Chris Hinchliff
MP for North East Hertfordshire · Labour · United Kingdom
“We may have a growing surplus of AI slop, all the poisonous social media one could possibly want to consume, and the jolly good fun of casino capitalism that does not actually produce anything, but we lack safe, comfortable and genuinely affordable homes for millions of people.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In our era of perma-meta-poly crisis, the decisions the Chancellor has taken to provide our country with a little breathing space will be welcome to many of my constituents.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Nearly 100 years ago, he warned that a focus on the wrong priorities would keep us “for ever in the pit of want”. In other words, chasing the chimera of infinite, exponential increases in consumption completely misses the point of what economic policy should achieve.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There are literally trillions of pounds managed by UK pension funds and asset management schemes. If we directed just a fraction of that to investing in our actual priorities, our country could finally hop off the nauseating merry-go-round of chasing growth that endlessly forces us to make trade-offs that have brought our natural world to…”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I suspect I am doing neither the right hon. Lady nor myself any favours by saying I absolutely agree with her. It is our duty as MPs to robustly defend local democracy.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To reverse decades of retreat from public house building and restore the public sector as the driving force in our housing market, new funding must come with new powers for local democracy.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“There are literally trillions of pounds managed by UK pension funds and asset management schemes. If we directed just a fraction of that to investing in our actual priorities, our country could finally hop off the nauseating merry-go-round of chasing growth that endlessly forces us to make trade-offs that have brought our natural world to the brink of collapse. I will end on this. The fundamental fact about all our lives is that they are transient. The promise of consuming more every year than the last is irrelevant to making the most of the time we are each allotted.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We may have a growing surplus of AI slop, all the poisonous social media one could possibly want to consume, and the jolly good fun of casino capitalism that does not actually produce anything, but we lack safe, comfortable and genuinely affordable homes for millions of people. We lack food that is both affordable and nutritious for all and, almost everywhere outside London, we lack a public transport network that can reliably get us to where we need to be. The reason for that economic failure is straightforward: we have not had the self-confidence and determination to mobilise our enormous resources to meet our fundamental problems. Keynes was right when he argued that we already have all the “resources and technical means” to erase economic need in our country; what we have lacked is the organisation to use them.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Nearly 100 years ago, he warned that a focus on the wrong priorities would keep us “for ever in the pit of want”. In other words, chasing the chimera of infinite, exponential increases in consumption completely misses the point of what economic policy should achieve. Since Keynes’s time, there has been nearly a sixfold increase in UK GDP per capita. We have more than enough wealth to ensure that every one of our constituents is meaningfully employed, can afford decent food and is well housed, yet hardship, reliance on food banks and the housing crisis do not just persist but, in many ways, continue to worsen. When Keynes wrote about the economic possibilities for his generation’s grandchildren, I do not think this is what he had in mind.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In our era of perma-meta-poly crisis, the decisions the Chancellor has taken to provide our country with a little breathing space will be welcome to many of my constituents. The longer-term question that remains is what we mean by good growth, because, looking back over the last two decades, it has proven perfectly possible for GDP growth to happen, and yet simultaneously for almost everyone’s life to get harder. Our country will drift until politicians can give a meaningful definition of good growth that the whole country can strive for and mobilise around. Fortunately, we do not have to reinvent this wholly anew for ourselves. John Maynard Keynes, the greatest economic mind our country has ever produced, left us many of the answers we have been fumbling for.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I suspect I am doing neither the right hon. Lady nor myself any favours by saying I absolutely agree with her. It is our duty as MPs to robustly defend local democracy. Does she agree that, when the communities we represent and their directly elected councillors oppose speculative development, the answer is not to silence their voices but to secure genuine public consent with a higher standard of development that meets local needs and hopes for the future?”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It says more about the miserabilism of the so-called YIMBY—yes, in my backyard—movement than it does about those they accuse. There is no public support barrier to building high-quality homes in the towns and villages in my constituency. Indeed, people are crying out for it. When the public tell us they do not want this particular rubbish, the problem is the rubbish, not the public.