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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“I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I fully agree. Before I get to costs, I would like us for a moment to lift our eyes to the potential prizes to be won by a new generation of council housing across the country, because council housing is not just the most effective tool we have to cut waiting lists, it is not just the best policy for transforming the futures of the tens of thousands of children going to sleep every night in temporary accommodation, and it is not just the surest way to save billions of pounds from the housing benefits bill. As if each of those were not justification enough in their own right, council housing is also the best hope we have to create the new communities that foster the sort of life and society that the labour movement has always dreamed of and strived for.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We all deserve a warm, safe and affordable home, where we can put down roots and have the safety and security to flourish and grow. It is our duty to make that a reality. Hundreds of thousands of families cannot afford for us to delay or go slow. Now is the time for the Government to live up to their heritage and provide a new era of council housing that transforms lives up and down the country.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The case for more council housing and what it could deliver for our society is overwhelming in its own right, but even if we were to reduce ourselves to desiccated calculating machines, concerned only with economic statistics, the irrefutable fact is that we cannot afford not to invest in hundreds of thousands of new council houses over the coming years. A major council house building programme would deliver a huge counter-cyclical boost to economic activity in every region of the country. Alongside the vast savings to be made on the cost of temporary accommodation provided by councils, there would be knock-on benefits from secure decent homes: they would reduce costs right across the public sector, from the NHS to our schools. In short, it would be fiscally reckless not to invest in a new generation of council housing.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I recognise that, even with all that, matching the scale of council housing delivery overseen by Attlee’s Government is a daunting task, but in the context of the upcoming Budget and increasingly vociferous debates on the merits of a wealth tax, I will take this opportunity to briefly fly the flag for the comparatively straightforward proposal of a levy on multiple home ownership. With so many in our society unable to access suitable housing at all, requiring those who own multiple homes to contribute to the public coffers a small percentage of the value of their additional properties would be both fair and proportionate. That leaves a final, concluding point.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We will only see the council housing that our country desperately needs if we reverse that trend. Alongside making more low-interest loans available to councils through the Public Works Loan Board, the Government should raise the money needed to invest in a new generation of local authority planners, ecologists, designers and architects through a windfall tax on the largest property developers, which have dominated the market and enjoyed super-normal profits for too long. On funding, the Government have already committed to a transformative £39 billion over 10 years for the new affordable homes programme. I will not try the Minister’s patience by calling for additional money today, but front-loading this investment and driving it primarily towards council housing could see us well on our way.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If we are to have the hundreds of thousands of council houses that we need in order to swiftly tackle the housing crisis, the Government should ensure that the new strategic planning authorities created through devolution have tools at their disposal to direct available resources where they are needed most, even if that means putting limits on construction for private profit. Of course, many of our local authorities will need substantial support to rebuild the capacity necessary for a major council house building programme. As Shelter has said, in trying to balance budgets after years of funding cuts, local authorities have been forced to shut down their building operations, transfer their council stock to housing associations or focus on building private homes for sale.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That would not only make the provision of council housing on a vastly increased scale viable by ending the payment of inflated sums of public money to wealthy landowners, slashing an estimated 38% off the total development costs of a mass-scale building programme; it would also allow local authorities to capture the full uplift in land values associated with the delivery of their local plans, and to fund projects that combine high-quality council housing with improved space for nature and expanded public infrastructure. We must also face up to the reality of serious constraints on construction capacity due to a workforce that is too small and an inadequate supply of key materials.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Next, we need further planning reform to empower our local authorities to drive forward a council housing renaissance up and down the land. We need new social housing targets, to make the delivery of council housing the urgent priority of every local planning authority. Ministers must bring together local authorities and charities like Crisis to create fairer rules for eligibility for social housing, so that homeless people are no longer unfairly excluded. We need to build on the welcome measures that Ministers have already brought forward on hope value, by allowing local authorities to disregard it entirely for the purposes of purchasing land to meet housing targets.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I had better make some progress. That is the yardstick the Government should measure themselves against. I now come at last to how we might go about achieving this. The place to start, as we have already heard, is with plugging the gap. We must stop draining our stock of council houses, year on year. It is a fact of mesmerising absurdity that in the last year of the previous Conservative Government, there was a net loss of social housing in this country, as over 20,000 homes for social rent were lost to right to buy. I welcome the determination of Labour Ministers to reform the right to buy, and to ensure that more homes are built than lost, and I especially welcome the planned 35-year exemption for newly built properties. I urge the Government to bring forward the necessary legislation for those changes as swiftly as possible.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In Switzerland, the region of Zurich guarantees villages of 300 people or more at least an hourly bus service running seven days a week from 6 am to midnight, linking rural residents to regional facilities for employment, education, training, shopping and leisure, while North Hesse in Germany has a target of bus services reaching every village across the region every hour.”
