Chris Hinchliff MP: speeches

Speeches

• 30 Jun 2026 · Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. This is a hugely consequential instrument. Little democracy remains in our planning system, and this legislation will cut the amount down further. We are elected to this place to serve the public, not treat them as a problem to be silenced. The measures will mean that individual councillors lose the ability to directly call in planning decisions completely, and that democratically elected councillors get to publicly scrutinise and vote on planning decisions only in exceptional circumstances, even for schedule 2 applications. With no committees for the vast majority of decisions, they will also mean that the public lose their chance to speak for a few minutes in front of those deciding on what gets built and where in their local area. In effect, in many circumstances, they will render our constituents and their locally elected representatives bystanders in the future of their own community. The measures seem to directly contradict Labour’s historic mission to redistribute power, not to mention the current drive for devolution and putting decision-making power back in local hands. Streamlining our processes, in my view, cannot justify to my constituents the loss of their voice through these measures. I fear that the case for these changes relies overwhelmingly on anecdote and the belief that locally elected councillors are too responsive to the hopes and concerns of those they represent, and that by taking councillors out of the equation, more planning applications will be approved in spite of the public’s hopes and concerns. It is not a lack of planning permissions that underpins our decades-long failure to address our nation’s housing needs, however, and these measures will do nothing to build the hundreds of thousands of council houses we need. Whitehall is also not the best place to define which planning decisions are important enough for local democratic scrutiny; it is our local councils that have the knowledge and understanding of their communities needed to inform that choice. I absolutely accept that years of incoherent tinkering have created a planning system that is no longer fit for purpose. It is procedurally complex, it does not secure public support for future development, it does not build the affordable homes we need, and it is producing poor-quality, unsustainable outcomes—but making more decisions behind closed doors will not remedy any of that. Some may argue that this measure represents a shift towards a rules-based planning system by taking democratic discretion out of the equation, but the irony is that it is the decades-long deregulation of our planning system and the ever-growing focus on developer-led, speculative applications for building new housing that make the application of discretionary scrutiny essential. If we wanted a truly rules-based system, we would focus on reform that puts powers in the hands of local communities to decide for themselves through a genuinely co-designed local plan where, how and in what way their housing needs could be met. To conclude, this is a bad piece of legislation that will do nothing to help our constituents off housing waiting lists or to secure public consent for development in this country. It will hang like an albatross around the Government’s neck. The public anger about and resistance to damaging and speculative plans put forward by profiteering land promoters and developers will not disappear if this legislation comes into force; it will simply be redirected to target the planning officers who will have to enact it, the Members of Parliament who allowed democracy to be quietly killed off in a Committee Room, and Labour Ministers every time a councillor has to explain to their residents that they can no longer publicly scrutinise and challenge inappropriate development because this Government abandoned their own best traditions and stripped them of their rights. All that the statutory instrument will achieve is more polarisation and yet further erosion of trust in our political system, so I urge the Committee to reject these proposals. I urge the Government to choose a different course that recognises communities as a positive force to be empowered and that focuses on securing the highest-quality development plans to win genuine social licence to build, rather than trying to silence opposition to the development of unhappiness given physical form, which has already done so much damage to our country.

• 24 Jun 2026 · Farming Road Map and Profitability Review · Hansard source

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  For many years we have expected farmers to steward our environment and at the same time deliver food at rock-bottom prices to make up for the failure of politics to secure an affordable cost of living across the rest of society. That has made agricultural profitability increasingly difficult. Now, with the crisis posed by climate change to our national food security, we must pull every available lever to reverse that trend. At the general election, the Labour manifesto committed to a target of half of all food purchased across the public sector being locally produced or certified to higher environmental standards. Will the Secretary of State provide an update on progress towards that target?

