Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Committee (3rd Day) (Continued)

Amendment 89

89: After Clause 28, insert the following new Clause— “Prohibition of solar power development on higher-quality agricultural landNo permission may be granted for the building or installation of provision for solar power generation where the development would involve—(a) the building on or development of agricultural land at grade 1, 2, or 3a, and(b) building or installation at ground level.”Member's explanatory statement This new Clause would prohibit the development of solar power generation on higher-quality agricultural land.

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 89 in my name. This amendment would insert a new clause after Clause 28 which would prohibit the development of solar power generation on high-quality agricultural land, in particular, as set out in paragraph (a),

“agricultural land at grade 1, 2, or 3a”.

As many know, agricultural land is classified into five grades based on various physical and chemical characteristics that affect its long-term agricultural use, grade 1 being the highest and grade 5 the lowest. Grade 3 covers good to moderate-quality land and is divided into two sub-grades, with 3a defined as land capable of consistently producing moderate to high yields of a wide range of crops. I excluded sub-grade 3b, which is more limited in its agricultural use, often suited only to grassland and extensive grazing. Paragraph (b) in Amendment 89 then prevents solar power generation development, which would involve building or installation at ground level.

As I and others argued at Second Reading, the Government need to be joined up when considering infrastructure. Despite the high-level meetings over the summer in Alaska, the current situation in Ukraine remains significantly worrying, and the threat will remain even when the war in Ukraine has been resolved. Our defence policy has pivoted to deterrence against possible war: that we should be war ready. Although defence is the first priority of the Government, surely our second, as an island nation, should be food security.

Solar farms will take up large areas of land that should be used for food production. The Minister has suggested that these concerns are not proportionate, as it is estimated to impact only 1% of agricultural land. According to the Government’s own statistics released in March this year, covering the UK up to 1 June 2024, utilised agricultural land accounts for some 16.8 million hectares in 2024. One per cent of that is the equivalent of 105,000 football pitches, around four-and-a-half times as big as the Isle of Wight. That is not something to be just brushed aside.

Proposed new paragraph (b) would help to provide the answer to where we should put panels instead. I and others question why we need to be putting solar panels at ground level at all. At Second Reading, the scope to put panels on our existing transport infrastructure was highlighted. It was pointed out that France have already mandated for installing solar panels on car parks. What about bus garages, train depots, railway stations, state schools and prisons? The Minister failed to respond to my suggestion that the Government could also mandate for them to be retrofitted to government buildings. What about incentivising owners to have them fitted on commercial and industrial buildings, as well as insisting that they go on new builds? If all these actions were put in place, I wonder if it would exceed what current aims hope to achieve and not only generate clean energy but reduce grid pressure and improve our energy infrastructure resilience against disruption while preserving maximum options regarding food production.

The negative environmental impact of solar farms should also be recognised. The clearing of land to facilitate these solar farms causes major disruptions, with new roads having to be put down and many lorries thundering down tiny country lanes that have to be widened for the purpose. The construction can degrade the land, harm local ecosystems and displace wildlife, upsetting the balance of diverse wildlife, insects and birds.

We should not forget that green open spaces absorb carbon through photosynthesis. By storing carbon, green spaces reduce the overall concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere, producing cooling effects that help to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Green open spaces act as carbon sinks, improving air quality. The panels themselves contain hazardous materials such as cadmium and lead, raising concerns about leaks. They are usually guaranteed for only about 25 years, and the replacements will again cause excessive intrusion into rural areas. There are concerns since recycling infrastructure for solar panels is still developing. There are also worries about future waste problems as the solar panels reach the end of their lives.

There is all this disruption when we know that solar power is intermittent. I understand that these panels produce power only when the sun shines. I know that we have just had a wonderful summer, but solar panels produce less electricity when it is very hot because excessive heat reduces their efficiency with every degree over 25 degrees centigrade. As we all know, there can be precious few sunny days in the UK winter months. Therefore, electricity from solar panels cannot be guaranteed and back-up power and storage solutions need to be put in place, which can be costly.

I understand that many of these proposals for solar farms are being put forward by foreign investment companies. I question whether the Government are aware of these and whether they are in the UK’s interest. There is a register of overseas entities, requiring foreign companies owning UK land to register, but does the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 also make it mandatory to be transparent about long leases, as many of these companies will be leasing land and taking it out of UK food production for up to 60 years? To come back to my earlier point about resilience, some foreign powers might see this as a subtle way of reducing the UK’s food security. Is the UK monitoring the proposals in this regard and understanding who is truly behind them? Do the Government have any policies on who can buy land in the UK? Can the Minister clarify whether these foreign investors are given tax breaks to invest in these solar farms?

I also raise the impact of solar farms on the countryside and the people who live there. We live in a beautiful country and the UK countryside is treasured, especially by those who live in it. The majority of people who live in rural areas do so because they love looking out over rolling green fields and they value the natural habitats in which they live. They do not wish to look out over a sea of silicon solar panels glaring when there is sunlight.

Putting in a solar farm industrialises the countryside and changes the character of the area for ever. It is causing huge upset to many who live in rural environments and are threatened with a solar development on their doorsteps. Many feel very threatened and the level of distress is incredibly high. When you drive through areas where solar farms have been proposed, there are often masses of signs along the roads from people demonstrating against them. This is happening in many areas of the country—Lincolnshire, Suffolk, Essex, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Sussex, Oxfordshire and County Durham to name some. This situation was epitomised by an article in the Daily Telegraph last weekend about the solar farm proposed near Mike Rutherford’s house in Sussex.

We live in a country that prides itself on property rights. We should not casually disregard local people’s wishes and create such distress, especially when the world is such a threatened place. I have heard people vulnerable to development of solar farms on their doorsteps saying that they will have to move, which will have a dramatic effect on property prices in such areas. It will also affect the fabric and culture of our countryside. We hear about the explosion of mental health problems since Covid; it is well recognised that the countryside and green spaces can have a significant positive effect on mental health. This is not the time to allow huge tracts of open land to be undermined by the monoculture of solar panels.

I am lucky enough to have spent the Recess in a rural area of Shropshire, where we have a house. I watched the harvesting over August, with farmers working all hours of the day and night. I know from talking to many people in the area that it feels as though the countryside is not understood and is being attacked by this Government. Proposals for solar farms on agricultural land are yet another attack. I beg to move.

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.

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.

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.