Chris Hinchliff MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  For millions, the affordable housing crisis is the clearest sign that Britain is broken. That is why I welcome the Government’s announcement of £39 billion for the affordable homes programme in the spending review. That is a significant investment, but getting the 160,000 homeless children out of temporary accommodation is a national emergency, and it demands urgent action. I ask Ministers to comment, in their response to this debate, on reports that much of this funding is back-loaded until after the next general election, with only relatively modest increases over the next three years. We cannot ignore the human cost of delay. This is not a static problem, or a building waiting to be repaired. Childhood does not pause. We need to prove to the public that we are tackling the housing crisis now. When we fail to provide the basics of shelter and stability, we undermine the talents and contributions of the next generation. That failure not only harms those children, but diminishes our collective future. I urge Ministers to consider Shelter’s proposal that two thirds of the announced funding be spent in the first five years. Matching this would show true commitment to change, and offer real hope for the future. We must also ensure that this funding is used to deliver the genuinely affordable homes needed to bring down spiralling waiting lists. My constituents are understandably hugely cynical; they are promised affordable housing, but so often what gets delivered is anything but. All the evidence shows that it is council housing that is desperately needed by families at the sharp end of the housing crisis. The affordable homes programme should deliver an end to decades of under-investment in housing for working-class communities—and I know that is what Ministers intended. The way to get there is with a clear public commitment that 80% of this investment will be for social rent. To conclude, I welcome the fact that the headline figures are ambitious and encouraging, but the details must be refined to deliver the homes that workers need. Yes, that means more up-front investment, but there are solutions. Housing developers fuelled this crisis by building at rates that maximised profit while families waited, and by prioritising luxury builds while key workers struggled to find affordable homes. Just as the Government rightly used a windfall tax on oil and gas giants to lower energy bills, we should consider a windfall tax on the supernormal profits of the biggest housing developers. The major developers put profit before the public good, raking in billions while failing to deliver the homes that we need. They should help pay to fix the mess that they helped create.

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

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  In the debate today, Conservative Members have robustly defended the principle of paying landowners the uplift from the current-use value to the value that land would have with planning permission. Given how Winston Churchill said such unearned increments in land are “positively detrimental” to the general public, are they not attacking their own best traditions?

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

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  Once more unto the breach. I rise to speak in favour of amendment 68 in my name, and I hope to find as much common ground with Ministers as possible. I fully agree with the Government that we need bold reform of the planning system to tackle the housing crisis, and that is what even stronger reform of CPOs would deliver. We have substantially more homes per capita than we did 50 years ago, yet over that time, house prices in the UK have risen by 3,878%. The Minister for Housing and Planning was right to argue that housing supply is not a panacea for affordability. There have been 724,000 more net additional dwellings than new households in England since 2015, so the Deputy Prime Minister was right to argue that there is plenty of housing already, but not enough for the people who desperately need it. The fundamental planning reform we need is an end to the developer-led model, which Shelter estimates is on track to deliver just 5,190 social rented homes per year, despite those being the very properties that we need to reduce waiting lists and get families out of temporary accommodation. The housing crisis is one of inequality. We must move away from reliance on the vested interests of private developers, whose priorities will never align with the public good. Amendment 68 is intended to ensure just that. Half of England is owned by less than 1% of its population. Between 1995 and 2022, land values rose by more than 600% to £7.2 trillion, which amounts to more than 60% of the UK’s net worth. The amendment would build on Government proposals to give councils the land assembly powers necessary to acquire sites to meet local housing need at current use value, and so would do away with speculative hope value prices, which put taxpayers’ money into wealthy landowners’ pockets. That would finally make it affordable for local authorities to deliver the new generation of council homes that is the true solution to this nation’s housing crisis. If we coupled strengthened compulsory purchase powers with a more strategic approach to site identification and acquisition, we could not only increase the amount of affordable housing built, but achieve genuinely sustainable development, and would no longer be beholden to whatever ill-suited proposals developers chose to bring forward. The failings of our developer-led planning system are writ large across my constituency. In the 10 years from 2014 to 2024, North Hertfordshire and East Hertfordshire delivered a significant expansion of housing supply—3,973 and 7,948 net additional dwellings respectively. What happened to local authority housing waiting lists over the same period? They rose from 1,612 to 2,449 in North Hertfordshire and from 2,005 to 2,201 in East Hertfordshire. There have been more than enough new homes in my area to clear housing waiting lists, but the affordable homes we need are simply not delivered by a profit-driven model. A further fact stands out: over that decade, during which housing supply and waiting lists grew simultaneously in North and East Hertfordshire, not a single council house was built in either authority. It is time for a genuine alternative to this farce. I urge the Government to look closely at the amendment, and to push onwards to create a planning system that once again puts people before profit.

