I suggest that the grass and the wonderful flowers in the picture my hon. Friend has shown me were there before the panels were put up—the panels can only just have been put up for the advertisers to get such a picture. The whole thing is—but perhaps I had better not say what I was going to say.
I echo the words of my hon. Friends: do not blame the farmers for what is going on; blame the companies. Basically, the companies are using a scattergun approach. If they apply as many times and for as many sites as possible, they will not get many applications through, but they will get one or two of them, so they keep going. All they do is terrorise the population of those areas, who see planning application after planning application, costing Mid Devon a fortune to process. The council is now asking for environmental impact assessments, but everything still has to be processed.
The Minister wants the money that we are using to subsidise solar panels—we should not forget that panels can only get into place with vast amounts of subsidy—to go on community projects and individual households, so that people get real benefits. The problem is, however, that the money seems to have landed up in the vast numbers of field projects, because the price of panels has halved. A year or so ago, the Minister got lambasted for reducing the tariff on solar panel production, but in the meantime the cost of the panels has dropped and they have become lucrative. In the end, it is all about producing money, and the panels are too profitable. That is the problem.
I urge the Minister, therefore, to reduce the tariff further, especially for the field panels, although I am sure he is not keen to do so after his previous experience of reducing it. That will ensure that the money goes where he intends it to go. The planning process is good, and I welcome what the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr Pickles), and his Department have done, in that local authorities will now have a great deal more say. My argument, however, is simple: if the panels are not profitable, we will not get them. We will not get 90-acre farms covered in solar panels if they are not profitable; if such undertakings are profitable, the companies will try to get them up and running.
Just over the border from me, I have industrial buildings that are covered in solar panels, which is a great place to put panels, and as other hon. Members have said, there
are some large farm buildings around the area. That is absolutely right, because farm buildings on the whole are not things of great beauty, and putting solar panels on them might even increase their beauty, and they certainly would not detract from it. Do not take the panels out into acres and acres of land. Where would it stop? If we take all that grade 1 and 2 land out of food production, we will be short of food, and we do not actually need the solar panels.
I take huge issue with my hon. Friend the Member for Wells. The Hinkley power station is already there; I am the first to admit that Hinkley A and B are not things of great beauty, but they are already in place. If we add two new reactors that will produce 8% of the country’s total electricity needs in the same place, no one will notice. In fact, the new power stations will be marginally better looking than the previous ones. They will certainly produce electricity for the whole country—some 8%—and we would have to cover virtually half the country with solar panels in order to produce a similar amount of electricity. Furthermore, during dark times of year when little solar energy is produced, we would not get that electricity, whereas a nuclear power station is a base load, which is there and producing electricity all the time.
People are getting cross, because they feel that they are being sold green energy as a total solution, but I am sure that the Minister will admit that we need all types of green energy in order to balance. We have got the balance wrong. I do not blame him for that, because he has done his best to ensure that the money goes to community schemes and individuals, but we have to do much more. My local council in Mid Devon was successful in putting solar panels all over council and social housing, which has been a benefit of about £3 a week to many of the tenants, who are hard-pressed for cash—that is a great way of using the subsidy.
Finally, I ask the Minister to look at the issue again. All through the valleys of east and mid-Devon we have large power lines in many places. The companies follow the power lines all the way through the valleys, which are right out in the open. Even quite large farms can be accepted in places—if they have trees around them and are reasonably well hidden, that is fine. The companies will carry on following the power lines all through the south-west, because the region—Devon and Cornwall in particular—is especially good for panels, on account of the light and the amount of production possible, making them lucrative. I wish the Minister well, but I want him to do much more than the DCLG changes to the planning system; we need to alter the tariffs to ensure that those huge solar farms are no longer profitable.
4.7 pm