Over the past four and a half years one of my top priorities has been protecting our Buckinghamshire countryside from unwanted development and solar installations. Food security is vital, especially in light of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and I want our farmland protected for producing food, with housing and energy projects on brownfield sites instead.
Our fields are for farming, for producing the food we all want to eat.
So it is mad to cover our fields in solar panels, battery storage and buildings.
We need to build homes and commercial premises on brownfield sites instead and the place for solar is on rooftops.
I have worked hard to get planning laws changed to give greater protection and will continue to do more. Labour risks this; it's clear that they want to expansively build on our green fields.
In the last Parliament I got national planning policy updated to better protect land used in food production and only a few weeks ago the government listened and brought forward new rules to cut down on land take for solar.
I won’t give up on fighting to protect our Buckinghamshire countryside and farms.