Chris Curtis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Jun 2025 · Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government · Hansard source

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  I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for calling this important debate. Let me start with what I think should be seen as positive news and welcomed across the Chamber: the once-in-a-generation increase in funding for social housing. We in the Select Committee have heard about some of the dire consequences of the housing crisis that was left to this Government, especially its effect on the thousands of children growing up in temporary accommodation. The extra funding will mean that, finally, the dial will start to move. I hope that I am not breaking any confidences in saying that the Committee Chair and I were at a dinner with many representatives of the industry on the evening that the spending review was announced. It is, I think, very rare in politics to sit in a room with people who are pretty unconditionally happy with a policy that has been announced—and, in this instance, happy about not just the extra money but the 10-year funding settlement, which I do not think has been mentioned yet, and also the access to remediation funds, which will make a real difference to the number of homes that are built. This is important for the entire housing sector. The model that we have for building homes in Britain nowadays means that housing funded by section 106 contributions is struggling to be purchased, because the amount provided for social housing has not been good enough. There is real confidence that this funding will start to fix that problem and move us closer to the 1.5 million target, but, while the money is good, I think it important to urge the Government to go as far and as fast as possible with planning reform, and not to row back on the commitments we have made to ensure that the money is spent effectively and efficiently and we can unlock the homes that the country needs. It is also important for us to start to have a conversation about the Building Safety Regulator, which is clearly not working at present and is holding up projects. We will hear back from the new towns taskforce shortly; I hope that the Government will put the necessary funds behind that programme. It is great news that we have the extra money in the multi-year funding settlement, but most councils will acknowledge that they are still concerned about stretched resources, and, again, it is important for us to go as far and as fast as possible in reforming special educational needs and social care services to ensure that they are fit for the future. Let me end by saying—because the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution is present—that it is notable that the spending review provides for an increase in the funding pots that are available specifically to combined authorities. We in Milton Keynes feel that the Department has acted rather like Lucy pulling the ball away from Charlie Brown, so please will the Department redouble its efforts to create combined authorities, not just in Milton Keynes but across the country, so that areas that currently do not have them are not left behind?

• 9 Jun 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Oh, is it?

• 9 Jun 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member agree that what he has just described would lead to more delays in the system, which would mean that more planning permissions were held up—something that Opposition Members have complained about? If the amendment were passed, the requirement would also add a lot more expense to the system, which would mean more viability problems and fewer social homes being built.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  May we please start by acknowledging something that still has not been acknowledged enough: the current planning system is broken? Nowhere is that clearer than in our environmental and habitats regulation, which part 3 of the Bill is hoping to fix, and which many amendments—amendment 69 in particular—would make significantly worse. Let us start with a couple of clear examples. First, we have the lower Thames crossing. Some £250 million was spent on a planning application spanning over 350,000 pages. That is more than 250 times the length of “War and Peace” at a cost that is more than Norway paid to build the world’s longest road tunnel. Fifteen years on, not a single spade is in the ground. Secondly, we are currently building the most expensive nuclear power station in the history of the human race at Hinkley Point. Why? For the last eight years, EDF has been stuck in regulatory wrangling over—I kid you not—a fish disco: an acoustic system designed to guide fish away from water intakes. Millions spent and still not a single resolution. My personal favourite is the infamous bat tunnel, where £120 million of taxpayers’ money was wasted on a tunnel that might save a handful of bats from a nearby forest, though many experts argue it will more likely put them in harm’s way. That is not planning; it is parody. While we argue about newts and bat tunnels, what is really happening in Britain is that 150,000 children or more are growing up in temporary accommodation, with all the consequences mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi).

