I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith) for allowing me to co-sponsor this important debate. I am a big advocate of green, clean, renewable energy, and a member of the Conservative Environment Network. I find myself at a difficult crossroads. The people of Rutland want to play our part but are faced with an impossible situation, where our heartfelt determination to go green is being attacked by egregious, cynical and unacceptable proposals that would destroy England’s smallest county.
The current system for nationally significant infrastructure projects bypasses the will of communities. It creates a loophole that gags them, and goes against the Conservative mantra of community ownership and pride of place. This is not a fair situation. We need to take steps to ensure that NSI projects and planning rules are not hijacked into becoming a fast-stream planning approval conveyor belt for big developers. That is why NSI programmes can no longer be assessed on an individual basis but as part of a national solar plan.
In Rutland, we are facing the imposition across Rutland and Lincolnshire, on which my neighbour and right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) will speak in a moment, of a solar plant of 2,175 acres. That is 1,400 football pitches—eight times larger than the current biggest solar plant in the country, and bigger than Monaco or the Vatican. I have already made my opposition to that very clear and I plan to fight it, because I will not see that imposed on England’s greatest, smallest and most beautiful county.
I want to touch on Uyghur blood labour and will make two key points, because I think many others will cover agriculture and biodiversity. The Sheffield Hallam report, mentioned earlier, was an in-depth investigation into supply chain links between solar and forced labour in Xinjiang. As we know, the primary material for solar panels and modules is polysilicon: 45% of the world’s polysilicon is produced in Xinjiang. Mallard Pass solar plant is the best example of that. Canadian Solar are a company who are seeking to infiltrate our country with Uyghur blood labour. They are the company proposing to build in Rutland.
Despite their name, Canadian Solar are a de facto Chinese company. The vast majority of their production is in China, with only two small manufacturing facilities in Canada. Their founder, Shawn Qu, lives in China. Since 2019, they have had a supply contract with a company called GCL-Poly, who operate a production facility for solar cells in Jiangsu. But who are GCL-Poly? They are one of the four largest producers of polysilicon in China. An investigation into GCL determined that they actively participate
“in the resettlement of ethnic Uyghurs from…areas of Xinjiang”,
and
“contribute to and implement re-education programs that impose political and military training on resettled populations.”
They are putting Uyghur people into concentration camps and using them to build solar panels, and I will not see those imposed on Rutland.
The US Government have already seized four shipments from Canadian Solar due to their supply chain links with blood labour and genocide. I call on the Government to sanction Canadian Solar and their supplier GCL-Poly, and absolutely not allow them to build in Rutland. As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and as a member of the British public, I do not expect to see blood labour on our soil.
I will not touch on the biodiversity and agriculture points, which will be well made by many colleagues, but that is good agricultural land, graded 2 and 3, and Rutland is the bird capital of the UK, with ospreys, ground-nesting quails, red kites, buzzards and so on.
I thank the Mallard Pass Action Group for all the work that it has done, and I promise the Minister that we will deliver a petition to Parliament that makes clear the opposition from across Rutland. Ultimately, we need a national policy on solar farms. We cannot see this constant competition for the biggest possible solar plant being imposed all across the UK. We need to make sure that we do not have tainted supply chains, and we must protect our natural environment and our ability to feed our people. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw again for calling this important debate.
2.56 pm