My hon. Friend has made exactly the point that I want to make, with, perhaps, more succinctness than I have been able to manage. This is indeed about local consent. It is about communities giving their views and actually being listened to when it comes to these projects. Far too often, the desktop exercise that is done in London or Birmingham or Leeds or Manchester, or any of our great cities, is done largely by those who have little or no understanding of rural life—of the way our rural roads actually operate, the way our farmland is actually farmed, and the way our countryside actually works. If local people were listened to a little more often, we might not have some of the problems that these energy infrastructure projects, or projects such as HS2 or East West Rail, throw up on the land that any local will tell you floods three or four times a year.

Those doing the desktop exercise say, “Oh, that is nothing. It is nowhere near a floodplain. That land will not flood.” I have stood on many of these sites in my own wellington boots a number of times, on the land that the consultants in the city say will not flood, with the water lapping up at the top of my boots, and have gone home with wet socks. That is a reality that local people often understand in a way these consultants and desktop exercises never would.

I gently invite the Minister to acknowledge that no matter how sustainable such projects claim to be, the hard truth is that whether it be during the construction or operation of these sites, the transportation of materials effectively offsets any benefit and does permanent damage to a local area, exactly as it has with HS2. Only this week I objected to yet another BESS application in the Claydons, in which the developer has not even bothered to include a battery safety management plan. It is utterly disgraceful, and a reflection of just how speculative these applications are becoming.

Despite this speculation on solar and battery storage, wherever we go in Buckinghamshire there are few if any warehouse roofs with solar panels. That is a real shame, given the amount of unused roof space that could generate 15 GW of solar-derived energy without damaging a blade of grass or any crop growing in any field. That is equivalent to 46 million solar panels. Why, then, are the Government not actively incentivising the use of large-scale roof-mounted solar, particularly on industrial buildings—the distribution centres and warehouses and factories that we see popping up all around us, certainly near my area when we go out towards Bicester or up towards Milton Keynes? That is a question that is rightly being asked by farmers across my constituency who stand to lose everything when a solar developer comes along, or indeed someone involved in any energy project, with little or no compensation provided.

This is, I am afraid, fairly typical in relation to infrastructure, especially in rural areas where a farm is not just a source of income but someone’s livelihood, and the very shape and beauty of the landscape in rural communities. When it comes to a project the size of Rosefield, which primarily affects tenant farmers, the loss of income not just for individual farmers but for the whole area is devastating. That is because, unlike a freeholder—in this case, the Claydon estate—tenant farmers do not have ownership rights and are therefore not entitled to proper compensation, although this and other sizeable projects are spearheaded by large multinational energy companies for which compensation is normally just a rounding error.

However, it is not just farmers who are affected. Unpaid parish councillors across my constituency are spending ever more time fighting this infrastructure tidal wave. I dare say many have become rather good at it following years of doing battle with HS2, but that by no means justifies thousands of hours each year being spent by countless individuals—countless heroes—sometimes combined with significant sums of money, fighting projects that local residents do not want and did not ask for. They, along with farmers and local business owners, are paying the price for this nonsensical approach to energy security.

For projects that are given the go-ahead, there is little chance of promoters paying up for the damage that they will invariably do to our local road network. That is the sad reality for infrastructure projects, as we have seen with the countless others that I have referenced, although I am proud of the work that I and Buckinghamshire council did to push East West Rail to pay up for the damage it caused. There is no such prospect with energy infrastructure, but the fact is that, with so many sites in one area, the impact on our roads from all the construction traffic would be far worse than any promoter is prepared to admit. Just as we have seen with the railways and the highways works clash, it will delay all projects in the area, ultimately costing the taxpayer and prolonging the misery for my constituents.

This is the reality. If something is not done, we will lose our ability to produce food and we will see the continued erosion of rural communities, and all while doing little to source our energy sustainably. Energy infrastructure does not belong on farmland. It does not belong in Mid Buckinghamshire. Let us drop this nonsense and go for nuclear instead.