Robert Jenrick

The hon. Lady makes an important point. We should think about the impact on rural communities. Larger projects such as those that I am speaking about will have a profound impact on rural communities. To go back to the point I was making, why are we not using every incentive possible to ensure that such projects are placed on warehouses or factories rather than on beautiful and important countryside? It makes no sense. Fourthly, let me address the impact on the countryside itself. These are some of the finest landscapes in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. They will be scarred for generations. Some families will find solar farms just metres from their gardens. Imagine walking the dog not along a hedgerow, but between two 3.5-metre-high metal fences bristling with CCTV cameras. Imagine going for a run, flanked for miles not by rolling British countryside but by 4-metre-high walls of black glass. That is not the rural England that my constituents cherish. Fifthly, there will be a massive impact on rural life. I believe in house building, but if we encircle villages with solar farms, we will make it nigh-on impossible to have organic housing growth in those villages in the years to come, at a time when our country needs new houses in rural communities.