Chris Hinchliff MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Nov 2025 · Land Use Change: Food Security · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and my employment by CPRE before my election to Parliament. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing this important debate. There are fair questions to answer about the effectiveness of planning policies that are supposed to protect our best farmland. They are currently failing far too often, but this is not a new problem, and the Tory record of preserving agricultural land for our food security is, I am afraid, rather shaky. In the 12 years from 2010, we lost more than 14,000 hectares of prime agricultural land to development. Having listened to Conservative Members speak on this issue many times, I suspect that the debate today is really something of a proxy war. They use the issue of food security as a smokescreen for the fact that they oppose the aesthetic impacts of turning large swathes of our countryside into industrialised landscapes under steel and glass, surrounded by wire fencing and surveillance cameras. I would encourage them to be brave and defend beauty on its own terms.

• 18 Nov 2025 · Land Use Change: Food Security · Hansard source

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  That is a very fair intervention—I take the point. Indeed, the right hon. Member made some powerful arguments about the beauty of our countryside, and we should be up front about the fact that those aesthetic values are worth fighting for—perhaps I should have put it like that. I do not think my hon. Friends on the Government Benches should scorn that argument either, as protecting the beauty of Britain’s countryside for all our citizens is a proud part of Labour’s heritage. From creating national parks that steward our best landscapes for future generations to launching national trails that are enjoyed by millions and, yes, even establishing the green belt, the Labour movement has always yearned for bread and roses too. Returning to food security, it has been far too long since we have taken the issue seriously. We have grown complacent in the surety that, as a rich nation, we can import all we want and need. With the worsening climate emergency, however, it would now be entirely unwise to assume that we can continue to rely on those supply chains—when Valencia next floods, we will remember that to our cost—or to step back from trying to achieve net zero. The threat of flooding from climate change to so much of our best agricultural land is too great for that to make any sense, with 95% of grade 1 land in the east of England already at risk of flooding. We must urgently update our agricultural land classification. The system we use to determine potential farmland productivity is desperately out of date. It uses rainfall data from 1941 to 1970 and temperature measurements from 1961 to 1980. The impacts of climate change are already being severely felt on our farmland and intensive farming is degrading soils, with 5.3 million tonnes of organic carbon lost from our soils every year, so the likelihood is that the current agricultural land classification system substantially overestimates land productivity. We must update it. Food security is about not just the amount of land under agricultural use, but what we are producing. Food security must mean nutritional security. To take this seriously, the Government must set a clear and measurable target for a higher proportion of our nation’s nutritional needs, according to a recognised diet such as the NHS “Eatwell Guide”, to be met reliably by domestic production to high environmental standards. Achieving that will require national policy to guide substantial changes in the amount and types of food that we produce domestically. The essential element of genuine food security is establishing a national policy framework that provides certainty and incentives for farmers to invest in practices that prioritise nutritional needs and environmental outcomes, but that will likely see their yields fluctuate in the short term. When we consider energy security, Government contracts for difference ensure a minimum price that gives suppliers the confidence to invest in the production needed to secure national policy objectives. Food security is no less essential than energy security, and farming practices that restore nature are as important as the transition to renewable energy. A Government serious about making genuine food security profitable to produce should establish new contracts for food security based on the contracts for difference mechanism in the energy sector, providing certainty through price floors for the key produce necessary to meet the nation’s nutritional needs. That is how we can achieve genuine food security.

• 17 Nov 2025 · Illegal Waste: Organised Crime · Hansard source

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  Alongside our people, our natural heritage is the most important part of our national identity, yet every week, profiteering corporations and organised criminals treat it as a giant dumping ground for pollution and waste. It is these enemies of our countryside, not asylum seekers escaping hardship and persecution, who are the clear and present danger to our nation. Notwithstanding what the Minister has said, the status quo is clearly failing, so how will she ensure that we finally start holding to account all those who trash our environment?