• 9 Jun 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I start by appreciating the description of a rant—I will keep ranting on this point until I do not have to speak to my constituents waking up in temporary accommodation because of this country’s failure to build. I note that there is a middle ground; in fact, it is even better than a middle ground, because through this Bill and the changes we are proposing we can improve the situation for nature and improve the situation for building, including incentivising developers—for example through the biodiversity net gain process—to put swift bricks in place. What we currently have is not a conservation system, but a cargo cult, mimicking the symbols of protection while the reality on the ground gets worse. Contrast that with what protecting nature actually looks like, from this Government: a strategic land use framework that supports farmers to deliver climate and nature benefits across 1.6 million hectares of land—more than half the size of Wales; banning bee-killing pesticides; backing a transition to regenerative farming and planting forests on double the amount of land that will be needed to build the 1.5 million homes.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  In one of the wettest countries in Europe, we could face summer water shortages because we have not built a single major reservoir in over 30 years. Here is the real kick in the teeth: we have paid all those prices for rules that have failed even on their own terms. We have created endless hoops to jump through and poured public money into bizarre mitigation schemes while Britain has become one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth. We have lost over half our ancient woodland and one in six species are at risk of extinction. We have got fewer birds, fewer butterflies and fewer mammals, and yet more paperwork than ever before. We should ask this: if these rules are not helping people and they are not helping nature, who on earth are they for? We throw money at scattergun mitigation—fish discos and bat tunnels—while failing to invest in strategic, landscape-scale restoration that actually works. We force every project to fit every issue on site, even when that is more expensive, less effective and totally irrational. That means tens of thousands of individual site-by-site protections, which are bureaucratic, inconsistent and scientifically out of date, and all despite the fact that modern ecological science is clear that nature recovery depends on scale and connectivity, not isolated microprojects.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Hundreds of thousands of children will wake up tomorrow morning in temporary accommodation as a consequence of this, and millions of families will continue paying some of the highest energy bills in the western world. When Russian tanks rolled into Europe, we were dangerously reliant on foreign oil and gas because our planning system consistently blocked the clean, home-grown energy generation that we so desperately need. I see some Liberal Democrat Members laughing. I note that, in many cases, it was their councils that blocked that energy infrastructure from being built.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  On that point, will the Minister give way?

• 9 Jun 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I will make some progress. Now we have a Bill that will finally move us towards environmental delivery plans that take a far more strategic approach to improving nature and increasing the building that this country so desperately needs. I want these changes to go further. We need to look at the culture within our regulators, especially Natural England, which has become too much of a blocker to building, but this Bill is a step forward, and the amendments proposed would be a step backwards. I end with this plea, especially to hon. Members on my own Benches who seem to find themselves defending this broken status quo: “Before you vote tonight, talk to the people who will still be here after you’ve gone home. Speak to the person cleaning your office this evening, and ask them what it is like when rent swallows up over half your salary because we have failed to build our way out of this housing crisis. Speak to the person who cooked your lunch in the Tea Room, and ask what it is like to raise kids in a country with sky-high energy bills because we failed to build home-grown energy generation. Ask yourself who you are here to serve: the broken spreadsheets or the people who sent us here?” If we keep putting more and more barriers into our planning system, it is hard-working families across this country who will pay the price. Let us fix our planning system and get Britain building again.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that that is why we need significantly more planning officers in our local authorities to ensure that we can unlock a lot of that development?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I have an essay in front of me, in which it is argued that when the Government pay for new infrastructure, new roads or new developments in order to unlock new housing, the landowner “has only to sit still and watch complacently his property multiplying in value, sometimes manifold, without either effort or contribution on his part.” The argument is that the landowner should not get that profit with no effort. That is not from Trotsky; that is from Winston Churchill—