House of Commons10 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“However, to succeed in meeting the hopes of communities such as those that I represent, we should go further and move towards a universal basic right to public transport with enshrined service standards across the country, replacing the threadbare, patchwork and inadequate network left by deregulation. Although it may be difficult to imagine, given the current state of public transport in our nation, that is, in fact, something that other countries are quite happily doing already.”
House of Commons10 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“During the progress of the Bill, I ran a survey on the experience of my constituents of their local bus services. Hundreds of residents responded and a massive, if unsurprising, 83% of them felt that the bus services available do not offer a viable alternative to owning and driving a car. As I am sure you can imagine, Madam Deputy Speaker, whether via the survey or in community meetings, my constituents have been none too shy in sharing their thoughts about the quality, reliability and general usefulness of local bus services. Consequently, it is completely clear to me that voters in North East Hertfordshire are utterly fed up with a bus network based on profitability for shareholders rather than public need. The measures in the Bill to address that with a long-overdue strengthening of socially necessary bus services are very welcome.”
House of Commons10 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The privatisation disaster means for those unable to drive or afford a car, a connected life in rural England is practically impossible. I welcome many of the clauses in the Bill that together offer a chance to reverse the hollowing out of our villages which threatens to end centuries of cultural and economic vibrancy. We need a bus network that comprehensively meets the needs of every community, especially for rural areas that lost their train stations in the Beeching cuts, including Buntingford, Westmill, Braughing, and Standon in my constituency. That is why I have tabled new clause 22, which would empower Ministers to conduct a review into the delivery of guaranteed minimum bus service standards for every community with more than 300 residents across England.”
House of Commons10 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I speak in support of the Bill and in favour of new clause 22 in my name. We can now say in complete confidence that the privatisation and deregulation of our bus services has been a catastrophic failure for rural towns and villages such as those across North East Hertfordshire. Decades of dogmatic adherence to flawed ideology has created vast public transport deserts where residents have no meaningful alternative to driving a car. The consequent social costs of this failure have been profound: more and more traffic that stifles our communities and chokes our rivers and air with life-limiting pollution; young people cut off from education and employment, forced to leave their homes to get on in life; and our elderly trapped in loneliness and isolation, which should be a source of shame for our entire nation.”
House of Commons10 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Given the unanimity of feeling in the Chamber today on the importance of BNO visas and the uncertainty that the consultation is creating, will the Minister put it on record that he recognises that uncertainty, and that it will be foremost in his mind as he develops policy going forward?”
House of Commons8 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Minister for his answers, and I fully agree that there can be no place for violence in our politics. However, does he accept that elderly retired priests and disabled veterans would not be protesting in the way they are if they genuinely believed that Palestine Action was a similar organisation to ISIS or al-Qaeda? Can he provide any additional guidance or advice on how members of the public can legitimately protest against the proscription of this organisation?”
House of Commons8 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons4 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons3 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“By escaping the desiccated logic of the Office for Budget Responsibility and the old lie that cuts to people equal savings, we can instead invest in our young people and, in doing so, enrich the future of our nation for all of us. In my first year as the MP for North East Hertfordshire, I have enjoyed visiting schools and meeting students in Royston, Baldock, Letchworth, Standon, Weston and other places across my constituency. The students’ talent and optimism is always a powerful antidote to the cynicism and pettiness that can all too often pervade our politics.”
House of Commons16 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Leaving hard-working families to raise their children in cramped, mouldy accommodation with precious little space to play or learn is no way to nourish the future of our country. Shelter is clear: we need 90,000 social homes a year for 10 years to address the affordable housing crisis, and I will keep making the case to relevant Ministers on the need to frontload this funding package. This is not just the right thing to do morally; the Centre for Economics and Business Research found that hitting the 90,000 homes a year benchmark would return billions to the public purse through lower spending on temporary accommodation, reduce benefits cost, result in less crime, and raise nearly £3 billion from the improved life chances of children.”
House of Commons16 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I welcome the Government’s £39 billion funding announcement for the affordable homes programme. The commitment to allocate 60% of this to social housing could make a real difference. To ensure that children growing up today have the best start in life, it is vital that as many of those homes as possible are built during this Parliament. Above all, we need a new generation of council housing, built to meet the needs of those that a profit-led sector will never provide for. This will require upfront investment and difficult choices about other projects that must fall by the wayside, but we cannot ignore the human cost of delay. This is not a static problem—a building simply waiting to be repaired. Childhood does not pause.”
