Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)

My Lords, I will say a word about Amendment 45, which has been tabled by my noble kinswoman, my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger. My noble friend cannot be here—she is part of an IPU delegation in Geneva—and she asked if I would come tonight, apologise to the House for her absence and make a few remarks about this amendment on her behalf. I am happy to do this not just for reasons of domestic harmony, although domestic harmony is very desirable, but because this amendment runs very parallel to one about food security that I moved in Committee. My issues then looked top-down at the world position and how it would impact this country’s food security; this amendment looks bottom-up at what we need to do to make sure that we do not unnecessarily and unduly impede our ability to feed ourselves, which must surely be a key responsibility of any Government. My noble friend asked me to make a number of points. Before I do, I remind your Lordships of my entry in the register: my family investment company owns a few acres of agricultural land. The first point is that solar power development should not take place on higher-quality agricultural land, which was the point that my noble friend Lord Fuller made. We need to keep this productive land to feed ourselves and remember that, if we lose it once to solar panels and solar farms, we have probably lost it for ever. The Minister might refer to the forthcoming land use framework as providing the answer to this, but that will not come out until this Bill is an Act. One hears the awful sound of a door slamming behind a bolting horse. The second issue is another point made by my noble friend Lord Fuller, about the continuing and rising tensions geopolitically. We need to keep those always in mind when we consider this country’s position and our ability to feed ourselves by bringing in food from overseas. We grow just over half our food ourselves. The third point is that using agricultural land for solar panels has too often been the soft touch and the easy option. As has been said, farming is not particularly profitable and is cyclical. Therefore, it is much easier for a farmer to sign a long-term contract that provides security for a generation, for himself and for his family. That is one route. The other route, of course, which is much more difficult, is to go down the commercial channel. There, the Government are likely to see much more hard-headed commercial resistance. For example, as a first step, why are we not putting solar panels on every new house we build? Why are we not insisting that solar panels are put on every new factory and every commercial building that is constructed? Why are we not thinking about retrofitting solar panels to existing buildings where suitable? All that would improve the situation without us having to reduce the amount of land available for production of food. My fourth point takes the Minister to a point she made in Committee, to which she was not, to be honest, able to give an entirely satisfactory response. What plans do the Government have to monitor the continuing ownership of these solar farms—not just the person who builds them and owns them initially but when they are sold? If the Government argue that solar power is critical to this country, some monitoring of who owns that critical facility is obviously important. The Minister has written to my noble friend—she is grateful for that—and indicated that the Government are thinking of some form of monitoring, but it is not clear in what form the statutory basis of the monitoring will be. Will it be in statute? Will it be guidance? Will it be advisory? Who will enforce it? My noble friend Lord Blencathra and I have spent enough time dealing with secondary legislation to know that there are all sorts of ways in which this can be effective or not. It would be very helpful for the House to know what the Government have in mind for this critical part of our future national life. Finally, no proper account has been taken to assess the permanent damage to our countryside—not just the short-term implications for roads, with tons of material being brought in to establish a solar farm, but the long-term visual impact on our country. In an age when mental illness is rising, we should not underestimate the value of open country. Not for nothing did Octavia Hill, one of the co-founders of the National Trust, write: “We all want quiet. We all want beauty … we all need space. Unless we have it, we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us gently”. The Minister will say that the Government have clocked this and are working hard to make sure they are collecting all the appropriate statistics to ensure that these risks are being examined. Indeed, she concluded a long paragraph on this in Committee by saying: “The Government therefore already have legal requirements to report regularly on matters relevant to food security in the UK”.—[Official Report, 15/9/25; col. 1963.] I do not for a moment suggest that the Government are not collecting lots and lots of statistics. The critical question is what they are then doing with them. Which government department and Secretary of State are responsible for taking all this information, which we are told is now being collected and we all agree is very important and has a real impact on our future as a country, assessing it, working with it, interpreting it and using it to guide future policy? I think the House is entitled to know from the Government how it is being used, how we can be reassured that our future is being properly assessed, and that it is not falling between the stools of different departments and that there is a Secretary of State responsible who is going to be able to keep us, Parliament and the country, informed that our future is safe.