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  That is true. Certainty is incredibly important to enable the housing sector to invest in the skills, development and modern methods of construction that will enable us to alleviate the country’s housing crisis. Beyond housing, we must recognise that our failure to build vital infrastructure in Britain is leaving our country vulnerable. Our energy security—the foundation of our national security—depends on having infrastructure to support a modern, productive economy. We have failed to build the transport links that are needed to get goods and people moving efficiently. We have failed to build the energy infrastructure that is needed to reduce our dependence on volatile foreign oil and gas, and we have not built a single reservoir in decades, meaning that we lack the water security that is required in the face of climate change.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I agree, and I hope that the nature restoration fund can be an opportunity to make those spaces more biodiverse. I am trying to support a wetlands art project in my constituency that would use such money to improve biodiversity. I hope that all the organisations that, like me, care about nature recovery will do the right thing and support these changes—they will be the best thing for nature in decades—rather than trying to defend an indefensible status quo. Finally, as somebody who owes much of my fantastic upbringing to a development corporation, I turn to the crucial issue of how we will fund development corporations when we start building the new towns. Although the changes introduced by the Bill are promising, at some point we will need to think about that financing. For every pound that was invested in Milton Keynes, many more were given back to the Treasury—somebody said the ratio was 14:1, but I have not found a source for that. Currently, any debt issues by development corporations to private capital must be added to the Government’s balance sheet. However, a simple change to Treasury accounting, to count those corporations in the same way as the banks that fell into public ownership after the financial crash, could unlock huge sums of international private capital to fund these vital homes and projects. That approach is consistent with those taken by many European counterparts, and we should actively explore it as a priority. I will support the Bill today, but I urge Ministers to be honest that this is not a moment for self-congratulation. We need to continue to go further and faster to build the homes and the infrastructure that this country so desperately needs.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I recently visited my 93-year-old grandmother, who was a constituent living in rural Buckinghamshire back in the 1960s. At that time, she expressed many of the concerns that he has just expressed about a city being built around her rural community, but if you ask her now, she will tell you about the fantastic opportunities that Milton Keynes gave to her children and grandchildren, to the point where one of them is now sitting on these Benches able to make speeches and interventions. Sometimes we need to have change and development, and sometimes we need to support it.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Would the hon. Member like to take this moment to congratulate the absolute heroes in his party who forced it to change its policy at conference last year in favour of building homes? Many of those who sit on the Benches alongside him were calling out the members of his party for trying to get it to do so, one of whom, a former leader, called them Thatcherite. Does he agree with me that building new homes is not Thatcherite, but is the pro-development future that this country needs and that this Chamber should be supporting?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I note the length of time that that reservoir has taken to be built. It would be nice if someone on the Conservative Benches started by acknowledging their Government’s lack of ability to build the infrastructure that this country so desperately needed for decades. The barriers that they constantly put in the way of building it are one reason why we are in this situation. Our national security is only ever as strong as our economic security. Sure, we should be investing in defence, but we can do so only if we have a strong economy. One of the biggest reasons why we have not had a growing economy or economic security is because it has become too difficult to build in Britain. I am proud to support a Bill that will get Britain building again. I will talk briefly about the nature restoration fund, which in principle is a policy masterstroke. What is most shameful about our current nature legislation set-up, including the habitats regulations, is not just that it stops us from building the homes and infrastructure that our country needs and that it damages our economy in the meantime, but that it does not even work on its own terms. As was mentioned earlier, Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world; I am told that it is second only to Singapore. Why is that? Because the money that we force builders to pay for nature projects is not being spent in the most efficient way. Take for example, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Dan Tomlinson) pointed out, the infamous bat tunnel, which cost us more than £120 million to protect a tiny proportion of bats, all while critical infrastructure projects were delayed or cancelled. Imagine what we could have done for nature not just with that money, but with the extra money that would have been provided to our economy by not stalling that project for so long. Although the nature restoration fund is a welcome step forward, we must ensure that it works. It is heavily reliant on Natural England bringing forward workable delivery plans in a timely fashion.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  We have already heard comments from Conservative Members about cases where planning permission has been granted, but nothing has been built. Almost every developer I have spoken to during this Parliament has said that that has one cause. It took so long to get planning permission—the Bill is designed to fix that—and while developers sought it, Liz Truss crashed the economy. Consequently, we had an inflation crisis and costs skyrocketed. Before the hon. Gentleman comments on our economic record, will he apologise for his?

• 3 Feb 2025 · AstraZeneca · Hansard source

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  Alongside other Members representing Milton Keynes, I attended the Chancellor’s speech last Wednesday and spoke to many companies, including those from the life sciences sector. There were two really important points that they wanted to make, after being reasonably pleased with what they heard from the Chancellor. The first was about the importance of talking up our world-leading universities, after the previous Government continually talked them down. Will the Minister commit that this Government will continue to sell our world-leading universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, on the world stage? The second point that companies wanted to make was that investing in life sciences right across the country requires a successful Oxford-Cambridge arc. Will the Minister commit to doing whatever it takes to make the entire corridor successful, including by getting a devolution deal for the midlands and speaking to his colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that that happens?

