Sir Alec Shelbrooke

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. That is the view of a lot of people we speak to in and around rural constituencies: they say that the Government either do not understand these communities or, worse, they do not care. People feel there is this constant attitude of, “You don’t need the money. We’re going to take it to the urban areas.” At Prime Minister’s questions, we saw the Prime Minister trying to say, “We have got this bit of the economy and that bit of the economy.” That is all very well, but it does not feel like that for people sitting at home when the weather is freezing cold, wondering where they can make cuts to heat their homes. That happens in areas of deprivation in and around my constituency, which is deemed to be affluent—because of that people do not get the money they need. I want to touch briefly on how good agricultural land is being taken over by solar farms. I am fed up to the back teeth of listening to Ministers say, “We must no longer be reliant on petrochemical dictators to control our energy.” China is a dictatorship, and it controls 90% of the processed materials for renewable energy. I would have a huge amount of respect for the Minister if, in her summing up, she admitted that the dictatorship of China is no better than some of the dictatorships of the petrochemical states. We are just transferring the problem from one region to another. Ministers should not pretend that they are any different.