I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on bringing forward this amendment, and on her fight for rationality in decarbonisation within the United Kingdom.
When I get up in the morning in Cornwall, I look out of my window—quite often before I go running or whatever—and I can see some 30 wind turbines from my house. One is about just under a kilometre away, and from it I can see which way the wind is blowing and how strong it is. Most of all, what it genuinely portrays to me is a living countryside that is economically sustainable and which is part of the economic mix. That to me, down in the far south-west, is really important. People understand that, just as the noble Baroness has described.
For me, there is an irony in government policy at the moment. Many Members here will recall, as distantly as 10 days ago, the results of round 5 of the contracts for difference for renewable energy. There were two results that were particularly interesting. One of them, which was given a lot of publicity, was that onshore wind had absolutely no take-up—a real disaster for the decarbonisation programme that the Government want to put forward.
The area that was less talked about was the fact that, as part of this contracts for difference round, 1.5 gigawatts of onshore wind was actually agreed and promoted by the Government. However, none of that has come to England; it has all gone to Scotland and Wales. Because of the crazy planning system we have at the moment, England was excluded. I would like to understand from the Minister the rationale for that.
The other important aspect of the contracts for difference round was that the strike price was around 50p per megawatt hour. That is a really low-cost renewable energy that we as a nation whose households have high energy bills really need. That is why these Benches strongly support this proposal—because it would lead to unequivocally moving back to a planning system where there is equal opportunity for onshore wind. It would also mean that the programme for decarbonisation at a low cost for British households could go ahead. We support the amendment.