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Instead, I would be grateful if he could answer just one specific question: will he put a number on what is meant by “the biggest council house building programme” since the end of the post-war period? I think we would all be interested to know what precise target the Government are setting. I am keen to be optimistic and positive in my contribution today, so I will get the polemical bits out of the way first. There is, I am afraid, a nasty strain of ideology infecting political circles these days that seems to think of our fellow citizens as a lumpen mass of incorrigible misanthropes motivated only by mercenary selfishness and having no care for the good of their wider community when it comes to housing and development. That is certainly not my experience.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the delivery of council housing. It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I must declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on council and social housing, for which Shelter expertly provides the secretariat. The APPG is currently undertaking an inquiry into barriers to council house building and the solutions required. Although I do not want to overly pre-empt our findings today, I do want to take the opportunity to invite the Minister to attend the launch of the report from that inquiry, and I invite hon. Members across the Chamber today to attend the evidence sessions we are currently holding, including that taking place shortly after this debate. Given the imminent Budget, I will not ask the Minister for lots of spending commitments today.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Having dispensed with those points, before we get to the question of how, I want to dwell briefly on the possibilities of a future in which the Labour Government achieve their council housing goals. When we debate this subject, we often focus—and rightly so—on the immediate crisis and urgent need that council housing can alleviate, but the power of council housing to transform the future of our society does not end there.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It was the surrender to neoliberal capitalism and the lack of political will that accompanied its hollowing out of our state’s capacity to function that stopped the building of decent, affordable homes at scale. Secondly, it is worth paraphrasing Keynes early on in this debate by reiterating that claiming it does not pay to house the people of this country in affordable, high-quality housing is one of the most dismal notions ever advanced by modern economics. We have the technology and the capacity to house everyone safely, comfortably and in beautiful surroundings. If private capital says it is not profitable enough to do so, the problem is with the economic model, not with the hope for our nation’s future.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I completely agree. We have seen for many years that the market cannot solve this problem. In fact, it speaks to a rotten lack of ambition that the political response to children living in cramped, damp and overcrowded conditions has so often been to demand that we lower our expectations for the future, promising that the only way to get families out of temporary accommodation is to reduce insulation standards, concrete over the countryside and ignore risks such as flooding and the lack of infrastructure. Then, it might be more profitable for developers to cast their crumbs down to our communities. What a tragic irony that we are told that the only way to rescue families from low-quality emergency housing is by lowering the standards of the permanent homes we build instead. The problem was never that our standards were too high.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree; my hon. Friend is absolutely right about the immediate need, which I will come to later. This is a slightly incongruous point, but I am sure that, like me, every hon. Member in the Chamber visits schools in their constituency often. When I see the potential in pupils such as those at Little Hadham primary school, where I was last, I cannot help but contemplate what future we are building for them. If it is one in which hundreds of thousands of council homes have been built in every community—and I do mean in our most rural villages as well as our greatest cities—for people of every background, including doctors, academics, farm workers, bus drivers, bin men and bar staff, then what our country will be able to offer them will be far greater than the prospects that adulthood currently holds.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“With our current lack of council housing, how many of us really have the opportunity to explore talents and abilities that do not immediately help to enable us to pay rent? With plentiful, genuinely affordable homes, such that covering the cost of life’s essentials is no longer such an uphill battle, who knows how many McCartneys, Joan Armatradings or Michaela Coels we might have? Delivering council housing is about more than just bricks and mortar; it is about unleashing lost creativity across Great Britain and re-establishing our place as the world’s pre-eminent cultural superpower.