Lord Deben (Con)

I very much want to support this amendment, because it is asking for information, and one of the problems we have in this country is that when we do not like the answers, we do not ask the question. That seems to me to be the fundamental issue here. I am rather in favour of properly placed solar farms, but I use the wording “properly placed”. I also think that, in many ways, at least you can get rid of them. The problem with building houses is that you cannot, and I am very concerned about the way in which we constantly use greenfield sites instead of insisting on the development of already used land. I have to say that this Government have really not faced up to the reality, which is that the housebuilding industry does not like anything but a greenfield site and will take those long before it will try to develop inside our already used towns and the like. This is not only bad for food security but bad for the environment, because it means that people, instead of living relatively hugger-mugger, able to live and move within the same area, have in fact to use transport to get anywhere. In Suffolk, where I come from, I see this all the time: more and more people are commuting from villages which have never had the jobs, and will not have the jobs, to towns increasingly far away. So, the issue of housebuilding is crucial, and we have not thought it through. Merely saying “1.5 million new homes over five years” does not actually face the real issue. I declare an interest as a small organic farmer. I am very concerned about the failure of the Government to face food security. I am not sure that I myself would have chosen Angela Eagle for that job. The fact of the matter is that it is a very important job, but it is not one that is being faced up to. When I was Minister of Agriculture, I was interviewed by Peter Jay, the cleverest man in Europe, and he said to me, “I don’t know why we have a Minister of Agriculture, because we can always buy food elsewhere in the world”. That is the ignorant position, which I am afraid has been carried on either publicly or privately, and not only by this Government, but I fear by previous Governments too. It is a serious matter that no member of this Cabinet has real agricultural connections of any kind. No member represents a fully agricultural seat, although I am pleased to see that the new Secretary of State for Defra—who is an extremely intelligent and useful addition to the Cabinet—has the most agricultural seat of any Cabinet Minister: Wycombe. Anyone who knows where Wycombe is knows that the agricultural bit is ancillary rather than central.