyn East, Rosebank, and most recently Victory. Mentioning Rosebank gives me an opportunity to come back to an issue that has been touched on a few times tonight: the scale of fossil fuel subsidies. We have heard a load of guff from Conservative Members about the importance of tax revenues from oil and gas, yet look at the amount of money we are giving to the oil and gas industry. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) spoke about tax revenues going to Russia. We could also point out that the UK taxpayer will hand over no less than the equivalent of £3.75 billion to Equinor to develop the Rosebank site, because of the massive loophole in the windfall tax that means that for every £100 invested, £91.40 can be claimed back. A bit of clarity on these issues would help.

Section 20 of the Environment Act 2021 requires that a statement be made on the front of the Bill saying whether it is in line with other environmental laws. The Secretary of State claims in her statement that

“the Bill will not have the effect of reducing the level of environmental protection provided for by any existing environmental law.”

To me, that seems extraordinary because, even if one believed that the carbon intensity test would make a difference, the annual licensing rounds under the Bill could easily cancel out any predicted carbon savings and lead to an overall increase in emissions. I hope that she will tell us what modelling was undertaken to inform her section 20 statement.

Looking at its content more closely, the Bill proposes two so-called tests, which are set so ludicrously low they are impossible to fail. The first is the carbon intensity test, which is met if the carbon intensity of domestically produced gas is lower than that of imported liquefied natural gas. That test not only ignores the fact that more than half our gas imports come from Norway—via a pipeline, as we have established—where gas production is half as polluting as in the UK, but in only considering gas, it fails to take account of the fact that 70% of remaining North sea oil reserves are oil. In any case, comparing the carbon intensity at the point of production rather than combustion exaggerates the difference between different sources, given that the vast majority of emissions are produced when any oil or gas is burned. In other words, they are scope 3 emissions, which remain unaccounted for. The second test is the net importer test, which will be met if the amount of oil and gas produced in the UK is less than the UK’s demand for oil and gas. Surely that question would be much better addressed by reducing demand rather than producing more planet-heating oil and gas, yet the Government seem incapable of pursuing demand reduction in any meaningful way.

What should the Government do instead? If they were actually interested in cutting household bills and delivering energy security, they would be working to get us off expensive gas for good, rather than continuing to tether us to volatile international markets. The National Infrastructure Commission has been really clear:

“Reliance on fossil fuels means exposure to geopolitical shocks that impact the price of these internationally traded commodities.”

In its 2022 energy outlook report, the IEA reported that a higher share of renewables correlated with lower electricity prices in response to the energy crisis, with energy efficiency and heat electrification providing an important buffer for households. At a time when, as we have heard, 6 million families in the UK are living in fuel poverty this winter, we have to ask why the Government are doubling down on the very thing at the heart of the crisis.

The Government should instead be delivering a meaningful just transition that genuinely meets the needs of workers and communities, rather than temporarily propping up insecure jobs that we know will not exist in years to come. We have heard the rhetoric from Conservative Members pretending that those of us who want to accelerate a transition to a greener economy do not have people’s jobs in mind. That is totally untrue; it is precisely because we care about people’s jobs that we want them to have sustainable jobs into the future—good-quality, decent jobs—and are not pretending that draining resources in the North sea will somehow provide a sustainable livelihood in years to come.

There should be a massive scaling-up of renewables, and we should back cheap and abundant energy sources such as onshore wind, for which a grand total of zero applications have been submitted since planning rules were changed in September. There should be a nationwide, street-by-street energy efficiency programme to ensure that families have warm homes for the long term, rather than scrapping the upgrade in standards of private rented homes, which according to the Climate Change Committee could have saved tenants £250 a year, even at so-called normal prices let alone at a time when prices are spiralling. Again, what an indictment of the Government. Remember the green deal back in 2012? The Government set the interest rate so ridiculously high, as we all said at the time, that unsurprisingly the whole plan collapsed. Those homes were not insulated and plenty of energy companies, including in my constituency, went bust as a result. The Government are incompetent as well as totally ideologically driven.