• 13 Nov 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I declare an interest as a vice-chair of the Climate and Nature Crisis Caucus. At the outset of my contribution to today’s debate on this important legislation, there are a few general points that are probably worth reiterating. There need be no conflict between house building and nature; the real conflict is between greed and the sort of country we want to build. After 20 years of planning deregulation, time and again we see profiteering trumping public need and the protection of the countryside; cost cutting where communities deserve quality; and low-density, high-price housing while families wait for council homes. Since we last debated the Bill in this place, Key Cities has published a very useful report, which highlights that in a survey of its members, only 6% cited the planning system as the primary obstacle to house building. More than twice that figure pointed to developer delays, so I hope that we will shortly see similarly major Government legislation to tackle the profiteering developers that are blocking the delivery of genuinely affordable housing in this country. The recent announcement of plans for towns built within a new forest shows that good development and nature recovery can go hand in hand, and we must go further. A democratic programme of mass council house building could easily avoid the clashes that so often mark the developer-led system. What is needed are well-funded councils with the power to assemble land and identify the best sites for new homes—building not grey estates that are shaped by the defeatism of low expectations, but cohesive, thriving communities that are built for life to flourish. That is the solution to the housing crisis and would create a country that puts people and nature before profit. I welcome the several important amendments tabled by the Government in the other place. In my view, the most important is the stronger overall improvement test for nature recovery, which I campaigned for on Report. It is very good news that these amendments have substantially allayed the concerns of the Office for Environmental Protection. Nevertheless, it is clear that environmental experts and conservationists continue to have some concerns, which the other place has sought to address through Lords amendments 40 and 38 in particular. Our Labour Government were elected on a clear manifesto promise to reverse the nature crisis in this country, so it is essential we get this right. That is particularly urgent for our endangered species and irreplaceable habitats, including chalk streams such as the Rib, Beane, Ivel and Mimram, which criss-cross North East Hertfordshire and bring joy to so many people’s lives. I genuinely welcome the comments that the Minister has made to allay the concerns of nature experts, and I will dedicate my remaining time to a few short questions that I hope he can address in his wind-up. First, given the need for legal certainty, can the Minister confirm that the overall improvement test will guarantee that irreplaceable habitats and species cannot be covered by EDPs, and if so, will the Government set out a list of environmental features that they consider would be irreplaceable? Secondly, can the Minister confirm whether any EDPs are currently under consideration or development by Natural England, or proposed by the Government? If so, will any of them be affected if Lords amendment 40 remained part of the Bill? Thirdly, will the Minister give confidence to the many constituents of North East Hertfordshire worried about potential impacts on the wildlife we love by once again putting on record that the Government recognise the difference between diffuse landscape issues such as nutrient pollution, where strategic scale action is best suited for nature restoration, and protected sites and species that cannot easily be recreated elsewhere? Fourthly, given the widespread interest in this Bill shown by many of our constituents and by the wider nature sector, will the Minister consider providing further transparency and accountability through a Government amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 40 to ensure parliamentary approval of EDPs beyond diffuse issues such as air, water and newts? Fifthly, given that the “Catchment Based Approach” annual review published this autumn found that a third of chalk streams do not have a healthy flow regime, that over-abstraction due to development pressures is one of the main threats facing these crown jewels of our natural heritage and that there are currently no planning policies specifically protecting chalk streams, can the Minister set out in more detail how the Government foresee planning authorities being able to direct inappropriate development away from struggling chalk streams within the process of setting spatial development strategy plans, and would he consider opportunities for this through regulation, if not through the Bill? Sixthly, will the Minister provide further certainty from the Dispatch Box about ensuring that chalk streams are specifically added to the national planning policy framework as an irreplaceable habitat, and will he set out when this might happen given that an update of those provisions has been delayed since 2023? Seventhly, as one reason put forward for Lords amendment 40 is that it would mitigate concerns about the weakening of the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, what reassurances can the Minister give my constituents that these iconic animals will not be at risk from widespread licences to kill in EDPs paid for by developers in the absence of Lords amendment 40? Eighthly, can the Minister confirm whether the Government have assessed the potential impact of proposed biodiversity net gain exemptions on the private finance for nature markets that will be essential for the delivery of EDPs? Ninthly and finally, can the Minister reassure those who have raised concerns that the current legislation may allow money committed to the natural restoration fund to be redirected to other purposes?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q9. During the debates on assisted dying, I and many others highlighted the importance of palliative care provided by hospices, but this vital work has been left reliant on donations and charity for far too long. Garden House hospice in Letchworth now faces a serious funding gap. I welcome Government investment in hospices, but will the Prime Minister consider broader reform to put hospice funding on a sustainable footing, and will he ensure that Ministers meet me to explore every option to keep Garden House hospice open?