House of Commons16 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I welcome the fact that Hormead Church of England first and nursery school in my constituency is among the first to benefit from our breakfast club programme. Together with the expansion of free school meals, these policies go some way to ensuring that no child’s learning or health is held back by hunger. Just as central to early years development is the vital importance of every child having decent housing. We need to take a holistic approach to health, welfare and education, which recognises that a secure and stable home is the foundation for everything else in life. Currently, there are 164,000 children in temporary accommodation across the country—a record high. This means families in overcrowded conditions, children forced to travel long journeys to school and a situation which, all too often, is anything but temporary.”
House of Commons16 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We understand on this side of the House that the wealth of our country does not lie in the bank accounts of casino capitalists or the title deeds of billionaires. It lies in nature, with each chalk stream and ancient woodland a national inheritance to be cherished; it lies in the bonds of community that held strong even through the years of politically imposed austerity; and, perhaps most importantly, it lies in our young people—in their talents and their hopes that shape our collective future. The benefits of a Labour Government have been most pronounced when translating into policy the belief that, for Britain to succeed, we must give all young people, whatever their background, the opportunity to fulfil their true potential.”
House of Commons16 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I wholeheartedly agree and have heard exactly the same thing from students in my constituency. Each and every one of the children in our country deserves a safe, healthy and stable home that is genuinely affordable and does not leave families struggling to make ends meet month after month. If we give the next generation the security to thrive, they will do the rest. The true legacy of this Government will be found in the laughter, learning and achievement of the nation’s children.”
House of Commons16 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government have taken long-overdue steps to secure rooftop solar on new builds, but there is even greater untapped potential on existing commercial and domestic rooftops. Will Ministers consider introducing a scheme, similar to those in other countries, offering free installation of rooftop solar for businesses and residents? The costs could be paid back through a long-term power-purchasing agreement. That would simultaneously increase the supply of clean energy and cut bills.”
House of Commons15 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“T8. In recent weeks Ministers have been arguing that vital support for the disabled is fiscally unsustainable because it is forecast to rise to £60.7 billion a year by 2029-30. What assessment has the Chancellor made of the fiscal sustainability of the 107 non-structural tax breaks that are currently costing HMRC £207 billion a year?”
House of Commons1 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I accept that the Minister may feel that it is not currently an issue, but would it not be wise to regulate proactively and take action now to prevent buy now, pay later being offered directly by merchants in a way that would cause the very harms that we are currently trying to avoid from third-party providers?”
House of Commons25 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I would like to ask a few questions about article 3 of the order. In practice, its current drafting means that the order would regulate Klarna, if it offered buy now, pay later agreements to customers shopping on Amazon, but it would not regulate Amazon, if it offered such agreements in the future to its own customers. Given that FCA research shows that adults with vulnerable characteristics are disproportionately likely to use buy now, pay later, with 44% of the most frequent users of buy now, pay later already over-indebted, there is concern that the consumer focus of buy now, pay later is not about informed borrowing but engineered overconsumption.”
House of Commons25 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“T3. Many of my constituents have raised concerns about the use of RAF Akrotiri to support Israel’s military activity in Gaza. Given the rapidly developing situation with Iran, can Ministers assure this House that British arms and military bases will not be likewise implicated in any further escalations of that conflict?”
House of Commons24 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons24 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons24 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons24 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons24 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The level of destitution among disabled people in England is not just a problem—it is a national disgrace. Three quarters of adults receiving health-related universal credit are experiencing material deprivation. Poverty among the disabled is the deliberate outcome of an economic model and a style of governance designed to serve the interests of ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations. Under this Labour Government, there can be no moral or fiscal justification—none at all—for maintaining the lowest corporation tax in the G7 alongside a social security net so threadbare that hundreds of thousands of disabled people have already fallen into poverty, let alone cutting back further the support that it provides, which would result in even more widespread destitution.”
House of Commons17 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Making community energy the centrepiece of the Government’s clean power plan will foster support for new schemes by putting the public in the driving seat to choose where, and at what scale, projects can fit into local landscapes. To unleash the full potential of community energy, will Ministers consider implementing the long-standing proposals to enable these schemes to sell electricity directly to local people?”
House of Commons10 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons10 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons10 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons10 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons10 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons10 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons10 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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]”
House of Commons5 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons5 June 2025Contains 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, 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.”
House of Commons5 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