Greg Smith

The Conservative party has been very, very clear on that. We believe in decarbonisation, but we need to do it in a way that people can afford and that does not trash our country in the process, in the way that ground-mounted solar and these wind farms do. The points I am making in arguing that damaging untouched peatland ends up causing more environmental damage than the supposed benefits of the wind farms that those who argue for them want to put there should make every Member of the House pause. They should think whether, in getting to decarbonisation, we are not creating more problems than we are solving by simply taking the first technology off the shelf or going for the convenient bit of land that might be available to build this on. It is a totally false economy to go down the rabbit warren of saying, “It looks green, so we must do it,” rather than doing a whole-system analysis, from the manufacture of parts to the destruction of habitat, land and place across our country. That may actually reveal that the results are not as green as they look on the metaphorical packaging. The guidance does little to help the communities living along these landscapes, the wildlife that depends on them, or indeed the climate if carbon storing habitats are destroyed in the name of carbon reduction. In contrast to that inaction, there is a straightforward solution: prohibit wind farm development on protected peatland across our country—full stop. Despite the Secretary of State holding responsibility for both energy and net zero, it is preposterous that no such ban has been enacted. It is either that the Government do not wish to constrain their ambitions or are displaying sheer negligence towards the natural environment they claim to champion. The reality is that this is not an abstract problem. These are living landscapes that once destroyed cannot be recovered on any human timescale. We need the Government to bring forward a clear prohibition—not guidance, balance or nuance deployed as a smokescreen, but a complete ban. Without the will to protect these habitats absolutely, the peatlands will be lost, and with them 3 billion tonnes of stored carbon, a quarter of our drinking water supply and the quiet, irreplaceable richness of the United Kingdom’s upland landscape.