The shadow environment secretary Maria Eagle said in the House of Commons on Thursday that Elizabeth Truss had “no underpinning evidence” for her department’s decision to remove subsidies for farmers who place solar farms on agricultural land.
Eagle slammed the policy, stating that land can be multi-functional – producing energy and an agricultural yield.
The shadow environment secretary also questioned Truss whether “her priority should be cutting Britain’s ability to generate clean electricity” at the same times as when capacity margins are at their lowest level for seven years.
Eagle was backed up by the shadow energy minister Julie Elliott, who tweeted that the “govt again costing jobs and threatening our energy security”
The Conservative environment secretary responded: “I don’t think it is right we locate solar panels on productive agricultural land that could be contributing to our economy.”
She added: “Food and farming is one of our largest industries and contributes £100 billion to the economy, and there are 250,000 hectares of commercial roofs where solar panels can be located.”
This change will come into effect from January 2015 and means that farmers who choose to use fields for solar panels will not be eligible for any farm subsidy payments available through the Common Agricultural Policy for that land.
The changes to the subsidy regime are stated to potentially save taxpayers up to £2 million per year.
The move follows other decisions by the government to end support for solar farms on agricultural land, including ending subsidies for large scale solar (above 5MW) farms from 1 April 2015.