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If, when they reach adulthood, they are able to begin an independent life without shelling out upwards of a third or even half of their salary for a roof over their head, imagine what that would mean for our high streets, coffee shops, pubs, clubs, bars and restaurants. In a future with plentiful council housing, when genuinely affordable housing is recognised as a right of our citizens and not a rare collector’s item, no one, no matter how wealthy, will be able to buy up property and charge others extortionate rents for somewhere to live. With that model of economic vampirism finally laid to rest, billions of pounds currently sucked out of our local economies will begin to flow through our independent shops again. Suppose that that young man or woman has artistic talents and wants to make their contribution to our society.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Not at this point; I had better make progress. Housing is by far and away the most oppressive, anxiety-inducing and life-stunting part of the cost of living crisis in this country. The price of rent or a mortgage leaves millions struggling to make the bills add up at the end of the month, and millions more only just staying afloat, with little left over to experience life’s other possibilities. If we build enough council housing—to end the years wasted on waiting lists, to ensure that every child has somewhere safe to learn and play and make that a normal part of life again, and to provide an anchor on housing costs for our whole society—then our economy, society and culture will be much healthier than they are. Let us briefly imagine a boy or girl in a primary school classroom.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There are, of course, up-front costs, legislative hurdles and, I expect, a mouthful of teething problems, but it is the bitter medicine we must take today to stop the bleeding of public money to those profiting from the broken system. We must never forget that the Government’s £39 billion investment in affordable and social housing is dwarfed by the £70 billion that the Government are set to spend over the next five years on housing support to subsidise the gap between the rents that private landlords charge and what tenants can afford. The need for the housing is there, and we are already paying for it. The only question before us is whether we turn that spending into a lasting public asset or keep paying over and over again for failure.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The truth is that, from the standing start that we have inherited, in which local authorities such as mine have not built a single council house in decades, new house building will take years to ramp up. However, the housing crisis is one that requires urgent resolution. We must therefore make the acquisition of existing properties to rebuild our council housing stock as important a part of the Government’s mission as new builds. With the housing market in the doldrums, we have a much-needed opportunity for councils to purchase and re-let at affordable rates hundreds of thousands of homes across the country, to bring down waiting lists now.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“From town planning to architecture, design, ecology and construction standards, only the very best is good enough for our constituents, so local councils must be where people go to excel. In our determination to remove the institutional barriers holding back council house building, we cannot undervalue solutions to get families out of temporary accommodation and off waiting lists now. The Prime Minister was right in his recent conference address to set out plans to take control of empty properties. We should back councils to acquire neglected and empty properties at scale. We have seen throughout our modern history that, in times of crisis, our citizens are conscripted for the common good. Where housing lies dormant during an emergency, we must be willing to take the same approach to property.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Even with the fairest possible wind, and even if all the economically destabilising military conflicts around the world came to a close, the truth is that, if the Chancellor showered every local authority with all the funding they could want, the expertise and institutional knowledge to use it would no longer be there. To deliver the council housing that I suspect every MP in this room wants to see, we need to attract the best and brightest in the country to work in our local authorities, whether as an elected member or as an officer. We need to restore the standing of our underfunded, undervalued and overworked councils, so that the whole country can see that a career in local government is the most tangible route to shaping the future of our nation.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To reverse decades of retreat from public house building and restore the public sector as the driving force in our housing market, new funding must come with new powers for local democracy. If we recognise that social housing delivers a public good, its provision cannot be put on a level playing field with speculative land promoters looking to make a quick buck, or be beholden to the supposed right of wealthy landowners to inflate the value of their land to extract more from the public purse. Councils need to be able to assemble all the land we need for developments, large and small, including where it is already optioned, and to acquire land at existing-use prices, so that council house building is viable in every part of the country. Above all, we must invest in our councils’ institutional capacity to deliver the housing we need.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In short, delivering the council homes our country needs to transform our housing market will make possible a society in which all the parts of life that really matter can finally come ahead of the relentless and disproportionate financial costs of housing that we see today. How, then, do we realise these hopes? First, building a new generation of council housing is being held back by a pile of largely fictitious debt created by central Government. We cannot ask local councils to deliver the homes of tomorrow while burdened by a model that failed yesterday. Armed with even the best intentions, councils remain suffocated by housing revenue account debt; cancelling that HRA debt could deliver more than 280,000 additional social rent homes in the next decade.