• 27 Apr 2026 · Animal Testing · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) on an excellent opening speech. All life is a miracle and every living creature has an intrinsic value that we cannot measure or put a price on, so I am not in the least bit surprised that hundreds of my constituents signed this petition. We rightly expect the highest standards for animals bred in this country and should demand the same for those imported from abroad. The British people want tough penalties on cruelty. Labour’s animal welfare agenda, from tackling puppy farming to ending trail hunting, brings policy closer to the public’s values. Those same values matter when we consider animal testing. Given the invasive, painful and often lethal nature of these experiments, the burden of justification has to be immense. It is not enough to say that the ends justify the means; the ends themselves must be clearly achievable, necessary and proportionate enough to warrant such suffering. In other words, we cannot morally justify harming animals simply because we consider ourselves a more intelligent species. If some disagree with that statement, it is a useful thought experiment to consider whether we would accept it as morally justifiable and acceptable for a provably more intelligent species to experiment on our families and loved ones for their own purposes. Would we stand by and nod along stoically that all species can rightly be used however they wish by another that has a more developed brain? I think not. A genuinely moral justification can be attempted only if the scale of suffering prevented by testing on living creatures provably and overwhelmingly outweighs the suffering of the test patients themselves. Too often, that case is simply not made. When we weigh the public interest in research and medical progress against the imperative to minimise harm to animals, the balance just does not stack up to scrutiny. Animal testing is often cruel and would often pass for barbaric sadism in any other context. More profoundly still, the scientific value of animal testing is often overstated. As we have heard repeatedly today, there is growing evidence that animal models can be unreliable predictors for human outcomes, and we have an increasing range of scientific tools and models that offer a more accurate alternative. If the suffering we are inflicting on these animals is profound but the result is uncertain, can the means really be justified at all? Herbie’s law would help to correct that balance, through a phased transition by 2035 away from animal experimentation and towards more effective alternatives, including human-specific methods backed by training and support for scientists. More than 2 million animals were used in experiments in our country in 2024 alone. That is suffering on an immense scale, affecting animals alive today and countless more yet to be bred into a system of pain. Herbie’s law offers the chance to turn a historic page and reduce suffering, improve science and move our laws closer to the values that the public already hold. That would be a profound step forward for animals living now and those spared this fate in future. I urge Ministers to adopt Herbie’s law in full as a matter of urgency.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  There are many important proposals before us today, and I congratulate the Minister on bringing them forward. I wholeheartedly support the Government’s efforts to tackle antisocial behaviour, offensive weapons, fly-tipping, the exploitation of children, and appalling sexual offences. However, Lords amendment 312, which was introduced in the other place, dangerously infringes on civil liberties. It is incumbent on all Members to jealously guard the rights of our constituents, and any restriction of their civil liberties should only be accepted by this House on the basis of overwhelming evidence that such proposals would strengthen, rather than undermine, the health of our democracy. On this occasion, however, we have had next to no evidence whatsoever, because these significant changes were only introduced after the original passage of the Bill through this House, which is ultimately a pretty sorry way to treat representative parliamentary democracy. Lords amendment 312 is out of step with the best traditions of this country and of the Labour party, which has always existed to redress the balance of power in favour of ordinary people. The Chartists, the suffragettes, the organisers of the Kinder Scout trespass, those who stood against fascism at Cable Street, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Jarrow crusade—these were protest movements and campaigns of direct action that were supported and led by giants of our party, and which we should celebrate, not disown. They were advancing Labour’s historic mission to wrest power from the established status quo, so that ordinary people have a real say over their lives. Lords amendment 312 contradicts that impulse, and risks shifting the balance of power in our society towards the vested interests that we ought to take on. The corrosive influence of the rich and powerful runs through every corner of our politics. It muddies policymaking and leaves our constituents asking whether decisions are made in their interests, or in those of the last donor who paid £2,000 a head at a lobbyist curry night. If tweaks are to be made to defend our democracy and prevent disruption to the life of our communities, that would be a far more apt target than the civil liberties of our constituents. Today, Lords amendment 312 is opposed across the Labour movement and civil society by many organisations that share the progressive instincts that should be guiding this Labour Government. That is hardly surprising, given the way this legislation is drafted. It is vague, with no definition of what is meant by “serious disruption to the life of the community”. It is widely drawn, with no necessary link between the events considered to be cumulatively disruptive. It does not define the area in question or the timeframe, and it has the blindingly obvious potential to be abused. The proposals could easily be used to restrict protests simply because they are considered inconvenient due to their persistence, and not because of their content or messages. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) pointed out, this may place substantial political pressure on the decision making of senior police officers. I want to address the concerns raised by several hon. Members in this debate about the intimidation of specific minority groups. I do understand those concerns and they are legitimate, but the legislation is not drafted tightly enough to address that problem. It is far too vague and far too broad to coherently address that point, and it is not what we will achieve by passing this amendment. Finally, since we are discussing notions of cumulative impact, whatever the stated intentions today, when these plans are considered alongside the recent restrictions on the right to protest against animal testing, a legally contested proscription and other legislation that I assume means that any of my constituents disobeying these plans would not have the right to a trial by their peers, assertions by the Government that they hold the right to protest sacrosanct are wearing so thin as to be clearly transparent. The case for Lords amendment 312 has not been made, we should not be asked to vote for it en bloc alongside other important but entirely separate changes, and I urge Ministers to drop these plans for good.

