Chris Hinchliff

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Parliament's party history for this member: Labour (7 Nov 2025 – present); Independent (16 Jul 2025 – 7 Nov 2025); Labour (4 Jul 2024 – 16 Jul 2025).

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1. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·Labour·Chris Hinchliff

   Immigration: Earned Settlement

   Almost everyone in my constituency who speaks to me about immigration says that they welcome those who come to work hard in our country and play by the rules. As the Home Secretary knows, though, many of those workers across multiple sectors of the economy face significant exploitation from their visa sponsors. She referred to helping workers break away from rogue employers; will she meet those of us who are interested in introducing a certificate of common sponsorship to resolve this problem?

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2. 29 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Chris Hinchliff

   Budget Resolutions

   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. 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. 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. 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.<span id="533" class="column-number" data-column-number="533"></span>

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3. 28 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Chris Hinchliff

   National Scheme of Delegation of Planning Functions

   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?

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4. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Chris Hinchliff

   Council Housing

   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. 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. 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.

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5. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Chris Hinchliff

   Council Housing

   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 <span id="82WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="82WH"></span>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. 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. 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.

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6. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Chris Hinchliff

   Council Housing

   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 <span id="83WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="83WH"></span>staff, then what our country will be able to offer them will be far greater than the prospects that adulthood currently holds.

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7. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Chris Hinchliff

   Council Housing

   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. 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. 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.

   Hansard source
8. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Chris Hinchliff

   Council Housing

   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 <span id="84WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="84WH"></span>connections that once meant the world but could not survive the splintering imposed by a lack of homes for the young. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.<span id="85WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="85WH"></span> 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. 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. 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.

   Hansard source
9. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Chris Hinchliff

   Council Housing

   I thank all hon. Members for contributing to a wide-ranging and passionate debate.<span id="107WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="107WH"></span> 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. 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. <em>Question put and agreed to.</em> <em>Resolved,</em> That this House has considered the delivery of council housing.

   Hansard source
10. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Labour·Chris Hinchliff

    Housing Costs: Government Support

    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. 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.

    Hansard source

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