• 11 Nov 2025 · Rural Railway Stations: Step Free Access · Hansard source

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  What the hon. Lady is describing sounds very familiar to the market town of Baldock in my constituency of North East Hertfordshire. Baldock is due to double in size, but does not have any step-free access. Would she join me in urging the Minister to ensure that rapidly growing rural communities receive a fair share of infrastructure funding?

• 5 Nov 2025 · Fresh and Nutritious Food: Inequality of Access · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member agree that one solution to the problem of access to sustainable and nutritious food would be the right to grow food on public land, as campaigned for by Incredible Edible, forming part of the wider campaign for community rights that is coming to this Parliament?

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  I really welcome the efforts to curtail the excessive examination time that our children are facing. It does not help real learning and is having a big impact on the mental health of the younger generation. What opportunities does the Secretary of State see for introducing more modern approaches to teaching that offer opportunities to learn through play and would provide wider access to education than traditional methods do?

• 5 Nov 2025 · Conflict in Sudan · Hansard source

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  I echo the comments of those who have highlighted that the atrocities in Sudan are absolutely abhorrent, and I welcome the Minister’s statement that we must hold those responsible to account, but may I ask for some further reassurance? Will he press for the expansion of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court to international crimes committed across the whole of Sudan?

• 5 Nov 2025 · Bronze-age Heritage: Cambridgeshire · Hansard source

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  While the Minister is talking about the brilliant work that the Government are doing nationally to protect and preserve our heritage, can I encourage him to welcome the fact that the now Labour-run North Herts council is choosing to prioritise investment in our museum storage, so that we can preserve our bronze-age heritage and local heritage more widely?

• 5 Nov 2025 · Bronze-age Heritage: Cambridgeshire · Hansard source

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  I sense the hon. Member is winding up, but before he does, I would like to say that across the border in North Hertfordshire we also have some fantastic bronze-age heritage in places such as Arbury Banks and Therfield Heath, but we have had real difficulties in preserving that heritage because of the sheer number of finds we are getting from development locally. He mentioned the importance of museums; will he join me in asking the Minister to consider what more we can do to fund our local authorities so that they can properly preserve that heritage for our whole community into the future?

• 30 Oct 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Neil Whitehouse, a loving father and grandfather who lived in my constituency, sadly lost his fight with cancer earlier this year. Neil was a lifelong advocate of the NHS, but tragically delays in communication between NHS departments may have prevented him receiving earlier, lifesaving treatment. We cannot give back to Neil’s family the time they lost with him, but we can ensure that the NHS he loved learns the lessons from his case. May we have a debate on improving integration and communication within the NHS to honour Neil Whitehouse’s memory?