• 13 Apr 2026 · Social Housing Standards · Hansard source

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  More social housing is essential but, as Members across the House will know, increasingly distant housing associations are often far too quick to put up fees and far too slow to tackle damp, mould and disrepair. What more will the Minister do to ensure that future public funding comes with clear strings attached to require better standards for our constituents?

• 13 Apr 2026 · Social Housing Standards · Hansard source

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  22. What steps he is taking to improve standards for social housing.

• 5 Mar 2026 · Standards in Government · Hansard source

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  4. What steps he is taking to uphold standards in Government.

• 5 Mar 2026 · Standards in Government · Hansard source

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  Over the last 25 years, companies that have donated tens of millions of pounds to political parties have been granted Government contracts worth more than £60 billion. It is pretty obvious to the public that these cosy, influential and lucrative relationships appear to be the precise opposite of high standards in public life. Does the Minister agree that companies donating to political parties should be automatically disqualified from Government contracts?

• 3 Mar 2026 · Environmental Protection and Biodiversity · Hansard source

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  I completely agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of protecting our curlews, and the curlew action plan is a hugely important step, which the Government should be looking at. I also wonder how long it will be before the screaming sky falls silent, as each year, fewer swifts return to grace the air above our towns and villages. Even our English language is losing its power, as the colours of the countryside are allowed to run dry. How could Brontë have conjured Heathcliff to love Cathy without the wild of the Yorkshire moors? How could Tolkien have fathered an entire fantasy genre without a shire worth fighting for? What hope is there for a future Vaughan Williams with so few larks left to ascend? Worse still, what stories will we have left to enchant the next generation of children with when the Hundred Acre Wood has been declared a blocker, Ratty and Mole have been evicted from their river home by decades of effluent, and—this is probably only a matter of time—someone tries to redefine Watership Down as grey belt? All in all, the scale of the nature crisis is difficult to overstate, and any move to lower standards risks turning that crisis into a catastrophe. Yet, despite all this, we still get senior politicians declaring war on what little remains of our wildlife, with repeated suggestions that even this dire baseline is somehow too high. We continue to hear the unevidenced claim that Britain is held back not by a broken economic model but by bats and newts, and that profiteering developers would build genuinely affordable homes for all if only the last remnants of the natural world were less burdensome. Liz Truss may be gone, but the spirit and lazy rhetoric of deregulatory Trussonomics bulldozers inexorably onwards with a planning and infrastructure Bill that sought to allow developers to pay cash to trash nature, despite having no meaningful evidence to substantiate the claim that environmental protections slow down infrastructure. Then, after we managed to head off the worst of that, we have had the wholesale rejection of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee’s recommendations on species protections, as well as a nuclear regulatory review based on fundamentally flawed evidence that inflates the costs of environmental protections and downplays ecological risks. I would welcome the Minister taking this opportunity to distance the Government from that particular exercise in scapegoating nature for developer incompetence. Each additional deregulation and attack on environmental protections is a blow to the very root of what it means to be English. It is a truly bleak vision for our country to suggest that the only way to secure investment, build infrastructure or deliver homes is to rip up our environmental protections. Such measures are not only bad policy but directly contradictory to the manifesto we were elected on and deeply unpopular. Only 14% of British people think politicians are aligned with their values on nature, and three quarters of young people actually want more of the UK countryside protected.