• 17 Dec 2024 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. I refer her back to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Earley and Woodley (Yuan Yang). Our tax system has got even more complicated, particularly after the last 14 years, and we do not want to see the level of complexity, which costs businesses and organisations, continue to spiral out of control. It is important that we make these changes in a simple way, but extra money is going into our NHS and will be flowing through the system. At the moment, the Department of Health and Social Care is looking at how to make sure that the extra funding is spent as effectively and efficiently as possible. I look forward to hearing soon from the Health Secretary about how that money will benefit all elements of our national health service, but I do not think that that is a reason to add extra complexity to an already complex tax system. We do not want to raise taxes, and I appreciate that decisions like this are never easy— [ Interruption. ] The Conservatives laugh, but they raised taxes to record levels, broke our public services and left us with a £22.6 billion black hole. The reality is that they left us with no choice. Our goal is to lay the foundations for a thriving, resilient economy, where businesses can grow, communities can prosper and future generations can thrive. What we have heard from the Opposition today is a repeat of what got us into this mess time and again. Liz Truss promised unfunded tax cuts and crashed the economy. The last Tory leader promised unfunded tax cuts and left a £22 billion black hole. The Tory party is promising unfunded tax cuts again, and will not say where the money is going to come from. That is what got us into this mess, and it is ludicrous to think that it will get us out of it. However, the mess that the Conservatives got this country into is about more than basic arithmetic; it was a complete failure to achieve any economic growth. If growth in the UK had simply matched the OECD average, workers would have £5,000 more in their pay packets and the Treasury would have £50 billion more in tax revenues, without having to raise a single penny in tax. Just imagine how much better families would feel with that money in their pockets. We would not need to raise any taxes today if we had the extra tax revenue that was stolen from us by the Conservatives’ failure. Instead, they trapped us in a cycle of low growth, low productivity and low investment. That is the grim legacy of a Government who failed to create conditions for businesses to thrive. From a chaotic planning system to a revolving door of four Chancellors in five years, they have sown uncertainty at every single turn. Let us not forget the economic self-harm of Brexit, which was executed without a clear plan. The Budget, including the NICs changes—

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  That is okay. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thanks to the failure of the Conservative party, over 150,000 children will be waking up on Christmas day in temporary accommodation. If that is a record to be proud about, I have absolutely no idea what would make Opposition Members feel any shame. May I get two reassurances from the Minister? First, business needs certainty, so will he assure me that we will not see the chopping and changing we saw from the Conservative party and that we will stick by the policies? Secondly, the issue is not just about the planning rules but about capacity in our local councils, so what will he do to speed up the process of getting more planners into our local councils to add capacity to the system?

• 9 Dec 2024 · Planning Committees: Reform · Hansard source

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  It is good to see the Government’s recommitment to the importance of local plans. In July this year, Milton Keynes city council went through the important process of developing a local plan. During the election campaign, the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), visited my home town and described the development of a local plan as “reckless”. Will the Minister reassure us that this Government do not believe that local plans are reckless, but consider them necessary for the sustainable delivery of the homes that the country needs?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q3. Residents in Redhouse Park in my constituency are suffering from soaring management fees and poor service from their fleeceholder management company. Recent BBC reporting has once again demonstrated the consequences of the outdated and feudal leasehold system. All of them are frustrated by the broken promises of the previous Government. Will the Prime Minister reassure them that this Government will introduce legislation as soon as possible to resolve the fleeceholder and leaseholder crisis?

• 9 Oct 2024 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member think that the houses disappear when the landlords move out of the market? The bricks and mortar are still there. The problems in our housing market are caused by the lack of supply and by private landlords taking advantage. Such movement of homes in a fixed market is not going to cause the problems that I think she is suggesting.

• 9 Oct 2024 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I agree. In my experience, the 29% rent hike was deemed justified because right down the road there was a property being advertised on Zoopla at that new price—but of course that property was newly furnished and had not been agreed by a landlord yet, so it was likely to be inflated above market value. We should consider using the rental database to track actual agreed rents and give us a more accurate picture of market rents, not just speculative rents. I have a minute and a half left, so I would like to make one final point—this is my first experience of trying to scribble bits of a speech halfway through. We have heard lots of heartbreaking stories, but I want to bring the House’s attention to Zeke’s story. Zeke was an adorable cat who, just one day shy of his first birthday, ended up in Battersea after his family faced an impossible choice. They loved him dearly but, when it came to finding a rental home that welcomed pets, they hit wall after wall. In the end they had no choice but to give him up. Can you imagine, Madam Deputy Speaker, having to choose between a roof over your head and a loyal companion you had raised as part of your family? Zeke is not alone. Housing is now the second most common reason animals like Zeke end up in shelters—not because their owners did not care, but because the system failed them. We are a nation of animal lovers and nearly two thirds of tenants would love to own a pet—I know that feeling; I was one of them—but for many families it is simply not possible. Properties that allow pets are few and far between, and when they move, pet owners are often forced to choose between a place to live and keeping their pets. That cruel choice leads to heartbreaking stories such as Zeke’s. I warmly welcome the provisions on pets in this Bill, and the many other provisions that I know will make life better for private renters across my constituency and across the country.