Alicia Kearns – 2024 Speech on Planning, the Green Belt and Rural Affairs

The speech made by Alicia Kearns, the Conservative MP for Rutland and Stamford, in the House of Commons on 19 July 2024.

I join the House in thanking His Majesty the King and Her Majesty the Queen for their dedicated service and continued example to us all. I welcome all the new Members to this place and I congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) on his maiden speech.

It is a great privilege to be returned to this House, having served the people of Rutland and Melton for four years. However, I am returned to represent the wonderful people of Rutland, Stamford and the Harborough and South Kesteven villages. I would like to take a moment to reflect on the new communities I serve, because it may not be known that service runs deep in south Lincolnshire.

In world war two, our communities on their own raised enough money for a Spitfire to fight for our country. It is also in our communities where the apple dropped for Sir Isaac Newton in 1687. And a long, long time ago, Bytham castle was known to have a Lady Alicia, the lady of Bytham. I suspect I shall not be getting that title. [Interruption.] I bless you all! It is also home to Easton walled gardens, a place President Franklin D. Roosevelt described as

“a dream of Nirvana…almost too good to be true.”

So it is no surprise that Stamford’s honey stone streets, whose patterns have essentially remained the same since Saxon times, often grace the pages of the best places to live in this country. It was also a filming site for “Pride and Prejudice”, “The Da Vinci Code” and “Middlemarch”. Most recently, Grimsthorpe castle was home to “Bridgerton”.

Somewhat uniquely for a parliamentary seat, Rutland and Stamford sits across three counties, Leicestershire, Rutland and Lincolnshire, so I have my work cut out for me. What unites us is the rural landscape and traditions we share: our rural way of life embodied in the fields, farms and natural environment we are blessed to inhabit and hope to bequeath to the next generation. But protecting our green and pleasant lands is not about sentimentality. Our rural environment is the true workhorse of our country. Lincolnshire and Rutland alone produce 30% of the UK’s vegetables, 18% of our poultry, 30% of our turkeys and 20% of all English wheat. We are the agriculture super-producer of our country.

Yet the King’s Speech offered very little for us. It continued in the same vein as the Labour party manifesto, which did not mention the word “rural” even once, by ignoring the concerns of rural communities and ignoring farmers. It has put forward a different approach to development, setting out centralised powers for Westminster to impose projects on the countryside and stripping away the voice of local people. The consequences of that approach were apparent last week when the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero imposed three mega solar plants on communities, two of which sit within Lincolnshire and Rutland.

During the last Parliament, I consistently opposed the Mallard Pass solar plant and was dismayed to see the Secretary of State wave it through after only three working days in the job. Yesterday, he referred to himself as a “super-nerd”. I would never question his self-classification, but I do question how somebody could read over 3,000 pages of quasi-judicial documentation in just that time, while also getting to grips with a new Department. That perhaps explains why he missed or ignored the fact that even the Planning Inspectorate told him to turn down one of those applications.

There are well-documented links between Uyghur forced labour and the primary developer behind Mallard Pass. Labour has said it wants a renewal in public life and a focus on public service, but I ask where the sense of duty is to responsible and considered governance when decisions are made, frankly, for a propaganda announcement to say what the Government have done in their first seven days—decisions that solely affect Conservative-voting communities. Together these three solar plants will remove 6,000 acres of good-quality agricultural land, the land that feeds our country and powers our nation.

I want to delve more into the issue of slave labour. For years I have spoken out against what is taking place in Xinjiang. This House—including the new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero—voted to declare what was taking place a genocide. In opposition, Labour promised that should they become the party of government they would not only declare it formally a genocide, but would take the Chinese Government to court—I look forward to updates on that activity—but in government they have decided to carpet our countryside with solar panels produced by the blood of Uyghur slave labourers. The company behind the Mallard Pass, Canadian Solar, was found by our Foreign Office to have the highest complicity in Uyghur forced labour. It has been sanctioned by the United States Government for its

“ongoing campaign of repression against Muslim minority groups”.

This is a company whose representative rang my office and asked what I wanted to drop my opposition. Is that a company that we want operating on our land?

Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her speech. Does she agree that there would be full support on the Conservative Benches for measures to ensure that the supply chain for solar panels does not include slave labour?

Alicia Kearns

I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend, who has an incredible history as one of the greatest parliamentary advocates for tackling slave labour.

Will the Minister apologise, on behalf of the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, to the 32 anti-slave labour non-governmental organisations that opposed the Mallard Pass development. Will he apologise to the British people for signing over thousands of acres of prime agricultural land to such a company, and will he apologise to the 3,400 people whose petition I presented in the Chamber, with the highest number of wet signatures ever presented in this Parliament? Does he accept that the loudest statement made last week was not that we stand four-square behind renewables in this place but that we are giving the green light to all companies complicit in Uyghur slave labour to flood our country with bloodied solar panels? This Government are happy to go green on blood labour, and I will not stand for it.

Very briefly, in respect of rural economies, I want to express my absolute opposition to the Government’s intention to charge VAT on independent schools. There are 10 in my communities that employ more than 2,000 people and are attended by well over 1,000 children with special educational needs. Furthermore, one in five of my constituents who are military personnel or veterans send their children to those schools. This is ideology and dogma, and there is also no plan to support our comprehensive schools.

Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)

My hon. Friend is, again, making a very fine speech. She is talking not only about pressure on those families, but about any other families who will then see those children going to the state schools in the area.

Alicia Kearns

My right hon. Friend is, as usual, on point. In Rutland alone there are only three places for new children in year 9. Where are these children going to go? Why are the Government punishing parents who want the best for their children? Before Labour Members try to suggest that I am an out-of-touch Tory, let me point out that my children go my local comprehensive, just as I did. However, I recognise that this is wrong for our country, wrong for our local education system, wrong for our military families, and wrong for those who rely on employment in our local schools. It is dogma once again, and I expected better.

The Government have shown a degree of good grace and maturity in adopting some of the previous Government’s Bills for their agenda. It is a sign of political strength for a Government to acknowledge that other parties have good ideas, and to adopt them during their time in power. May I suggest that, in order to fill the blanks in their rural policy, the Government should look at ours? They should announce a £1 billion increase in the farming budget over the course of this Parliament. There should be reformed planning rules to support farming infrastructure. The introduction of legally binding food security targets should be at the heart of what the Government do, and they should recognise how much rural communities contribute to our communities. We provide the food that we eat, we offer an escape and access to nature, and we act as custodians for traditions stretching back deep into our history. I will work every single day for my communities, and I hope that the Government will see sense and do the same.