• 30 Oct 2025 · Property Service Charges · Hansard source

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  The scandal of property service charges is one of the most unjust, indefensible and generally enraging issues facing my constituents. In many cases, the charges amount to little more than a form of parasitic exploitation of ordinary people by absentee landlords and businesses. It has been allowed to fester for far too long. Across the country, 5 million people are trapped in a broken system that leaves them beholden to obscure, often overseas companies with a licence to cream off their hard-earned earnings with almost complete impunity. They have got away with it for years because leaseholders simply cannot effectively challenge this unfairness. As so often in Britain today, wealth is translated directly into power and ordinary people are left without any sense of agency over something as basic as their month to month finances. The issue of unfair and arbitrary property service charges is impacting every corner of North East Hertfordshire, from Royston to Tewin and from Baldock to Buntingford. There are fleecehold estates where constituents have purchased a new build property under freehold conditions but found they are “hostages to the whims and desires of service companies who can charge any amount of service fee they wish and without redress”, making a mockery of the notion of freehold. There are housing association tenants paying eye-watering fees, yet left with neglected and inadequate services; residents in retirement accommodation facing extortionate maintenance costs that leave families struggling to pay care fees and trapped with properties that have little resale value; and leaseholders facing huge hikes in service charges by freeholders, yet seeing little evidence of the maintenance they are supposedly paying for. One constituent put the experience plainly: “They are committing service charge abuse” and “they are making people’s lives miserable.” I have previously criticised privatised water companies and housing developers for raking in vast profits despite substandard delivery, but in many ways they pale in comparison with the sheer audacity of the leasehold scandal. These are issues rooted in feudal concepts of property ownership, and those trapped paying these fees, with next to no ability to challenge or escape them, are in effect still suffering from a form of economic serfdom where those with the right title deeds can levy private taxes on ordinary people that bear practically no relation to services rendered. Nearly 1,000 years after William’s conquest, I think the English have suffered under this Norman yoke quite enough. The Government’s own Competition and Markets Authority found “no persuasive evidence that consumers receive anything in return” for the ground rents they pay. In communities like Letchworth, that rings painfully true. We should all welcome the Government’s recent victory in the High Court over wealthy private interests who threw millions at trying to block vital reforms. I also welcome Ministers’ commitment to finishing the job of reforming leasehold. I look forward to supporting further steps to end this scandal once and for all. The solution is clear: municipal estate ownership and the ability to move to commonhold as quickly as is reasonably possible. Home ownership should mean owning the bricks and mortar and should come with a sense of freedom, not exposure to exploitation. No one should be left behind as we put this injustice to bed. I would also like to take this opportunity to highlight the broader campaign for a charter of community empowerment. Many of its principles are relevant to the debate. If the Government are to achieve that historic Labour mission of redistributing not just wealth but power into the hands of the majority, in today’s context that must mean trusting that ordinary people are more capable of upkeeping their own estates and managing their homes fairly than offshore firms or the landowning aristocracy. For once, I will not rain down a series of detailed demands on the Minister, as I know he faces a complex legal situation left by the previous Administration. Today I want only to urge him to cut this Gordian knot in this Parliament and give my constituents a straight- forward way out of being forever tied to service fees by unaccountable companies. The economic benefits to our high streets, which are desperately needed in villages and market towns such as those I represent, would be enormous, as thousands of families across the country found their disposable income no longer slashed every month by charges that cannot be justified. The resistance that the Government have faced from the freehold lobby, clinging desperately to their ill-gotten gains and the sacred right to turn hard-working people into cash cows, should only renew our sense of urgency. I am sure that we will see more appeals and outcry from vested interests—the Government should know the Labour party and millions outside this place are united behind them. After the High Court’s ruling, the Residential Freehold Association warned that the decision “opens the door for Government to intervene in markets far beyond the leasehold sector”— in other words, the terrible spectre that democracy may be empowered to secure the public good before private profit. As my constituents lose out in an economy rigged against ordinary people—one that rewards wealthy property owners and unearned income rather than those who go out and work for a living—I say, quite simply: I hope it is right.

• 27 Oct 2025 · Statutory Maternity and Paternity Pay · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 27 Oct 2025 · Statutory Maternity and Paternity Pay · Hansard source

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  Charting a path to national renewal means making decisions today, although the full benefits may not be felt for years to come. In the first few years of life, more than a million new neural connections are formed every second. During that time, more than any other, children must be nourished and supported by the scaffolding of happy, healthy lives. That means a decent, warm home, so that babies use their energy not to keep themselves warm, but to grow and develop. It means parents not being ground down by bills piling up; it means families being shielded from the impacts of poverty; and it means mothers not being rushed back to work before their bodies have even fully healed, as is too often the case. We hear a lot about family values in this place. That has to mean taking real steps to make daily life easier and to make the sums add up at the end of the month. As a nation, we must improve maternity and paternity pay to genuinely provide all families with security and stability. We must build a country where children are nourished in their early years, parents are treated with dignity through life’s challenges and people are not sneered at for receiving support. We must build a society that offers a helping hand, nurturing rather than sanctioning—one grounded in a belief in the value of every human life, where doing all we can to give a baby the best first steps is seen not as a cost on a Treasury spreadsheet, but as the duty of a decent society and an investment in a more prosperous country for us all.

• 27 Oct 2025 · Statutory Maternity and Paternity Pay · Hansard source

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  Several colleagues have mentioned Hugh’s law today. As the Member of Parliament for Hugh’s parents, Ceri and Frances, may I welcome the fact that the Government have committed to a consultation on the introduction of Hugh’s law? I urge the Minister to speak to his ministerial colleagues to see whether we can get Hugh’s law in the next King’s Speech so that it is delivered for families who desperately need support.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill · Hansard source

