Chris Hinchliff MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 18 Dec 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 18 December.

• 18 Dec 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  May I associate myself with the Prime Minister’s remarks? In 2021, Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis, who live in my constituency of North East Hertfordshire and are in the Gallery today, tragically lost their son, Hugh, at the age of just six to a rare form of cancer. Now they are courageously campaigning to ensure that every parent who must leave work to look after a sick child in hospital gets the financial support they need from day one. Will the Prime Minister meet them and me to discuss implementing Hugh’s law, and giving their son a legacy that improves the lives of families at the most difficult time imaginable?

• 16 Dec 2024 · Israel and Palestine · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 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?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Stellantis Luton · Hansard source

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  Many of my constituents will be impacted by this deeply worrying announcement, so can the Secretary of State confirm what discussions he is having with trade unions on this specific subject and what plans he has to mitigate the job losses for residents of North East Hertfordshire?

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

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  I thank the Government for so guilelessly bringing forward such a broad debate allowing those of us with rural constituencies to make wide-ranging demands on behalf of the towns and villages that we represent. I look forward to further inundating Ministers’ in-trays with legions of letters about agriculture in Anstey, school buildings in Baldock and potholes in Furneux Pelham. However, before I am accused of being excessively parochial, I will address the wider systemic issues that undermine rural life in this country. Fundamentally, the problem facing towns and villages such as those across North East Hertfordshire is that for decades almost every aspect of national life has been increasingly geared towards putting profit maximisation before the needs of our communities. Nowhere is that more evident than in our housing sector. Rural areas must deal again and again with totally unsustainable speculative developments dominated by houses designed to maximise profit, on a scale completely unrelated to local needs for organic growth. At the same time, house prices have continued to rise—almost always far beyond the reach of those who have grown up locally—rural homelessness has risen by 40% and local facilities have declined. In one of my local towns, Buntingford, hundreds of new houses have been built, yet it has lost its youth centre, the bank, the community swimming pool, a GP surgery, a daycare centre and the local waste disposal site—those facilities are all gone. The volume of new housing is putting such strain on the infrastructure that residents are repeatedly flooded by raw sewage. I am afraid it is of little consolation that the big developers, which the Tories allowed to force through applications on appeal, have been enjoying supernormal profits as a result. The systemic failures are not unique to rural housing. Our public transport system is next to non-existent in many villages—cutting off young adults from opportunities for work and education, and stranding older residents in loneliness and isolation—because the only bus services that ran under the Tories were those that made profits for shareholders. We expect farmers to steward our land for future generations, but they have—between the monopsonistic power of the major supermarkets and the pressure of global commodity markets—been pushed into the absurd position whereby it is increasingly impossible to make a fair living out of feeding the nation. All that points to economic policy that has consistently failed to recognise the intrinsic value that my constituents place on the rurality of their communities. For too long, economic orthodoxy that is obsessed with agglomeration and utilitarian accounting has proven incapable of recognising the social value of investing in less densely populated areas. To conclude, given the vast change in political representation of rural areas at the recent election, the Government clearly have a unique opportunity and obligation to deliver systemic change that creates a future in which our towns, villages and hamlets thrive as communities in their own right. Ministers have made an important start with policies to refocus house building on delivering new social homes, by paving the way for re-regulation of bus services, by delivering the largest ever budget for sustainable food production, and with a clear commitment to community energy. Today, I urge them to press on further as swiftly as possible by restoring services to our towns and villages and retaining their rurality; by recognising at last that, depleted as it is, the natural capital of our countryside is the better part of the wealth of our nation; and by redirecting investment, leaning into the growth of distributed technologies and remote working, and delivering a new revolution in cottage industries to once again spread economic opportunities across places such as those I represent.

• 4 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T10. Many towns and villages across my constituency have experienced rapid population growth in recent years, but education opportunities have not kept pace, so will the Minister meet me to discuss the specific investment needed to expand school places for my constituency’s growing population?

• 23 Oct 2024 · Independent Water Commission · Hansard source

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  The chalk streams in North East Hertfordshire and across England are of international significance, but too often these waterways are not just polluted, but running dry. Will the Secretary of State assure me that the commission will look at the regulation needed to bring an end to not only sewage spills, but the over-abstraction of aquifers and chalk streams?

• 8 Oct 2024 · Farming and Food Security · Hansard source

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  I do not doubt the motivation of Opposition Members, but the inescapable fact is that the Conservative party is ideologically incapable of putting forward real solutions to bolster our national food security. I share some of the concerns about the use of high-quality farmland for ground-mounted solar schemes, which is an ongoing issue in North East Hertfordshire, and we need a land use framework to give strategic direction to where we generate the solar energy that we need, instead of allowing a chaotic proliferation of profit-driven schemes wherever grid capacity, which the Conservative party failed to sort out, allows. Under the previous Government, just 5% of houses had installed rooftop solar, and neither did they take any of the obvious steps to mandate solar panels on new build houses or car parks. For 14 years, they allowed that situation to develop unchecked, and it will be this Labour Government who deliver the land use strategy that we need to provide a framework to ensure that we are making the best possible use of our finite land. On other challenges, it is estimated that one third of UK soils are degraded, yet the previous Government ditched the planned soil health action plan for England. On biodiversity, the previous Conservative Government authorised the use of harmful pesticides, despite knowing that that would have a devastating impact on pollinators. On new entrants, it is well known that the average age of farmers is too high, yet when it was in power the Conservative party’s austerity measures led to the closure of 15,000 acres of county farms estate, which is crucial for getting younger people into a farming career and contributing to national food security.

