Lewis Cocking

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) on his Bill. I do have some reservations about it, which I will go into shortly, but I am minded to support it today because this is a much better policy than the current Government line about having large-scale solar farms on all our farmland throughout the United Kingdom. I would much rather solar panels were put on new builds, and councils already have some powers enabling them to do that. Broxbourne council, which I used to lead, has engaged in extensive negotiations with developers, particularly at High Leigh, where we have managed to get solar panels on some of the houses. A large data centre is also being built, and we have managed to put some solar panels on that. As I have said, I do have some concerns. I am all for taking on developers and ensuring that they pay for their section 106 negotiations and do their community work, and standing up for the residents we all represent. However, during many of the negotiations when I led the council, developers told me that they wanted to put solar panels on more houses but the distribution network operator had told them that there was not enough capacity. I said that no one would be able to see the top of the data centre, so why not cover the whole thing in solar panels? Why would anyone not want to do that? Why would anyone not support it? That was my negotiating position. The developers went away and had discussions with the DNO, which said that they could have only 25% because there was not enough capacity for more and the system would not be able to cope. We need to have a discussion about the capacity of the grid if we are going to do this. I know that the Bill focuses specifically on new build properties, but surely it is a good thing to be able to use the rooftops of all the large data centres and warehouses that are already available.