• 3 Mar 2026 · Environmental Protection and Biodiversity · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her support for the red lines campaign. She is absolutely right about what makes life worth living. Investing in our country, strengthening standards and restoring our natural world will do far more to improve the lives of ordinary people than a short-sighted race to the bottom. That is the Labour tradition: action to correct market failure, not dogmatic deregulation. There is a nature-loving majority in this country, including the millions of members of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, wildlife trusts, national trusts and so many more. Our Labour Government should be working alongside those groups, not squaring up to them. At the end of the day, there is a lot more of them than there are developer lobbyists. Let us stop this endless cycle of skirmishes. It does not have to be like this. Enough is enough.

• 25 Feb 2026 · Student Loan Repayment Plans · Hansard source

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  As a plan 2 graduate myself, before the Minister proceeds will he put on the record an acceptance that, with the misstep on the tuition fee repayment level, the cat is out of the bag? We need to deal with it in this Parliament. I urge him to reject the tedious, time-wasting suggestions from the Lib Dems and get on and deal with it with Labour values.

• 12 Feb 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The disgraceful scandals of recent days have left what little remains of faith in our democracy hanging by a thread. One of the lessons has to be that, while inherited privilege is no basis for a second Chamber, neither is self-interested patronage by political leaders. Does the Leader of the House agree that we must end the rotten system of peerages being granted to individuals, despite sickening behaviour, simply because they are rich and powerful, or to give jobs to the boys? Will he convey to his Cabinet colleagues the urgent need for legislation to reform the House of Lords from top to bottom, sweeping away these abuses and ridding us of all these politically partisan appointees?

• 26 Jan 2026 · Key Stage 1 Curriculum · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Barker. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) on her excellent speech—although the “productive struggle” she referred to sounded rather like a slogan from my trade union days. I wholeheartedly support the petition, and I thank all the campaigners behind it for ensuring that we are debating this important subject today. I have heard from so many parents across North East Hertfordshire that over-formal academic approaches do not suit their children. Our whole society is missing out on the vast untapped potential of children who are never going to thrive in a sedentary environment. The valorisation of that model, and the expectation that all children can be measured against it, teaches many from the youngest age that learning is a struggle to be resented, not an exploration to be enjoyed. Politicians so often speak about the importance of education equipping children with skills that businesses require, but frankly I think it is a lot more important that five, six and seven-year-old kids are happy and healthy. Fortunately, we do not need to choose between an education that is fun and inclusive, and one that equips pupils with essential knowledge and skills, as has been so powerfully proven by Unplugged Tots, which is run by my brilliant constituent Hannah. Unplugged Tots supports children to be the problem solvers, inventors, engineers, scientists and technologists of tomorrow by equipping them with the skills they will need through accessible, fun, engaging activities that are screen-free. Hannah is proving that we can teach children as young as two and half the foundational skills and critical-thinking abilities for coding through play—and without any screen whatsoever. It is a genuinely inspiring model that I hope the Minister will look at closely, and that could benefit schools across the country. I will give the final word to Hannah, who says: “Today’s children are tomorrow’s future and equipping them for this rapidly changing future is essential. If we want to build capable citizens for tomorrow, we must take play in Key Stage 1 seriously…Play supports the whole child, providing an equitable starting point for all children, regardless of background. When play is integral to the curriculum, we raise standards by nurturing confident learners prepared for a rapidly changing world equipped with a lifelong love of learning.”

