New Energy Infrastructure: Community Benefit Scheme

5. If he will make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing a community benefit scheme for households near new energy infrastructure.

We have made clear, through the clean power action plan that we announced last week, that where communities host clean energy infrastructure, we will ensure that they benefit from it. There are many options in that area, including community funds and direct support for households, and we are exploring all those options to ensure that communities can benefit from the clean power mission.

There is a proposal to build 65 wind turbines on protected peatland in the neighbouring Calderdale council area, which I am staunchly against. To make matters worse, if the development is approved, my constituents will not benefit from any community benefit scheme, despite being on the periphery of the proposed location. How will the Secretary of State ensure that my constituents get their fair share of any community benefit scheme should the proposal be approved?

I cannot comment on the specific details of the case. However, I would like to know more about why the hon. Gentleman’s community might not benefit, because the aim is for all communities affected by hosting infrastructure to benefit in different ways. We are looking at the options—be they money off bills, or the community benefit funds that exist at the moment—as we work through the answers to the consultation launched by the previous Government. However, we are clear that if communities host infrastructure that is nationally important and benefits the whole country, they should benefit from doing so.

Community benefits come in many different forms—in my constituency, Ørsted has contributed £1 million towards Horizon Youth Zone, and RWE is supporting Projekt Renewable, which is a box park learning zone—but the most wide-reaching benefit is to people’s pockets. Schemes such as the Octopus fan club bring down people’s bills when the use of renewables is at its highest. How can other energy retailers deliver similar savings for consumers?

My hon. Friend asks an extremely important question. All communities should benefit from the transformation that we want to make to the energy system. Part of the answer is improving how we use smart systems right across the energy system, so that people have much more consumer-led flexibility in their options—we are moving forward with that. In the clean power action plan that we published last week, we committed to doing much more to give people the power to take advantage of some of the opportunities she mentions.

I call the shadow Minister.

Community engagement and funding are important. With large-scale solar farms planned for agricultural land, does the Secretary of State think that there are any circumstances in which local communities might know better than him?

Communities are, and will always be, able to speak about the plans for their local area, and to contribute to consultations and planning applications—we will not change anything about that. However, it is important to say that nationally important infrastructure will need to be built somewhere if we are to have the clean power future and energy security that everybody in this country needs. I gently say to the hon. Lady that, even in the most extreme statistics, less than 1% of land in this country would be used to build for solar. Either the Conservatives are in favour of keeping us on the rollercoaster of volatile fossil fuels, or they are in favour of building clean power. Her party used to be in favour of net zero, but now it seems to be running away from it at speed.