I agree with my hon. Friend. The collapse in farming incomes is extraordinary and both of us know that, having worked closely with farming communities. There used to be a dairy farm on every hillside in the South Hams area, but I am afraid that we are losing that vital part of our heritage.
Far from the rural idyll of grazing sheep and wild flowers that we see in all the glossy literature about these sites, the reality is that where the panels are closely packed and close to the ground there is very little grazing land. There may be a margin around the edge of these sites, which of course is where the photographs are taken, but those photographs give a very misleading impression. We are often told that these projects will be sensitively screened. Well, anyone who has driven past Blue Post will see very high and very ugly wire fencing, often with security cameras and humming transformers. That is a very different world from the one that is portrayed in the literature. The industry guidelines talk about sensitive siting, consultation with communities
and sensitive screening, but I am afraid that this process does not appear to be about renewables and saving the planet; instead, it appears to be about big money.
Diptford, the small community I referred to earlier, has already felt the impact of the arrays at Marley and Blue Post, and there are already two further large sites along the power line corridors nearby. Now, AAE Renewables is in the pre-planning stage for a further 83 acres directly bordering the AONB. There is a visceral sense that something is very wrong. I know that the community in Diptford will be immensely reassured that the planning guidelines will be updated by the Minister in the next few weeks.
However, I will just sound a note of caution, because we often hear the term “prime farmland” being used. Agricultural land is graded between one and five, but the grade is determined by a number of factors, such as gradient, flood risk, versatility, the yield and so forth. If the Minister looks at the map of agricultural land grading in my constituency, he will see that almost the entire area is grade 3 or 4. If we restrict the protections to prime farmland, and that is interpreted as being grade 1 or 2, that will be no protection whatever to the South Hams. I was relieved to hear this morning that landscape and rural views are also issues, because it is important that we focus not only on land type.
There is a wider point about food security, which has been made to me by my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), who would have liked to contribute to the debate. The projects in Suffolk Coastal are taking over not only areas of outstanding natural beauty, but valuable agricultural land. In summing up, therefore, will the Minister tell us whether any assessment has been made of the impact on food security, because we, as a country, are already unable to feed ourselves? There is also an issue about the impact on local food webs. The disruption to local food webs will be important in areas such as south Devon. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on that.
Another real grievance relates to subsidies. We see from the correspondence between AEE and the planning department that it is not necessary for an 80-acre area of desecration—that is what it is, I am afraid—to have an environmental impact assessment. Small-scale, sustainable, self-build projects from the Land Society are held up, sometimes for years, by the need to have environmental impact assessments, but the real environmental impact is from inappropriate large-scale solar developments. In summing up, will the Minister refer to the need to have environmental impact assessments? Often, the image we are given is of projects that will be high off the ground and widely spaced—we all recognise that that has less of an environmental impact—but if Members go to look at the project at Blue Post, they will see that there is a major environmental impact when these things are densely packed and ground mounted.
Another issue is, how temporary is temporary? The planning officer referred in her correspondence to “temporary structures”. In 25 years’ time, I will be 76—