• 5 Sept 2024 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to give my maiden speech in this important debate. The ongoing transition of our energy system is having a profound and, sadly, often harmful impact on many of the communities in my constituency, so I am very hopeful that the provisions in the Bill will begin at last to put the future of renewable energy in the service of those I represent. I warmly commend to my hon. Friends on the Front Bench the proposals, of which I am sure they will be aware, for Great British Energy to be given a duty to deliver nature recovery alongside its other objectives. I begin this speech by paying tribute to my predecessor, who served our constituency and this House faithfully for many years. The clear proof of the diligence with which he carried out his duties and the respect he earned from his constituents was plainly obvious from the feedback on the doorstep throughout the general election. I especially want to thank my predecessor for the work he did to support the campaign for Hugh’s law to secure better financial support for parents caring for seriously ill children, and also for his work fighting for the restoration of the several internationally significant chalk streams that flow through North East Hertfordshire. I look forward to doing what I can to further both of those important projects during my time in this place. Although the many years of my predecessor’s incumbency have all but erased it from our memory, I am not in fact the first Member of my party to represent communities in North East Hertfordshire. The late, great, trailblazing Shirley Williams, when she was first elected as a Labour MP, represented many of the areas that make up my constituency. Despite the intervening 60 years, I found reading her maiden speech from 1964 very helpful in preparing for this moment, for, as she said then, the constituency I represent is in “many ways…a microcosm” of much of our country. North East Hertfordshire from Hinxworth to Bayford contains many small rural communities full of important history and culture—from the home of George Orwell in Wallington to the stained-glass windows designed by William Morris and pre-Raphaelite artists in Waterford. In Baldock, Buntingford and Royston, we have quintessentially English market towns, home to fantastic independent businesses as well as nationally significant companies such as Johnson Matthey. In Letchworth, we have the world’s first garden city, built on the principles of the common ownership of land, which to this day offers a radical example of how to better design and build the communities of the future. Surrounding it all, we have some of the best agricultural land in the country, with local farmers such as those near Groundswell in Weston and Finches farm in Benington spearheading the ecological innovation we need to grow fantastic food in harmony with nature. Yet in my experience of speaking to residents right across North East Hertfordshire, the recurring theme is of communities dispirited and frustrated at having their needs put aside in the interests of what others have called progress, so I will close by mentioning one debt of honour that I want to bring to hon. Members’ attention at this time. I have been asked to keep the following story anonymous by the family in question, but I believe it illustrates powerfully how the communities outside our urban centres are too often treated. During the general election, as I reached the last road canvassing in a particularly idyllic village in my constituency, I came to knock on the final door in a quiet row of terraces. After initially waiting without answer, I was about to leave when I was called over by a voice from the passenger seat of a nearby car. The gentleman sat there was not old and was keen to speak, but was clearly very ill. Between painful coughing and laboured breathing, he explained to me how in the construction of new housing in the meadow beyond his street, agricultural sheds containing asbestos were demolished with almost incomprehensible recklessness in a single afternoon by workers who were themselves equipped with virtually none of the necessary protective equipment. Rather than the asbestos being carefully removed, it was smashed up on site, creating large clouds of hazardous dust right next to the existing homes. The gentleman I was speaking to had, tragically, subsequently contracted asbestosis, which had ruined his health and left him barely able to travel from his front door to his car. Despite the concerns he raised at the time, no one was ever held to account for these actions, and he urged me passionately to raise the dangers associated with the rushed and unsafe demolition of agricultural buildings containing asbestos at the earliest opportunity if I was elected as his MP. I am sorry to inform the House that when I returned a few weeks later to speak to him about honouring his request and including this story in my maiden speech, I was told by his widow that he had recently passed away. The chance for any meaningful justice for this family has now gone with him. Meanwhile, developers have no doubt pocketed a return on investment that much fatter for having fatally cut corners at the expense of local residents. Whether it is profit-led developments, the cancellation of bus routes, or the closure of banks and village schools, the fundamental experience of towns and villages like those in North East Hertfordshire has too often been one of being done to and expected to endure, rather than one of being looked after, worked with and empowered to contribute. It is this, above all, that I hope to chip away at in my contributions in this place. I thank the House for listening patiently to my first attempt, and my constituents for giving me the opportunity to do so.