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Similarly, if the next generation is able to grow into adulthood alongside their parents, supporting them through older life will be a natural part of everything we do, not something we struggle to find time for, with the constant sense that we are left snatching for precious moments all too quickly passing by. If our imaginary hero should fall in love and think about children of their own—and if we deliver council houses now—we can hope for a future in which the choice is simply whether a couple wishes to start a family, not whether they can afford one. Parents will be able to take time out of employment to raise their child and share in all their first memories, rather than living on borrowed time as burdens mount up.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I had better make progress; I am sorry. Perhaps most importantly of all, if we succeed in delivering council housing in every community, we will take one of the most important steps in fighting the atomisation of our society, which brings so many social ills. If today’s children are able to put down roots wherever they are growing up, should they want to, with no need to move away in search of prospects and a home of their own, then friendships forged at school will no longer need looked back on with regret, as connections that once meant the world but could not survive the splintering imposed by a lack of homes for the young.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a ludicrous failure and we must put an end to it. Secondly, we heard so many times about the 1.3 million people in this country on waiting lists and the nearly 180,000 children in temporary accommodation. It must be one of the most important yardsticks by which the Government measure themselves that, by the time we come to the next general election, those figures are no longer rising but have substantially fallen. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the delivery of council housing.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank all hon. Members for contributing to a wide-ranging and passionate debate. I note that the Minister did not quite answer the one question I left him with, which was about the number of council houses that the Government are projecting to achieve. A quick search on my phone during the debate suggested that 47,000 council houses were built in 1979, which I suspect is when most of us would suggest the post-war period came to an end. I am genuinely interested to know whether the Government are aiming for something like that figure per year. More generally, I would like the Minister to take away two key points from the debate. First, we must move away from a failed housing delivery model in this country. It seems we have accepted for a long time that we can afford to build only unaffordable homes.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Private renters spend an average of 36% of their income on rent, and although I fully support the drive for a new generation of council housing, it is clear that that will not substantially bring down costs for the nearly 5 million private renters in England in this Parliament. The housing crisis is a crisis, and it demands immediate action. Research by the Autonomy Institute has shown that, as an emergency short-term measure while we build the genuinely affordable homes we need, holding rents at 2027 levels would save renters more than £14 billion over the next four years. That would substantially reduce the burden on public spending to support those who need housing allowance in private rental as well. I hope the Minister will take that suggestion to Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government colleagues.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on securing this important debate and on an excellent speech, as always. I want to briefly encourage the Minister to speak to colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about reconsidering the merits of a potential cap on rental increases. I know that the Government are determined to do everything they can to give the British public breathing space on the cost of living. For almost all of us, the cost of our home is by far and away the largest item on our monthly bill.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is not quite the response to catastrophic climate change, wildfires and drought that I had in mind, but I accept that that appears to be a minority view in this place. Nevertheless, despite all the sophistry, the inconvenient truth remains that this choice means that more fossil fuels that are currently buried will be extracted and burned to pollute our planet. Does the Minister understand why so many people find it hard to believe that the hope of a liveable planet will win out against short-termism and deluded self-interest?”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The fundamental problem is that for years our country has not allocated enough of our national resources to growing food in a way that boosts biodiversity. We now have a nature crisis that is increasingly a threat to our national security. We need every farm that can to do more on nature-friendly farming. Can the Minister reassure me that his Department is talking to the Treasury about securing greater investment in the SFI going forward?”