• 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.

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

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  My hon. Friend may have slightly confused the point of amendment 69, which is merely to address the concerns raised by the Office for Environmental Protection and to ensure that the nature restoration fund works to deliver exactly the points that he describes with the right nature protection.

• 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]

• 8 May 2025 · Environmental Audit Committee · Hansard source

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  I welcome the publication of the report, which reminds us all once again that nature is the true foundation of all wealth in our country and around the globe. A wide range of environmental organisations and eminent academics —including Sir Partha Dasgupta, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Cambridge, whose review for the Treasury underpins the Committee’s entire report—have publicly written to warn that proposed plans in the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill are “not a tool for ecological recovery” but “a licence to kill nature, with no evidence to suggest this would in any way help our economy.” Does my hon. Friend agree that when leading economists, former Government advisers and leading conservationists with decades of collective experience have expressed such deep concerns about Government legislation, Ministers must listen and think again?

• 25 Mar 2025 · Seriously Ill Children: Financial Support for Parents · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered financial support for parents caring for seriously ill children. It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I begin by paying tribute to my constituents Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis, who are in the Public Gallery today. Their tireless advocacy, following the tragic loss of their six-year-old son Hugh to cancer in 2021, is an inspiration to me, and I know this feeling is shared by colleagues across the House. Ceri, Frances and the charity they set up, It’s Never You, have highlighted the immense challenges faced by families caring for seriously ill children. When a child is born, there is a support system in place for parents. Maternity pay provides a safety net for those who must stop work to care for their child, and the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 covers the parents of babies who are admitted to neonatal care within 28 days of birth. However, if a child falls seriously ill outside those periods, parents must navigate burdensome and insufficient systems that were not designed for families facing what is, for most, the very hardest time of their lives. Ceri and Frances experienced this unfairness at first hand during the 100-mile round trips they had to make to be with Hugh during his treatment. Thankfully, they were financially stable, but they witnessed the harsh reality of our benefits system as they saw other parents being forced to sell their homes and give up work to care for their seriously ill children. Of course, these issues are compounded by the cost of living pressures that all families face, even without family emergencies piling on. Approximately 68% of women and 57% of men with mental health problems are parents, which highlights the emotional strain that families across the country already face. Last year, a quarter of parents with children aged 18 and under said they struggled to provide sufficient food for their children, and Shelter estimates that 1.7 million private renters do not have enough savings to pay their rent if they were to become unemployed.

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

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  The origin of Britain’s planning system is as deeply rooted in the legacy of the post-war Labour Government as that of the national health service and the welfare state. Like those great Labour institutions, it has faced relentless underfunding, attacks and dismantling from the Conservatives, who prioritise the rights of wealthy landowners over the entitlement of working people to affordable housing and quality infrastructure. I commend the Government for bringing forward a Bill that offers the opportunity to at last get to grips with the appalling mess made of the planning system by the parties opposite; after all, it was they who allowed more than 14,000 hectares of our best farmland to be lost to development since 2010. The reality is that while we now have substantially more homes per capita than 50 years ago—a surplus that has grown rapidly in recent years—house prices in the UK have risen by 3,878% since 1971. Whatever may be said by their lobbyists, the housing crisis is not a straightforward issue of supply, and it will not be solved by simply putting more powers in the hands of profiteering developers. Waiting for a market solution to this societal emergency would be an exercise in utterly extravagant futility.

