Chris Hinchliff MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  I rise to speak in favour of the amendments in my name, particularly amendment 69, which has 53 supporters from across the House. Every family stuck on a housing waiting list, and every child suffering the insecurity of temporary accommodation, represents a moral stain on our country. I welcome Ministers’ urgency in seeking to address those corrosive failures, which, for millions, underpin a lingering sense that our country is deeply broken. However, I fear that the Government have misdiagnosed the root cause of the housing crisis, which is fundamentally that private capital will never deliver the public good that we need. The evidence is clear that processes that uphold democracy and nature are not the problem; profit maximisation is. The planning system consistently approves more homes than the private sector delivers, and when homes are built, they are too often unaffordable for those at the sharp end of the housing crisis. Last year, less than 2% of homes delivered through section 106 were for social rent. After 20 years of deregulation, hoping that just one more wave will finally make the market deliver is simply not credible. It certainly does not justify stripping away the few protections that we have left for our natural environment, especially when the Government’s own assessment could provide no concrete evidence that it would work. We are already one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world, and we can spend what little remains of our natural inheritance only once. If the Government press ahead with their proposals, the national account will soon be empty. There is the kernel of a good idea in a nature restoration fund, but the weight of evidence against the way that it has been drafted is overwhelming: nature organisations, academics, ecologists and the Office for Environmental Protection have all raised serious concerns. I welcome the tone of earlier commitments from Government Front Benchers, but amendment 69 gives Ministers the opportunity to rescue something positive from the wreckage of this legislation by ensuring that environmental delivery plans serve their purpose without allowing developers to pay cash to destroy nature, and that conservation takes place before damage, so that endangered species are not pushed close to extinction before replacement habitats are established. The amendment outlines that conservation must result in improvements to the specific feature harmed. That will protect irreplaceable habitats such as chalk streams. Our natural capital, which underpins all prosperity in this country, declined by a third from 1990 to 2014. This is a chance to reverse that trend. Given that Letchworth Garden City in my constituency sprang into life without a single mature tree being felled, we can build the homes that we desperately need to clear our housing waiting lists in harmony with nature. To conclude, the primary value to which our politics has sought to appeal has for decades been self-serving ambition, but as the party of change and of the people, Labour has a duty to serve a higher virtue: hope. I am talking about hope for a future in which our nation no longer imagines housing as an ever-appreciating financial asset, and instead builds homes that provide the secure and healthy environment essential for our physical and mental wellbeing, and that allow everyone to put down the roots necessary to grow and fulfil their truest potential; hope for a future in which we create connected communities of friendship and co-operation, rather than having the grey and miserable utilitarianism of commuter dormitories; hope for a future in which we take every possible opportunity to restore the glories of British nature and can meaningfully say, for the first time in generations, that we have left the nation richer than we found it; in short, hope that we choose by design to surround every man, woman and child in these islands with constant proof that life is beautiful.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Reform of Planning System · Hansard source

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  I rise to present a petition, alongside a corresponding online petition, signed by hundreds of my constituents in North East Hertfordshire, demanding a planning system that puts people and nature before profit. The root cause of the housing crisis is the flawed developer-led model that fails to deliver affordable homes and manufactures a false conflict between housing and nature. The Government must put councils back in the driving seat, with the funding and tools to build genuinely affordable homes within sustainable communities. The petitioners therefore request “that the House of Commons urge the Government to reform the Planning and Infrastructure Bill so it delivers for both workers and wildlife, redefining affordable housing based on local incomes, ensuring developers deliver on their housing promises, protects irreplaceable habitat like Chalk Streams and upholds local democracy in the planning system.” Following is the full text of the petition: [ The petition of residents of the United Kingdom, Declares that the planning system should put people and nature before profit. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to reform the Planning and Infrastructure Bill so it delivers for both workers and wildlife, redefining affordable housing based on local incomes, ensuring developers deliver on their housing promises, protects irreplaceable habitat like Chalk Streams and upholds local democracy in the planning system. And the petitioners remain, etc. ] [P003081]

