Climate and Nature Bill

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for introducing this important debate. I really admire her commitment to action and to real progress, not grandstanding, because politics is not a game. Politics is real life, and outcomes matter.

As the Member of Parliament for Morecambe and Lunesdale, I want to highlight how the urgent challenges of climate change and the nature emergency affect my constituency, which is a place of natural beauty and ecological importance. My constituency is also well placed to be part of the solution to the climate and nature emergencies, particularly in clean energy generation and stewardship of the land.

Morecambe and Lunesdale is especially vulnerable to climate change. Much of the urban areas of Morecambe and Heysham are low-lying, making them prone to future flooding. Villages such as Halton have already seen the devastation caused by extreme weather. Today, I am holding my breath about whether I will get home—I doubt I will—and what damage Storm Éowyn might wreak on my constituency. My constituency is home to farmers whose livelihoods are dependent on the weather. My farms are mainly dairy and livestock; flooding and extreme weather risk not only business damage, but animal welfare.

The rural areas of my constituency, with land stewarded for generations by our farmers, are exemplars of natural beauty with rolling hills and dramatic limestone eruptions. In my constituency, we have the national landscape of Arnside and Silverdale and a section of the Yorkshire Dales national park with the market town of Sedbergh, the dales’ most populous settlement—that is its claim to fame. My constituency is also home to Morecambe bay, a site of extraordinary natural heritage. Its mudflats, salt marshes and sandbanks support a wide range of wildlife, and it is a double site of special scientific interest. Migratory birds depend on these habitats, as other hon. Members have mentioned. That richness is part of our identity and is reflected in the Morecambe town motto, “Beauty surrounds, health abounds.”

Nature is fundamental to our lives and our livelihoods. The health of our environment is essential to our wellbeing. Climate change threatens our ability to give everyone a good life.

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

I make a brief declaration of interest: my former employer, CPRE, supports the Bill. Does my hon. Friend agree that the rate of climate change that she is describing in her constituency poses an existential threat to our most loved landscapes, our iconic wildlife species, the pattern of our seasons and some of our most valuable farmland, and that a rapid and just transition is therefore essential for rural communities so that we can hand over our countryside to future generations in some recognisable form?

[Lizzi Collinge]

I absolutely agree. Climate change does not affect just one part of our life, or just one part of the country or the world; it affects all of us, in every single domain. If we are to have a planet that is habitable by humans, we must take action now. As my hon. Friend says, it must be a fair and just transition.

We cannot ignore the risks posed by climate change. Severe storms and rising waters are already threatening our homes. The challenges are growing, and we must take action to protect our communities and infrastructure. Locally, we must be resilient; nationally, we must work at a system level to meet the challenge.

I know that thinking about this can be anxiety-inducing, and I worry for our young people who have grown up with a feeling of existential threat. But I ask Members to reframe this challenge as an opportunity to make people’s lives better, whether through warmer homes, cheaper bills, access to good public transport and good jobs in new industries, or simply by ensuring access to nature for all. It is an opportunity to turn on their head outdated notions of nature as simply the preserve of the rural and turn our urban areas into havens for the natural world. I am a sci-fi fan, and in my wildest dreams, I imagine energy abundance and the progression of technology to the point where we are harnessing and working with the wonders of the natural world—the chemistry, biology and physics that nature uses so beautifully—to ensure plenty and comfort for all.

On a practical point, what I love about the current political discussion on climate and nature is that it has moved away from what felt like a morality play about individual choices to be focused on the systematic determinants of climate change and ecological destruction. Back in Morecambe and Lunesdale, our farmers have always played a key role in managing the land and protecting nature. That is now recognised in policy, with support to manage land to promote biodiversity, improve soil health and reduce carbon emissions. Their work shows how agriculture and conservation can go hand in hand. Last year, the now DEFRA Secretary and I visited a farm in Quernmore that is using natural methods to slow upland water flow using marginal land, which in turn prevents lowland flooding. It also had robot cleaners in the milking shed, which was cool.

