I can reassure my hon. Friend that this is planning policy: the national planning policy framework is the framework of national planning policy. Every planning decision by every planning authority in the land must abide by the policies in the framework. I do not care what he has been advised by others; I am the planning Minister, and I am advising him that this is the policy that the Government have put through the House, and we intend it to be applied in every planning decision by every planning authority in the land.

Nevertheless, because we shared some of my hon. Friend’s concerns about how these policies were being applied, we issued further planning practice guidance on renewable and low-carbon energy. To ensure that these decisions reflected the environmental balance expected by the framework and that the views of local people were listened to, we published guidance last summer that made some things very clear. We reiterated that the need for renewable energy did not automatically override environmental protections and local communities’ planning concerns. The guidance made it clear that the deployment of large-scale farms could have a negative impact on the rural environment, particularly in undulating landscapes, and set out a number of factors that a local council would need to consider before making a determination.

We expect local authorities to encourage the effective use of previously developed land, and if a proposal involves greenfield land, the guidance clearly states that it should allow for continued agricultural use, but only if it has already met all the other environmental and landscape policy criteria that are set out in the framework and which are reiterated, underlined and expanded on in the new planning guidance. I and the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend Gregory Barker, believe that current policy and guidance gives every planning authority in the land the basis on which to take fully into account the landscape and agricultural quality of land.