House of Commons15 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Minister for her powerful statement. Some 84% of care beds in England are run by private companies, and Baroness Casey has highlighted that private equity is often holding councils to ransom, so that they can extract maximum profit from the public purse. I note the Minister’s earlier answers on ownership models, but can she confirm that Labour’s national care service will put an end to the essential care of our parents and grandparents being used as a profiteering investment vehicle by private equity?”
House of Commons15 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“And thus we have a national system in which the notion of affordable housing is a running joke, and in which the environment that politicians so often protest their love for is repeatedly trashed as a secondary matter compared to the unequally distributed benefits of growth. It is a national planning policy framework that overwhelmingly produces outcomes that lock us into car-dependent, unsustainable lifestyles, with polluted air that chokes the lungs of our children and costs the NHS billions, and utterly fails to secure public consent for the development we very desperately require to meet the needs of those stuck in temporary accommodation and in cramped, crowded and unsanitary conditions.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There can be no plan-led system when national policy introduces the overwhelming likelihood of caveats to local plans through an ever stronger and equally inaccurately named presumption in favour of sustainable development, which in reality functions as a passport to permission for all but the very worst speculative schemes. This is not planning in any reasonable sense of the word—it is merely reacting. Under the NPPF system, more and more of the initiative, the influence and the advantage lies with the vested interests of land promoters and major developers, whose private profit will never accord with the public good.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“When Lewis Silkin created the planning system that rebuilt this country from the ashes of world war two, he described the distinctly Labour vision for a policy that would meet “actual needs, democratically expressed.” Yet what the NPPF has achieved for years—I am afraid the latest iteration will be little different—is almost the precise opposite of Silkin’s idealism. Pretty much ever since the first version of the NPPF in 2012, what we have seen is the proliferation of speculative development across the country, with democratically produced local plans ridden roughshod over and housing built first and foremost for profit, not for people. In fact, a national planning policy framework is not even an accurate name for what we have.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Today, I am not joining this debate to raise a series of detailed concerns about the latest redrafting of the NPPF—although I do still have such concerns, especially in relation to possible changes to the sequential test on surface water flooding and limits being imposed on local authorities to pursue more ambitious policies on climate and nature restoration. The point I really want to make today is that I believe we have reached a point where national planning policy is completely broken and the NPPF is beyond reform. After decades of deregulation, the genius of Labour’s post-war democratic settlement has been degraded and reduced to a system of fiendishly complex processes, combined with overwhelmingly negative outcomes, which, for all the world, seems to have been designed by an evil genius to drive all those involved mad.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Without wanting to cast myself as a latter-day Cassandra, I shared early on my view that, try though Ministers might, there would be no appeasing the developer lobby—no amount of deregulation will ever satisfy them—and so it has proven, with the clamour for relaxed fire safety standards and the weakening of environmental policies, and for there to be less opportunity for ordinary people to influence decisions in the planning system, as loud as ever. However, my views on the subject have changed.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on council and social housing. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) on securing this very important debate. On a personal basis, a debate on national planning policy feels like a very fitting bookend to the outgoing Administration. The issue of what gets built where defines our daily lives like no other issue, and I have found my first two years in this place defined by those debates.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is time to bring back architects in every local planning authority, working with each community to shape plans for future development on an appropriate scale for each settlement, and with a renaissance in the local vernacular that strengthens and reinvigorates the culture and identity of each unique town, village and city. In short, it is time to ditch the NPPF and build a new system that puts power in the hands of the people and allows planners to genuinely plan with communities.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Now is the time to consign the NPPF to the dustbin of history where it belongs and start afresh instead of making further amendments. The one positive note I can strike is that it is not difficult to imagine something far, far better. We need to return to Labour’s democratic principles, stop treating the public as a problem to be silenced and embrace them as a source of optimistic solutions for meeting the needs of the future. It is time to replace the constant nonsense that traduces our constituents as nimbys, and to put power in their hands so that they can decide where and how to meet the housing needs of their communities in a way that expresses their hopes and priorities for the future.