10. What assessment her Department has made of the potential effects in different regions of the feed-in tariff review. (901441)

The FITs review covers a wide range of technologies for which deployment across the UK varies depending on the specific benefits of that region. For example, there is more solar deployment in the south-west and more wind in Scotland and the north. The effects of the review will therefore affect all in different ways, and the impact assessment acknowledges this.

Just this week the National Farmers Union Scotland expressed deep concern that the FITs proposals will have a damaging impact on those looking to diversify. Why did the Government not consider a steady and more gradual reduction of FITs for small-scale solar and wind as recommended by the industry itself in a strategy published last year?

As I think my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have made clear, this review is required under EU state aid rules and it is now out for consultation. We hope the NFU and other organisations will feed in their response to the consultation, which closes on 23 October, and only at that point will we look at the right balance between keeping bills down and continuing to support the industry.

Many people in Cornwall feel we have been overrun by wind turbines and solar farms, and may I assure the Minister that the recent changes announced have been warmly welcomed by many people in Cornwall? Does she agree with a constituent of mine who recently wrote to me asking me to thank the Government for their recent decisions because they have saved Cornwall?

Cornwall is a beautiful place and all of us will probably have had fantastic holidays there and would not like to see it overrun by something unsightly, so I can sympathise with my hon. Friend. I am always grateful for thanks; we do not get much of it in government, so I ask him to thank his constituent for thanking us. We are still in a consultation period, however, but this is an important sector and we want it to continue to be successful.

Let me tell the Minister, in case she is not aware, that the north-west of England is a beautiful region as well.

Green energy is vital to our economic future and I am afraid that companies such as Natural Energy Sources based in Bromborough in my constituency simply would not recognise the Government’s account of what they have done, given the risks they have created for the solar industry. I ask the Minister to think again, do as so many Members have suggested, and restructure this change to feed-in tariffs.

I understand what the hon. Lady says, but there has been a lack of understanding about what we are trying to do. We have been enormously successful in supporting renewables. The generation, particularly of solar energy, has far exceeded expectations, and we are on course to meet our legally binding targets, so in a sense we are victims of our own success. As the hon. Lady will appreciate, in this country we have the trilemma of energy security, decarbonisation and keeping the bills down. The problem is the more we subsidise and the longer we subsidise excessive deployment, the more it costs the bill payer.