Richard Fuller

My hon. Friend makes two important points. First, during world war two, London would have starved without agricultural produce from Bedfordshire. More importantly, the Minister must recognise that we are supportive. We know that the Government have a growth strategy—we may have disagreements on national economic policies, but we want to do our bit. Indeed, the people of Bedfordshire are doing their bit, and a lot more. The Minister will appreciate that, with so many projects happening all at once, at some point those things are going to break, and my hon. Friend makes an important point about that. In East Park Energy’s documentation, it chose not to be comprehensive in the scope of its evaluations, and was insufficient in the depth of its analysis. For example, it completely omitted any reference to Luton airport expansion, the Universal theme park, and any potential new town at Tempsford. It dismissed the need for an assessment of Black Cat roundabout on the assumption that construction would be finished before East Park Energy starts, but there will be consequential effects, including further construction from the change at Black Cat roundabout. It dismissed the need for an assessment of East West Rail on an assumption, but it is highly likely that there will be an overlapping construction period should East West Rail go ahead. It lacked any assessment of medium or long-term effects such as permanent land use change and increased perception of the urbanisation of the area. It provided no consideration of the over-concentration of solar development in North Bedfordshire—my constituency is part of the 1% club, which is constituencies where over 1% of the land area will be covered by solar panels—and it ignored the impact of overlapping construction periods that it would be adding to for two and a half years, or 30 months. Just imagine all the traffic from building Universal Studios, getting in construction because we want shovels in the ground to start building at Tempsford if the Government decide to go ahead with that, and trying to build East West Rail. East Park Energy completely ignored that, so from the point of view of understanding the impact of what it is going into, the proposal that was presented fell significantly short. Finally, before I yield to the Minister, I know that he is limited in what he can say about specific projects and that, given his role, the Secretary of State would not be able to comment at all. As I mentioned briefly to the Minister earlier, I am in a small minority of Conservative Members who agree with some of the Secretary of State’s criticisms about past energy policy, even though I may not agree with all of his proposed remedies, so I hope that the Minister understands that my observations come from a positive place. The role of a Secretary of State or his designated Minister in making a decision is a crucial step in an evaluation process, which the public must trust. They must assess each proposal individually on its merits, not just on overarching goals. There have been 12 solar panel development consent orders for evaluation since July 2024, each of which has been approved. Some of us may be old enough—not you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but certainly me—to remember the musical “Oklahoma!”, in which there is a song, “I Cain’t Say No”. That is a very old reference, but I am very old. I encourage the Secretary of State to avoid any caricature that he “cain’t say no”, because in the case of East Park Energy, my personal view is that there are considerable and specific reasons why he can say no.