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The section 106 mechanism they rely on is not only obscure, but demonstrably incapable of securing the investment in the infrastructure—GPs, schools, sports grounds and public transport—necessary to keep pace with population growth, when hundreds of new houses are bolted on to towns that have already seen almost all their facilities closed. The housing the NPPF produces is often both miserabilist and identikit. It is seemingly designed to erase local identity and shorn of local traditions, with no space for community and with a built environment that is best described as unhappiness given physical form. All in all, the damage that successive iterations of the NPPF have done to our country is difficult to forgive.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree with those concerns. As I understand it, many of the applications for grey belt are in fact on greenfield sites, and that needs to be addressed. For all its labyrinthine processes, the NPPF makes a mockery of local democracy, which breeds disillusion and contempt for politics in this country. The system we have created through the NPPF traps communities in a never-ending cycle of adversarial confrontations with corporations that see our local landscapes as easy pickings and cream off much of the wealth of new developments, while leaving the public to carry the majority of the costs.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“T7. Our NHS is heavily reliant on penicillin-based antibiotics for many of its core functions, but close to 90% of global manufacturing capacity of an essential component of those antibiotics is now concentrated in China. The risks to our NHS are obvious. What steps are Ministers taking across Government to reduce our NHS’s dependence on these highly concentrated supply chains?”
House of Commons14 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to ban housing developers from donating to political parties. And the petitioners remain, etc. [P003225]”
House of Commons14 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The petition states: The petition of residents of the United Kingdom, Declares that housing developers are among the largest donors to political parties and donate massive sums of money in an attempt to tilt the planning system further in their favour; further declares that cash-for-access leaves the impression that the same developers profiting from low-quality, overpriced housing are also helping to write the rules; and further declares that the corrupting influence of big money should be removed from the planning system and politics should be refocused on genuine solutions to the housing crisis that bring down housing costs for ordinary people and give local communities more of a say over their future.”
House of Commons14 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I rise to present a petition alongside a corresponding online petition signed by hundreds of my constituents in North East Hertfordshire calling to ban housing developers from donating to political parties. Developers are some of the largest donors in politics, pouring in massive sums to tilt the planning system ever further in their favour. Cash for access leaves the impression that the same developers are wrecking nature and failing to deliver affordable homes. Those profiting from low-quality, overpriced housing are also writing the rules. This cements inequality at the heart of democracy because the people living with the consequences of a profit-driven housing crisis never get a seat at the table.”
House of Commons14 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Our best hope in the fight to restore our environment is this country’s nature-loving public, but many across the House will be aware of the recent example of the Environment Agency threatening to take people to court for trying to clean up their dying river. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that the Environment Agency is empowering the public rather than threatening to prosecute them for protecting nature?”
House of Commons13 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I apologise in advance, Ms McVey, that I need to go to a Select Committee so cannot attend the full debate. My hon. Friend is, as usual, right about everything. Does he agree that public resistance to the construction of data centres is due not just to concern about the impact on the environment, but to underlying public scepticism about the breathlessness with which politicians talk about economic growth driven by digital technology when we have an economy that has a completely unsustainable food system, is not delivering genuinely affordable homes, has rubbish public transport in many parts of the country, and is not delivering the basics?”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“All the military hardware we can buy will not serve its purpose if our nation goes hungry, should our reliance on food imports be turned against us. What reassurances can Ministers give that they are leading conversations across Government to ensure that if push comes to shove, the UK has the necessary food security to stand on its own two feet?”
House of Commons6 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We have already seen the vulnerability of our economy to global supply chain shocks from the impact of wars on food, fuel and fertiliser prices, but scientists now warn that we are likely to be heading into a super El Niño—a global heating event that will trigger extreme weather around the world, threatening fish stocks and agriculture, disrupting the Panama canal and bringing climate-induced fires that destroy vital timber supplies. How are Ministers preparing for those risks?”
House of Commons2 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons30 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons30 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