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  On land and at sea, our natural environment has suffered a soul-crushing collapse over many decades, putting the future of iconic species and entire ecosystems at risk, as was so eloquently described by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) in a tour de force of a speech. The Government were elected on a clear promise to end that catastrophic decline, the long-term consequences of which, if we do not reverse that trend, will be profound. Our food security depends on healthy ecosystems, the bedrock of our economy is our natural capital, and the public—our voters—cherish our seas, rivers, coastlines, ancient woodlands and national parks. They will not be forgiving of a political system that fails to protect and restore our shared natural inheritance. The Bill is a particularly vital step towards the renewed protection of our natural environment. It recognises that biodiversity does not obey national borders or jurisdiction, so neither can our duty to safeguard it. As obvious as that truth may seem to the public, let alone conservationists, successive Governments have failed to give the high seas the attention they need. The Bill begins to put that right by at last creating a legal framework for the UK to ratify the UN BBNJ agreement and meet our international obligations in full. As has been noted, just 1% of the high seas have full protection, and there is still much research to be done on deep sea ecosystems, but they are increasingly recognised as a key global reservoir of biodiversity, so the crucial task is to move the legislation forward quickly and end the crisis engulfing our oceans. Industrial fishing practices such as bottom trawling—the underseas equivalent of ploughing a bulldozer through a wild flower meadow—are tearing apart fragile seabed habitats while trawl nets indiscriminately catch and discard countless non-target, endangered species. Once those species are gone, they will be gone forever, and their entire intricate web of connections will go with them, unravelling irreplaceable ecosystems with profound knock-on effects that we can neither predict nor prevent. As has been mentioned, if we fail to pass the Bill urgently, the UK will not have a seat at the table for the treaty’s first COP. That would not only represent a dereliction of our international obligations—we have as great a responsibility as any nation to protect global biodiversity—but silence our voice in safeguarding our own national interests, such as the protection of the UK’s 8 million seabirds, over half of which are already in decline. Species such as the albatross and the petrel spend more than 80% of their lives foraging on the high seas. We cannot protect them with action on our own coastlines alone, yet Britain stripped of her seabirds would hardly be Britain at all. Other countries will have their own priorities and national interests to pursue, so our Government must be at the table playing its part in securing the long-term future of the many species that play such an important part in our culture and identity. I welcome the Bill and the opportunity it creates to discuss nature and biodiversity in this place: a topic of serious debate right now for the public and for the Government. I close by saying again that decisions driven by an ideology that prioritises profit over people and the environment did not just undermine our economy; they wrecked our natural world and our social cohesion. National renewal must mean economic revival, but also once more cherishing those things that make life beautiful, and that means protecting nature. I thank Ministers today for doing just that.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Scientific Procedures: Use of Animals · Hansard source

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  More than 1.6 million animals have been approved for testing over the next five years, including through licences for invasive brain research on monkeys and for looking at different methods of killing animals in laboratories. Labour’s manifesto committed to phasing out animal testing. Can the Minister reassure me that the non-animal methods strategy will commit to Herbie’s law and provide a clear framework for phasing out animal experiments within the next decade?

• 15 Sept 2025 · Scientific Procedures: Use of Animals · Hansard source

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  2. What assessment she has made of the potential implications for her Department's policies of the approval under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 between April and June 2025 of the use of 1,656,930 animals over the next five years.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Provision of Council Housing · Hansard source