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

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  I completely agree. The Government need to deliver a coherent vision for development in this country that matches the clarity and boldness of Labour’s 1947 vision, putting democratic control and social justice back at the heart of the planning system. First, we must contend with the fact that more than 1.2 million homes that were granted planning permission since 2015 have not been built. Rather than waiting for developers to drip feed land into the system at their convenience, keeping prices high and profits maximised, we must introduce firm financial penalties for land banking to spur on construction and dampen price inflation. Secondly, in towns like Buntingford and Royston, although thousands of houses have been built in recent years, local people remain stuck on sky-high waiting lists, with enormous knock-on costs for those families and our wider communities. We must therefore address not just the aggregate quantity of building but the types of homes we are providing with a new era of council housing, especially in our small towns and villages. The housing crisis is also about the concentration of land ownership in the hands of the super-rich. Half of England is owned by less than 1% of its population. Between 1995 and 2022, land values rose by more than 600% to £7.2 trillion, now representing more than 60% of the UK’s total net worth. I welcome the Bill’s expansion of powers for local authorities to prevent developers cashing in on inflated land prices at the cost of the taxpayer. We must maximise the public capture of land value uplifts to provide the necessary funding for genuinely affordable homes that are linked to local incomes and based in well-designed communities that benefit from easy access to all the facilities we need in our daily lives. Simultaneously, the Government must also grasp this opportunity to reshape how councils develop local plans. Empowered councils with well-resourced planning departments should be able to take an active role to assess the needs of local families, identify appropriate sites and proactively use compulsory purchase orders for genuinely strategic land assembly to meet the needs of their communities. Finally, given the collapse of nature in our country, we must use this legislation to recognise the very real environmental limits on growth. It is high time our planning system ensured that a presumption in favour of sustainable development ceases to act as a presumption in favour of any development whatsoever. I look forward to working with Ministers to advance this legislation and secure the strongest possible Bill, which restores our role as custodians of the countryside, compels the private sector to deliver and places the power to meet our housing and infrastructure needs firmly back in democratic hands.

• 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.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Repairs to Whitebarns Lane in Furneux Pelham · Hansard source

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  I rise to present this petition on behalf of the residents of Furneux Pelham in my constituency, where Whitebarns Lane has been left in a state of disrepair for years, despite being the only access road for many social housing tenants and others in the village. Hertfordshire county council has refused to adequately maintain this road, forcing residents, including schoolchildren, the elderly and the disabled, to endure unsafe conditions. The petition states: “The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to work with Hertfordshire County Council to ensure that a proportion of the £1.6bn in increased funding for pothole repairs is used to repair and maintain Whitebarns Lane.” Following is the full text of the petition: [The petition of residents of the village of Furneux Pelham, North East Hertfordshire, Declares that Whitebarns Lane is the sole pedestrian and vehicle access for residents in social housing in Furneux Pelham; however, it is unfit for purpose and has been in a near constant state of dangerous disrepair for many years as a result of Hertfordshire County Council’s refusal to maintain the route as a road; further declares that this refusal to carry out repairs after many years of lobbying has led to vulnerable residents of Whitebarns, including the disabled and elderly, suffering from falls and other injuries; and furthermore expresses dismay at the ongoing neglect and mis-treatment of social housing tenants in rural communities. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to work with Hertfordshire County Council to ensure that a proportion of the £1.6bn in increased funding for pothole repairs is used to repair and maintain Whitebarns Lane and, to ensure that social housing tenants are never again placed in a situation whereby they have no substantive access to the main highway, to urge the Government to take action to ensure that the development in Furneux Pelham and all future developments have such access as standard. And the petitioners remain, etc.] [P003047]

• 25 Feb 2025 · Affordable Rural Housing · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister agree that the most important policies that we can look at in planning reform to deliver genuinely affordable homes in rural communities are a bold approach to land reform, the abolition of hope value and the reform of compulsory purchase orders to allow our local planning authorities to assemble the land that we need in our rural communities?

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

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  Residents in towns and villages across my constituency want an efficient and accountable planning system. Could the Minister set out in more detail how he sees these plans interacting with processes around master planning and the negotiation of planning conditions?