The Government should be properly taxing the filthy profits of oil and gas companies rather than foisting the cost of new developments on to the taxpayer, and they should urgently withdraw from the dangerous energy charter treaty, which—it beggars belief—allows us to be sued by fossil fuel companies. A fairer and greener energy system is entirely possible, but it requires both imagination and investment—two qualities that I do not associate with the Government. The legislation makes it painfully clear that the Government are wilfully ignoring the lessons of both the climate and the energy crises, and are once again privileging their own interests above the wellbeing of people and planet. The Bill sends exactly the wrong signal at the wrong time, and actively undermines global efforts to address the climate emergency by hampering diplomacy and giving the green light to further extraction right around the world. It is not what leadership looks like, it is not what this moment demands, and all our constituents deserve better.

COP28

Richard Foord Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Solloway]

This Government have demonstrated a commitment to investment in all these areas. Particularly from a science and technology point of view, I know that UK Trade and Investment has immense commitment and gives out support for this. But there are many things that we have been doing. We have not just been investing in R&D from a science point of view. What we are doing is investing in offshore wind, in alternative fuel and in all those things that will enable us to get to where we need to be.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

In the UK, heating homes accounts for 14% of carbon emissions, and in England our homes produce more emissions than cars do. That is not only costing the environment in the future; it is also costing taxpayers now. A decade ago, the then Prime Minister Cameron’s “green crap” riddance resulted in uninsulated lofts and in cavity walls being left unfilled. Given that that decision is now adding billions in additional costs to taxpayers and making it harder to meet the 2030 decarbonisation target, can the Minister ask the Foreign Secretary whether he regrets it?

[Amanda Solloway]

We are investing in making sure that homes are insulated and energy efficient. It is worth pointing out that between 1990 and 2021 the UK cut emissions by 48%, while growing the economy by more than 70%. I can, of course, pass on the hon. Gentleman’s message to the Foreign Secretary.

Energy Costs and Charges

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Westminster Hall

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

I thank the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) for his passionate and informative speech. I will say at the start that renewable energy clearly does not fit into my portfolio, but if I cannot answer on any points I will try to find the answers and follow up subsequently in writing.

First, the Government have been clear on the importance of protecting energy consumers, and I take my role as Minister for Energy Consumers and Affordability incredibly seriously. That is why I frequently meet energy suppliers and the regulator to remind them of their obligations and my expectations that they will do all they can to support customers, especially the most vulnerable, this winter and beyond. In response to the wholesale energy price challenge caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the Government acted swiftly to provide support to UK households and businesses, delivering almost £40 billion of energy bills support through different schemes from October 2022. The Government also continue to stand firmly behind energy consumers.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

Although I think our constituents are very grateful for the £40 billion of subsidy that was given across the cold winter last year, does the Minister agree that it would not have been necessary to spend that £40 billion of taxpayers’ money if we had carried on insulating homes at the rate that we had been up until the Liberal Democrats left government in 2015?

[Amanda Solloway]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Of course, the fact is that we had a cost of living crisis mainly, as I have pointed out, because of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. That was the situation we found ourselves in.

For households in fuel poverty, we have targeted support such as £150 directly off energy bills through the warm home discount, which last year we increased in value and extended to around 3 million households. We are also tackling the root problem through our energy efficiency schemes. We are looking at ways to make the warm home discount more flexible, and also to help respond to future increased pressures on consumers’ bills, and we continue to monitor energy bills and keep options under review.