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  I fully agree that council housing is essential to meeting the housing crisis that we face, and I hope that we will hear ambitious remarks from the Minister. The question is not simply how much housing is built, but the type of housing built and for whom. As has been referenced, more than 1.3 million households in England are trapped on waiting lists—a rise of 10% in the past two years alone. The scale of our failure to provide homes for all our citizens is staggering and reveals in the starkest possible terms the absolute folly of relying on the private sector to meet the public’s basic needs.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Provision of Council Housing · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I fully agree. Before I get to costs, I would like us for a moment to lift our eyes to the potential prizes to be won by a new generation of council housing across the country, because council housing is not just the most effective tool we have to cut waiting lists, it is not just the best policy for transforming the futures of the tens of thousands of children going to sleep every night in temporary accommodation, and it is not just the surest way to save billions of pounds from the housing benefits bill. As if each of those were not justification enough in their own right, council housing is also the best hope we have to create the new communities that foster the sort of life and society that the labour movement has always dreamed of and strived for. This does not seem to be debated too often in this place, but the built environment we go about our daily lives in matters profoundly. The provision of council housing is not just about progress towards social justice and the eradication of inequality; it is also about building a world around ourselves that contributes every day to the experience of self-worth, happiness, peace, connection and leisure in all our lives. If we are to be judged by future generations, not just on how many houses we build but on what we build, a policy dominated by council housing, with local authorities in the driving seat able to plan and design developments matching the hopes and identity of each community, is essential to avoiding the condemnation of history. Far too many of the estates thrown up in recent years by the private sector have been notable mainly for their identikit and bland miserablism. Even leaving aside the appalling quality of new build housing on many speculative developments, the status quo approach that housing policy has sunk into has in effect created a new phenomenon of spiritual slums, where a near total lack of facilities or features capable of instilling any sense of interest or civic pride condemns the young to a sentence of boredom. When we are building estates with more land given to car parking than space for children to play, rising disaffection and antisocial behaviour should not be a surprise to anyone. The choice facing the Labour Government in the provision of council housing is therefore between socialism and delinquency. Similarly, the record of private housing development when it comes to integrating nature into our lives, a basic need that we know more and more clearly is essential to our mental health, is shocking. Research has found that environmental features promised in planning conditions are not being delivered almost half of the time. Simple measures to help declining insect populations, birds, bats and other iconic species have all been regularly shirked by developers, and nearly half of the native hedges that were supposed to be laid do not exist. Once again, public goods, even when legally committed to, routinely fail to materialise when we rely on private interests to meet our nation’s housing needs. Public-led housing—council housing—offers the opportunity for different priorities that at last deliver something better. Just as 100 years ago the Independent Labour party trailblazer Ada Salter set about housing the working class of Bermondsey while also improving their lives by planting thousands of trees and filling open spaces with flowers, so now we can have council housing that goes hand in hand with nature. What is more, while so-called affordable housing set at 80% of market rates is often used to justify speculative developments, in reality it continues to price key workers out of many parts of the country. The promise of a new era of council housing, in which rents were linked to local incomes, would create a more democratic and less stratified society in which people of all incomes lived side by side. I would welcome the Minister’s reassurance that at least 60% of the affordable homes programme will be homes for social rent or council housing. Prioritising council-led delivery should also mean greater public accountability for maintenance and tenant support. That, sadly, is often lacking where housing associations have moved too far from their original purpose. If we want genuinely affordable homes for those currently priced out of the housing market, better place making, greener and more integrated communities, and all the things that our constituents are demanding, so that we can go from wishing for a better society to that being the lived reality across our nation, we must have housing funded by patient capital that can focus on wider benefits, rather than mere monetary calculations. Across the country, the evidence could not be clearer: only public funding is capable of mobilising the necessary resources at the scale required through long-term investments to deliver the public goods so conspicuously absent in recent years. Over six years, at a time of shortages, debt, constraints, and competing demands on public expenditure that were even greater than ours, the post-war Labour Government oversaw the construction of more than 800,000 council houses—some of the best ever built in this country.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Provision of Council Housing · Hansard source

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  I agree with my hon. Friend and will come to right to buy later in my speech. As Bevan described, “the speculative builder, by his very nature, is not a plannable instrument.” —[ Official Report , 6 March 1946; Vol. 420, c. 451.] They build what makes them most money, while we need our councils empowered to assess the needs of their communities and directly deliver for them, because that is in the public interest.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Provision of Council Housing · Hansard source

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  I fully agree with my hon. Friend. The points he raises perfectly exemplify why the provision of council housing is so important. England has seen 724,000 more net additional dwellings than new households since 2015, yet in the same period the number of households in England on local authority housing waiting lists rose by more than 74,000.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Provision of Council Housing · Hansard source

