Political parties shying away from tackling the climate crisis will “pay a heavy price” at the ballot box, the former Cop26 president Alok Sharma has warned, as he and other Conservative MPs look set to force the removal of a de facto ban on new onshore windfarm projects in England.
Ministers are expected to overturn the measure on Tuesday following a campaign from Tory MPs including Sharma and the former prime minister Liz Truss as legislation comes up for debate in the Commons.
On Monday, Downing Street had refused to be drawn on reports of an expected concession and said the government position “has not changed” after the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, pledged last October to keep the onshore windfarm ban in place.
However, a written ministerial statement is expected to set out changes, agreed during passage of the levelling up and regeneration bill, that will come into force with immediate effect.
Sharma maintained the pressure on Tuesday morning, saying that he and others who have signed his amendment to the energy bill want to see a “much more permissive planning regime” on onshore wind.
“We want to see the lifting of the current planning restriction, which means that a single objection to an onshore wind development can block it,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“And of course, allied with this, we want to ensure that local communities who are willing to take onshore wind developments will receive direct community benefits.”
He continued: “I think it’s going to be very important to see the detail of what the government puts forward in terms of its ministerial statement, in terms of what ministers say from the dispatch box.”
Asked if he was concerned that the government was pivoting away from green concerns by backing new coal plants and opposing limits on car use, Sharma said he welcomed the prime minister’s reiteration of a commitment to net zero a few weeks ago.
He added, however: “We certainly need to take people with us on this journey and I have always said we need to take more of a carrot than a stick approach, but the reality is that concerns about the environment consistently rank among those that matter most to voters of all hues.
“Any political party that chose to move away from this would pay a heavy price at the ballot box.”
Downing Street has been hoping that the changes it agrees to will placate Sharma and other potential Conservative rebels who have been pushing for the law to be liberalised and have threatened to intervene in Tuesday’s debate.
However, onshore wind developers warn that the changes are unlikely to be sufficiently wide-ranging to kickstart significant new generation.
Developers say expected changes would still leave an effective ban in place, while Labour’s Ed Miliband promised to give onshore wind parity with other infrastructure projects.
Under the current system, a local authority can reject an application to build an onshore windfarm on the basis of a single objection from a local resident. Any new development must also have been included in the authority’s most recent local development plan, a document that covers several years’ worth of building schemes.