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  The Minister is shaking her head, but I agree that it is difficult to see how any boss could qualify for a bonus in the current system. I would be failing to adequately represent the constituents of North East Hertfordshire if I did not make it clear that they have no faith whatsoever that private water companies, after years of disgraceful neglect, can now be trusted to restore the health of our rivers. The residents who sent me to this place are rightly furious at being asked to pay more to make good the malpractice from which water companies have been profiting. The public do not want to pay towards rescuing discredited corporations that have spent decades extracting wealth from our countryside and polluting our rivers to the detriment of wildlife, the pleasures of wild swimming, and any ordinary citizen who cares about the natural world. No doubt, some of the activities and profits of these companies have been included in the calculations of our nation’s GDP. Nothing could demonstrate more clearly that, so often, what passes for valuable economic activity in this country in reality inflicts enormous costs on the public, while threatening the very environment that underpins true prosperity and wellbeing for all. Frankly, it is difficult to disagree with my constituents when they say that, given the damage done by water companies to our rivers through a combination of over-abstraction and pollution, Ofwat is wrong to allow them to charge so much as an extra penny on bills, never mind the staggering 31% increase granted to Thames Water. The residents contacting me about this issue have repeatedly called for water companies to pay for the damage they have done. They say that if the water companies cannot afford to do so without going bankrupt, then let them. And should nationalisation be required as a result, then let Parliament set the appropriate level of compensation for shareholders, netting off not just company debt, but all the dividends shelled out while our rivers and streams have choked with pollution. I recognise that Parliament is not yet ready to accept the radicalism of the wider public on this issue, but this Bill offers a clear and pragmatic solution both to restoring democratic faith in the management of our water system, and to ensuring that it puts people and nature before profit. The whole saga we have witnessed in our water system means that we can now say, in all candour, that the capitalism of Adam Smith, in which the aggregate of self-interested economic decisions produces the collective good, in so far as it ever did exist, is now just a folk story told to justify the actions of the richest members of our society. When it comes to our water system, the free market is a myth, and pretending it exists has only served to inject more pollution into our environment and inequality into our economy, as has happened on almost every occasion on which we have privatised one of our nation’s major assets. The Bill offers a solution to reassuring residents in Baldock that the Ivel will flow fully once again; to residents in Buntingford that planning consultations will no longer be waived through, where they will cause already overloaded infrastructure to flood people’s homes with sewage; and to residents in Barkway that effluent will no longer flow into our rivers for hundreds of hours every year. Something which unites the rivers at each of the locations I have just referred to is that they are all chalk streams. We are proud custodians of 10 of these internationally significant waterways in North East Hertfordshire and I would be remiss not to take this opportunity to ask Ministers to publish the ready-to-go chalk stream recovery pack. It would be a move warmly welcomed by many local groups in my constituency and across the country. I would like to extend an invitation to Ministers to join me in visiting the River Ivel in my constituency to discuss a superb chalk stream restoration pilot project that could be implemented there. To conclude, the Bill has my full support and I hope that Ministers will reflect its whole spirit in their responding remarks today.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Sustainable Farming Incentive · Hansard source

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  I have also been contacted by concerned and impacted farmers in North East Hertfordshire. Will the Minister assure me that, for the remainder of this Parliament, the revamped SFI that he alluded to will allow farmers to plan seasons ahead, as they need to?

• 6 Mar 2025 · Political Finance Rules · Hansard source

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  I intend to make a short contribution on one particular aspect of political funding that I believe is especially corrosive to faith in democracy in our country. Across North East Hertfordshire, from Buntingford to Thundridge, local communities have worked hard to create local neighbourhood plans that are pragmatic but full of hope for the future. However, time and again, those plans are overruled, and residents get development that could hardly be further from what they have sought to secure—poorly designed, palpably unsustainable, and outrageously overpriced. So often, the reason for this is the enormous financial and political pressure that big developers are able to bring to bear on the debates around the future of our towns and villages in their relentless pursuit of profit maximisation. Our constituents will never have faith that our planning system will deliver fair outcomes that put nature, community life and genuinely affordable homes before developer greed for as long as those same developers—and the lobbyists they employ—are pouring vast sums of money into the bank accounts of political parties. Given the constant clamour for planning deregulation and the already enormous profits that these developers are making, it is hard to escape the conclusion that those sums of money have been a very wise investment on their part. The Labour Government have inherited the Conservative party’s housing crisis; we must not inherit the same issues of influence that plagued the previous Administration. Trust in politics will return only when we make our position unimpeachable, and the future of development in our towns, villages and countryside is too important even to appear to have been subverted on behalf of private interests. If we want the public to believe that the planning guidelines that we set nationally and locally will be fairly adhered to, it is my contention that we must ban all political donations from developers, those who work for them and the lobbyists they employ.

• 17 Jan 2025 · New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill · Hansard source

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  I agree that speed is of the essence in multiple ways, and I encourage the Government to move as quickly as possible. Empowering households to generate the electricity that they use will help families to lower their bills far more rapidly than commercial schemes that feed into wholesale energy markets influenced by international commodity prices. This strikes me as a well-drafted Bill, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) on its clarity and flexibility. The only thing that I might suggest is a widening of the provisions to cover commercial buildings as well, given the vast opportunities provided by warehousing space. It is estimated that we currently use only about 5% of warehouse rooftops for solar generation. Claims that the regulations would hinder innovation are clearly spurious, especially in view of the provisions for exemptions where other forms of renewable energy generation are installed. It is high time that our country had common-sense standards for rooftop solar on new builds, and I hope that the whole House will support the Bill.