Greg Smith

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. The point she makes is absolutely right and it applies equally to my constituency as to hers. In my constituency, the backbone of our economy is agriculture and food production. The Labour party used to say in its manifesto that “food security is national security” yet this Bill seeks to build all over the very land that our farmers in Buckinghamshire and across the country use to produce the very food that gives us national security. I want to focus on the infrastructure implications from the energy sector. I entirely approve of transitioning to cleaner forms of energy production, but it is a point I have made in this House time and again, and I will never get bored of saying it, that it takes 2,000 acres of ground-mounted solar panels to produce enough electricity for 50,000 homes on current usage. That is before everyone has two Teslas—which is perhaps not the brand that people would choose now—on the drive. However, a small modular reactor needs just two football pitches to deliver enough electricity on current usage for 1 million homes. Why on earth in this country are we messing around with solar, destroying thousands of acres of food-producing land, when other clean technologies are out there that can clean up our energy and electricity production in a way that is kinder and gentler on our national fabric and rural communities? When I hear the Secretary of State talk about, as she did in her opening address, protecting high-grade agricultural land, I take that with a large pinch of salt. That is because, in my constituency in Buckinghamshire, we have caught those paid exorbitant amounts of money to come and grade the land prior to a planning application deliberately testing the land in the headland of the field—the bit not used to grow crops or grass or to graze animals. Of course, they will always get a lower land grade by testing the headland. If the Government are serious about wanting to protect high-grade agricultural land, I would urge the Minister to look at measures he could take to ensure that the fertile part of the field is tested, not the headland.