Kerry McCarthy

I am pretty sure that my hon. Friend has raised that issue at Energy Security and Net Zero questions before. I will remind the Minister for Energy, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), to engage further with him about that. On clustering, and coming to the nub of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, some communities feel that what they are being asked to host is excessive. I have a few responses to that issue. First, the planning system includes provisions to assess cumulative impacts under such circumstances, so that should be a part of the process. Secondly, we will be changing the way that we allocate energy infrastructure around the country. To date, developers have been incentivised to build projects where there is spare grid capacity and in industrial areas, such as the midlands. That is why there is that attraction and that can lead to clustering. In the future, we will take a completely different approach to the one that we inherited from the right hon. Gentleman’s Government. We have commissioned the National Energy System Operator to create a strategic spatial energy plan that will set out a strategy for how new infrastructure should be spread across the country. By investing in our electricity networks and our grid, we can ensure that the grid will go where the projects are, rather than the other way around. I wish I had time to answer all the other points that the right hon. Gentleman raised about storage and safety, but I will be happy to do so in writing. Finally, I want to focus on what we are doing to accelerate solar deployment on rooftops. We will encourage the installation of solar on new-build housing and on commercial buildings through new building standards. The vast majority of new homes built under these standards will have rooftop solar fitted. We have permitted development rights to allow most rooftop projects to proceed without an application for planning permission, and we have just conducted a call for evidence about adding solar canopies in car parks. Great British Energy is putting solar on 200 schools and on 200 NHS sites to bring down bills and build more local clean power. Next month, we will launch our ambitious warm homes plan, with £13.2 billion available to support people with the upfront costs of installing green technology, including rooftop solar, insulation of homes, heat pumps and so on. We are unleashing a rooftop revolution because we think that rooftop is so important, but the scale of the challenge facing us, to get to clean power by 2030 and to ramp up renewables, means that ground-mounted solar and floating solar, which the Government also support, have to be a part of the plan. To sum up, we take the concerns raised by the right hon. Gentleman very seriously. We want to take people with us on our clean power mission, which will work only if we do so. We are putting measures in place to get the planning process right, to ensure that communities benefit from hosting clean energy, and to support the strategic spread of projects across the country, including in urban areas, through our rooftop revolution. I am glad that the British people agree with us that solar is a vital part of our future energy mix, but we are never complacent about retaining that support. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to set out—in brief, at least—our position, and he will appreciate why we cannot be too specific about some of the points he raises. Question put and agreed to.