Gove fuels Tory revolt as he backs onshore wind farms

MICHAEL GOVE has told allies he supports ending the ban on onshore wind farms, leaving Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet split on the issue and fuelling a growing Tory rebellion.

The Levelling Up Secretary is understood to have been joined by Grant Shapps, the Business Secretary, and Graham Stuart, the climate change minister, in privately supporting the removal of a Cameron-era ban on new turbines.

A band of Tory rebels last night reached 30 signatories on an amendment to Mr Gove’s planning Bill that would allow new developments, threatening to inflict a defeat on Mr Sunak in the House of Commons on the issue. The Prime Minister is yet to decide whether to overturn the ban, a decision that some argue would boost the UK’s energy security.

But the prospect of an about-turn would likely anger other members of the Cabinet, including Chris HeatonHarris, the Northern Ireland Secretary, and Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, who have opposed onshore wind.

Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, has expressed support for new wind farms, but is not understood to have pushed for them during the latest rebellion.

It comes as Britain’s biggest generator of renewable electricity warned that Mr Hunt’s tax raid on the sector will squeeze energy supplies this winter.

Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive of the £19 billion wind-farm and hydroelectric dam owner SSE, said the £14.2billion windfall tax on electricity generators imposed in the Autumn Statement means it may be unaffordable to run some dams at full capacity.

Amid growing dissent among MPs, Mr Sunak has asked whips to canvass opinion on onshore wind this weekend.

While Mr Gove and Mr Shapps are understood to be supportive of the reintroduction of wind farms, they are also concerned the policy will be unpopular with Tory MPs and voters.

An ally of Mr Gove said that he would “look to engage constructively with colleagues” on the issue. The eyesore developments have been effectively banned since 2016, and Whitehall sources said that concerns remain about their lower efficiency compared with offshore developments, and local opposition to their construction.

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, the Tory MP leading an independent review of net zero signalled that it was likely to back onshore wind in some form.

Chris Skidmore, who also revealed he is standing down at the next election, said: “I [feel] that we need to look at every opportunity to investigate renewable and clean technologies and how we can deploy them further and faster.”

While Mr Skidmore insisted that he did not want to prejudge the conclusions his review would reach on the matter, he said that “since the moratorium, public opinion has fundamentally shifted on onshore wind”.

“The question now is not whether onshore wind should happen but how onshore wind is delivered and, for me, the biggest policy question that I’m interested in is how you create community consent,” he said.

The rebels also include Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Alok Sharma, the former Cop 26 president.

A government source said: “We are not throwing anything out and we are not deliberately keeping everything in. We have to look at everything in terms of the wider energy portfolio.”

The Conservatives are in a bind over house building. Michael Gove, behind the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, wants to loosen planning. Opponents are worried that this would mean either the transformation of suburban areas into ultraurban areas, or that villages would be ruined.

The truth is that Britain desperately needs a lot more homes: if anything, the Government’s current vision is strikingly unambitious. But critics are also right that developments can often ruin neighbours’ lives, or create congestion and chaos.

The answer then is clear: we do need some densification and high-rises in city centres, but the answer cannot solely be to pack ever more people into the same space. As it grows up, Britain’s youth deserves to live the same quality of life that previous generations had enjoyed, and that means that we also need a very large number of additional suburban family homes with gardens. We need new towns, and the extension of suburbs (as in the 1930s) so that aspirational Britons can settle down, bring up their families and build the lives and careers upon whose prosperity this nation has long depended.

Green belts surround every major city in the country, but increasingly have unintended consequences. In particular, while often not being particularly green themselves, they push development into truly rural areas. What remains is largely just a constricting “belt” that hampers cities and stifles the expansion of family-friendly suburbs.

No one suggests letting the concrete-pourers have free hand to entomb the natural spaces that surround us. But with our population growing ever more quickly, Britain can no longer stick its head in the sand and hope that our housing crisis will suddenly go away.