Net Zero by 2050

Richard Foord Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

We are not rolling back from our targets at all; I agree with the Climate Change Committee’s assessment that there is no material difference between the projections in June and the recent assessments it made post the announcements. I welcome a lot of the work that many of our farmers are doing to pursue environmental goals. I have talked to many in my constituency who are doing quite phenomenal things at a local level. They will be supported by our agriculture policy, the landmark Agriculture Act 2020 and the Environment Act 2021 that we have brought forward in recent years.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

Last winter the taxpayer covered around half the cost of British people heating their homes. That amounted to exactly £39.3 billion of taxpayers’ money spent between last October and this March. At the end of last year, 33% of properties with a loft did not have loft insulation. How concerned is the Secretary of State about the cost to future taxpayers of rowing back this Government’s previous insulation plans?

[Claire Coutinho]

The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that we spent £40 billion last year helping people with their energy bills, paying on average half of people’s energy bills to support them through that difficult time. On insulation, I would say that when we came into power, 14% of homes were energy efficient, and now that figure is 50%. We are spending £6 billion in this Parliament, a further £6 billion to 2028 and £5 billion through the energy company obligation and the Great British Insulation Scheme to make sure that our homes are energy efficient.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

As ever, I thank my right hon. Friend. We are listening. As the Prime Minister set out, we will reduce our emissions in line with our obligations but do so in a way that recognises the challenges that families face. Off-grid households will be supported through the transition, and we will respond to the consultation in due course.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

During the summer recess, when I was touring villages, I found in my corner of Devon that some constituents are worried about whether they should replace their oil-fired boiler in the next couple of years with a heat pump or put their faith in hydro-treated vegetable oil. Some have been encouraged by the pilots of so-called HVO as an alternative source to heating oil. What assurances can the Minister offer that it will be a truly sustainable source of fuel and not made from palm oil, which encourages deforestation? Or should we put 100% of our efforts into heat pumps?

[Graham Stuart]

As the hon. Member doubtless knows, we have conducted a consultation on the use of HVO in heating, and we are determined to ensure that we decarbonise heat in homes, including off-grid homes, in a way that is practical and aligned with minimising any negative impacts on those families.

Offshore Wind Contracts

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question, which is a good one. Obviously, we did look at whether intervention, given that prices continue to change after they are set, was the right thing to do. We think that the CfD mechanism—the way that it is operated—is sound and that the best thing to do is to allow that to pass for the year. One reason for having the annual auction was precisely to allow us quickly to adjust, and, as I say, as soon as November, we will be setting the parameters for the next year.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

Last November, the Government paid up to £700 million to China General Nuclear Corporation to buy out China’s state-owned nuclear power enterprise from Sizewell C, and we spent the best part of 2022 freeing ourselves from our reliance on Russian oil and gas. Given the failure of this Government to sell offshore wind projects in the latest round, can the Minister please comment on how energy independence from authoritarian states was served by this inability to run an auction?

[Graham Stuart]

We are now running these auctions every year, and every year, we will be seeking to get the generation that we require at the lowest possible cost to the consumer. I make no apology for doing that. The fact that we have the most successful system, not only in Europe, but globally, is something that should be applauded and recognised.

Planning and Solar Farms

Richard Foord Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) for securing this important debate.

It is really good that the issue of solar farms and planning has been raised. It is obvious to us all that we have to shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy; nobody would demur from that. As well as the environmental benefit of saving the planet, renewable energy also has the advantage of cutting people’s bills, and again nobody would argue against that.

The hon. Lady said that it can sometimes feel like all the solar panels in the country are in her Lincolnshire constituency, but I assure her that that is not correct: we have stacks of them in my part of Devon. The small parish of Hawkchurch, a village in my constituency that borders Dorset and Somerset, is already home to more than 100 acres of fsolar arms.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

Although I recognise that the hon. Gentleman is advocating passionately for his constituency, I must point out that more than 50% of land nationally with proposed solar plants is in Lincolnshire, Leicester and Rutland, so we are disproportionately at threat.

[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.

[Sir John Hayes]

I was going to ask the same question as my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray). To clarify further, is the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) saying that he is against large solar developments on prime land? Or is he is saying that he wants many more of them and for them to be spread, meaning he would presumably like many more applications, in many more places, for smaller solar farms that eat up agricultural land?

[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.