Lord Fuller, a former leader of South Norfolk Council who was appointed to the House of Lords last year, has criticised the government's "unthinking dash" towards renewable energy at the expense of productive farmland.

Norfolk has become a major solar energy hotspot, with five projects revealed in recent months which, if approved, would cover a total of 17,000 acres of countryside.

Lord Fuller said the government has "lost control of the numbers on renewables", and was "unsighted on the stampede to take our best land out of production and lock it away for a generation".

The Conservative peer put forward amendments to the Great British Energy Bill to protect the most productive farmland for food production, and restrict it from being developed under the activities of Great British Energy (GBE) - a publicly-owned company aiming "to drive the UK's clean energy transition".

Lord Fuller said: "The purpose of this set of amendments is to protect the best and most versatile land for food production. That is........

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