Planning Bill

I declare an interest as chairman of a community archaeological trust and a couple of heritage trusts, albeit up in Scotland, but the principle is the same. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is seeking to protect archaeology. In Caithness, we have had huge problems with wind farms, like my noble friend Lord Reay. The real problem is money. When money is offered by a developer, as it will be with these infrastructure projects, people will be very keen, particularly in these economic times, to raise whatever finance they can when other forms of income are hard to generate, particularly for farmers and communities. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, was right that this is about communities. I have not discussed this with my noble friend Lord Reay, but I am sure that the wind farm proposals that he faces have divided communities. In Caithness, they have divided families, have divided the county into all sorts of groupings and have destroyed communities where people were working together. The incentives that a wind farm is able to offer have destroyed communities. With that has gone the heritage. The remote areas where people want to put wind farms and find greenfield sites are where the archaeology of our heritage still is. There is no doubt that a huge amount of our archaeology and heritage has been destroyed, often by the Forestry Commission planting trees, which was not given proper consideration and has done immense damage. We must learn from our mistakes. Let us write this into the Bill in some form now so that the things that we cherish, which will be important for future generations as well as for ourselves, are taken into account.