• 8 Dec 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I am not certain whether I or the Minister will be more relieved at the conclusion of debates on this legislation. I welcome the fact that the Minister has tabled an amendment to the remaining proposal from the other place; I support Government amendment (a), and welcome the additional parliamentary scrutiny it brings. Once again, this legislation is in a better place than it was the last time it came in front of us, and I welcome the fact that Ministers have committed to environmental delivery plans being initially focused on nutrient neutrality and that further EDPs will be preceded by a statement in this House presenting the evidence for them. I want to reflect briefly on further evidence that has come before us since our last debate on the Bill. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published an assessment of England’s biodiversity that found substantially more indicators of our nature in decline than going in the right direction. The Environmental Audit Committee, on which I sit, published its report on environmental sustainability and housing growth in which it called for an end to “lazy” narratives and scapegoating of nature. New polling has also found that more than two thirds of voters think politicians are out of touch with the public’s values on nature. We are still a long way from a planning system that delivers genuinely affordable homes and social justice, values democracy and reverses the decline of England’s nature. I hope that, with the conclusion of this Bill, we can move forward to some more positive progress.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member asked whether there were any positives in the Budget. Does he not think that raising more children out of poverty than any other Parliament on record is a positive? Does he not welcome that—does he not think it benefits all of us?

• 25 Nov 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill · Hansard source

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  I have tabled new clause 13 to address a slight oversight in this Bill—namely, that despite its title, it does not give communities any substantially new powers. The strengthening of the tools that local people have at their disposal to purchase assets of community value is certainly very welcome—yes, it is progress—but it is not fundamentally new. New clause 13 is intended to fill in this minor, accidental absence with a requirement on the Secretary of State to report on progress towards, and set out plans to deliver, a new charter of community rights containing seven key elements: a right to a clean and healthy environment; a right to a healthy home; a right to play; a right to grow food on public sector land; a right to roam and swim; a right to participate in decisions shaping communities; and a right to challenge local decisions. Designed to put power back in the hands of ordinary people, the charter offers a starting point to restore popular agency in our democracy. Each of the seven rights contained within it is based on clear legal proposals, and each builds on long-standing demands that stretch back into England’s history. I will briefly take them in turn. After years of scandals, with ordinary people powerless to stop sewage being pumped into local rivers or their children being poisoned by the air they breathe, the right to a clean environment would give every community the power to challenge proposals that threaten to impose pollution on them. Similarly, the right to a healthy home would put an end to an era in which permitted development rights have been used to create the slums of the future by housing the most vulnerable in society without adequate space, security, fire safety or proper ventilation. With this right, communities could require that new housing delivers the basics of a happy, healthy life, with plenty of natural light, access to green space and comfort in all weathers.

• 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.

• 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?

• 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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  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.

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

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely correct in his assessment of one of the many benefits of council housing. The provision of council housing is uniquely important for meeting the Government’s objectives, because of the risk in designing housing policy around a target delivered by a market over which we have limited control. Once again, Bevan was right when he said that committing to general housing targets would be “crystal gazing” and “demagogic”. He also stated: “The fact is that if at this moment we attempted to say that, by a certain date, we will be building a certain number of houses, that statement would rest upon no firm basis of veracity”. —[ Official Report , 17 October 1945; Vol. 414, c. 1232.] It is only with council housing supplied directly by public authorities that we can give real confidence to the electorate in our ability to deliver. The last time we were building 300,000 homes a year, nearly half the total was council housing, and if we want to secure an increase in construction to 1.5 million new homes over the course of this Parliament, the lion’s share of the balance must come through council housing.

• 4 Sept 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The current drafting of national planning policy is allowing developers to ride roughshod over local democracy, imposing completely inappropriate bolt-on estates to market towns such as Buntingford and Royston, while wholly failing to deliver the genuinely affordable housing that we need. It is difficult to imagine a system and state of affairs more likely to erode public support for the Government’s house building ambitions. Can we have a debate in Government time to ensure the presumption in favour of sustainable development achieves what it is intended to, rather than the current farce?

• 3 Sept 2025 · Living Standards: East of England · Hansard source

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  I also find in my constituency that the cost of a decent home is far too high for far too many of my constituents. Does my hon. Friend agree that the solution to that problem is not, as is believed in some quarters, to give the developers the right to strip away our environment and destroy nature, but rather to get on with building the council housing that delivers the genuinely affordable homes our residents need?