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  I had better make some progress. That is the yardstick the Government should measure themselves against. I now come at last to how we might go about achieving this. The place to start, as we have already heard, is with plugging the gap. We must stop draining our stock of council houses, year on year. It is a fact of mesmerising absurdity that in the last year of the previous Conservative Government, there was a net loss of social housing in this country, as over 20,000 homes for social rent were lost to right to buy. I welcome the determination of Labour Ministers to reform the right to buy, and to ensure that more homes are built than lost, and I especially welcome the planned 35-year exemption for newly built properties. I urge the Government to bring forward the necessary legislation for those changes as swiftly as possible. Next, we need further planning reform to empower our local authorities to drive forward a council housing renaissance up and down the land. We need new social housing targets, to make the delivery of council housing the urgent priority of every local planning authority. Ministers must bring together local authorities and charities like Crisis to create fairer rules for eligibility for social housing, so that homeless people are no longer unfairly excluded. We need to build on the welcome measures that Ministers have already brought forward on hope value, by allowing local authorities to disregard it entirely for the purposes of purchasing land to meet housing targets. That would not only make the provision of council housing on a vastly increased scale viable by ending the payment of inflated sums of public money to wealthy landowners, slashing an estimated 38% off the total development costs of a mass-scale building programme; it would also allow local authorities to capture the full uplift in land values associated with the delivery of their local plans, and to fund projects that combine high-quality council housing with improved space for nature and expanded public infrastructure. We must also face up to the reality of serious constraints on construction capacity due to a workforce that is too small and an inadequate supply of key materials. If we are to have the hundreds of thousands of council houses that we need in order to swiftly tackle the housing crisis, the Government should ensure that the new strategic planning authorities created through devolution have tools at their disposal to direct available resources where they are needed most, even if that means putting limits on construction for private profit. Of course, many of our local authorities will need substantial support to rebuild the capacity necessary for a major council house building programme. As Shelter has said, in trying to balance budgets after years of funding cuts, local authorities have been forced to shut down their building operations, transfer their council stock to housing associations or focus on building private homes for sale. We will only see the council housing that our country desperately needs if we reverse that trend. Alongside making more low-interest loans available to councils through the Public Works Loan Board, the Government should raise the money needed to invest in a new generation of local authority planners, ecologists, designers and architects through a windfall tax on the largest property developers, which have dominated the market and enjoyed super-normal profits for too long. On funding, the Government have already committed to a transformative £39 billion over 10 years for the new affordable homes programme. I will not try the Minister’s patience by calling for additional money today, but front-loading this investment and driving it primarily towards council housing could see us well on our way. I recognise that, even with all that, matching the scale of council housing delivery overseen by Attlee’s Government is a daunting task, but in the context of the upcoming Budget and increasingly vociferous debates on the merits of a wealth tax, I will take this opportunity to briefly fly the flag for the comparatively straightforward proposal of a levy on multiple home ownership. With so many in our society unable to access suitable housing at all, requiring those who own multiple homes to contribute to the public coffers a small percentage of the value of their additional properties would be both fair and proportionate. That leaves a final, concluding point. The case for more council housing and what it could deliver for our society is overwhelming in its own right, but even if we were to reduce ourselves to desiccated calculating machines, concerned only with economic statistics, the irrefutable fact is that we cannot afford not to invest in hundreds of thousands of new council houses over the coming years. A major council house building programme would deliver a huge counter-cyclical boost to economic activity in every region of the country. Alongside the vast savings to be made on the cost of temporary accommodation provided by councils, there would be knock-on benefits from secure decent homes: they would reduce costs right across the public sector, from the NHS to our schools. In short, it would be fiscally reckless not to invest in a new generation of council housing. We all deserve a warm, safe and affordable home, where we can put down roots and have the safety and security to flourish and grow. It is our duty to make that a reality. Hundreds of thousands of families cannot afford for us to delay or go slow. Now is the time for the Government to live up to their heritage and provide a new era of council housing that transforms lives up and down the country.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Provision of Council Housing · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. As usual, he makes a good point, and I wholly agree. As our whole nation loses out on the stifled energy, talent and creativity of so many people held back by not having a secure home where they can put down roots and flourish, it is ever clearer that the magic of the invisible hand of the free market is little more than a fairy tale told by economists to justify a refusal to meet our obligations to the least well-off members of society. However, if we look to our past for inspiration, we see many parallels between the challenges confronting us now and those facing the great post-war Labour Government who took office 80 years ago. Then, Labour came into office determined to change the “devil take the hindmost” approach to housing policy in which, as Aneurin Bevan described: “The higher income groups had their houses; the lower income groups had not. Speculative builders, supported enthusiastically, and even voraciously, by money-lending organisations, solved the problem of the higher income groups in the matter of housing” —[ Official Report , 17 October 1945; Vol. 414, c. 1222.] while the rest were left behind. Bevan’s solution was to start at the other end and focus on meeting the needs of the working class. Our current state of affairs is much the same. We need the same priorities to get to the root of the contemporary housing crisis, because while house prices in many parts of the country are eye-wateringly high for all, the reality is that higher-income earners—frustrated though some of their ambitions may be—can find a home, while too often those at the other end of the spectrum cannot. Simply flooding the market with speculative developments will not address the problem. The only way to get high-quality homes that those on waiting lists can actually afford is to directly plan and deliver housing for people on low incomes. That is why we must have council housing —not housing built to maximise profits for developers’ shareholders—offering rents linked to local incomes, and hundreds of thousands of them. I will be quoting Bevan extensively, given his achievements in delivering high-quality council housing in this country.