How we produce our food is fundamental to our wellbeing and the health of the environment. My farmers are always striving hard for productivity, and they are opening up to new methods of production to address climate and nature concerns. Further north in my constituency, local efforts to protect species such as the red squirrel demonstrate what can be achieved through collaboration. The tentative return of those iconic creatures to our woodlands is a source of pride for our community.

In Morecambe and Lunesdale, we are also providing some of the solutions to the clean energy challenge. As well as wind and solar, Heysham has not one, but two nuclear power stations. Nuclear power has an important role as a low-carbon energy source. It provides always-on baseload energy and is currently the only reliable and scalable technology that is an alternative to fossil fuel baseload.

For those who are not nuclear geeks like me, I will briefly explain what that means. For our grid to work reliably and avoid brownouts and blackouts, we need energy that is always on. Solar and wind, while brilliant technologies, offer variable levels of energy through the day, and our grid does not like that. Also, the demand for energy does not go away when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining. There are two solutions to that. One is storing energy. There are problems with current battery technology, although I must shout out LiNa Energy, just over the river from my constituency, which is developing sodium-metal chloride batteries that address many of the issues of current technology, and it let me visit the lab.

Returning to always-on energy, nuclear is the only currently available technology. It provides baseload, but without the carbon emissions. It also provides energy density. It is a good use of land in providing energy. In Heysham, nuclear has provided good, unionised jobs for decades. In fact, Councillor Matthew Black at Lancaster city council spoke just a few days ago about how his family has had connections to the power stations for three generations. His grandad was a crane operator on the build, his dad was a toolmaker—one of many connections that I am sure he has with our Prime Minister —and Matthew was a labourer there in his university summer breaks. I take this opportunity to reach out to Members who are not yet convinced of the need for nuclear in tackling climate change. I urge them to review the evidence, to not be bound to shibboleths and to move forward into the future.

I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to tell the House how wonderful Heysham would be for new nuclear. We have the people, the skills, the land and the transport connections. [Interruption.] I will make progress, as I believe you would like me to, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Finally, I will talk about some of the things that this Labour Government are doing. I am proud to sit as a Labour MP on the Government Benches, because I believe we are meeting the huge challenge we face. We are bringing forward game-changing legislation to tackle the climate and nature emergencies. We have an ambitious programme of true change for our country that is practically sound and absolutely implementable.

We have been taking bold steps. We have published the Clean Power 2030 action plan. In our first week in government we lifted the ban on onshore wind. We have consented to nearly 2 GW of solar projects and started a solar rooftop revolution. We have invested in modern technologies, set world-leading targets and reaffirmed our commitment to no new oil and gas. We have phased out coal and confirmed that we will ban fracking. We have set up Great British Energy and the National Wealth Fund. We have appointed world-renowned climate and nature envoys. We are showing global leadership at COP29, and we strengthened the energy regulator to ensure that it properly stands up for consumers. In nature, too, our Government are taking bold action.

I would like the House to think about that bold action and join me in supporting the new Labour Government to tackle the climate and nature emergencies.

Rural Affairs

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

I thank the Government for so guilelessly bringing forward such a broad debate allowing those of us with rural constituencies to make wide-ranging demands on behalf of the towns and villages that we represent. I look forward to further inundating Ministers’ in-trays with legions of letters about agriculture in Anstey, school buildings in Baldock and potholes in Furneux Pelham. However, before I am accused of being excessively parochial, I will address the wider systemic issues that undermine rural life in this country.

Fundamentally, the problem facing towns and villages such as those across North East Hertfordshire is that for decades almost every aspect of national life has been increasingly geared towards putting profit maximisation before the needs of our communities. Nowhere is that more evident than in our housing sector. Rural areas must deal again and again with totally unsustainable speculative developments dominated by houses designed to maximise profit, on a scale completely unrelated to local needs for organic growth.

At the same time, house prices have continued to rise—almost always far beyond the reach of those who have grown up locally—rural homelessness has risen by 40% and local facilities have declined. In one of my local towns, Buntingford, hundreds of new houses have been built, yet it has lost its youth centre, the bank, the community swimming pool, a GP surgery, a daycare centre and the local waste disposal site—those facilities are all gone. The volume of new housing is putting such strain on the infrastructure that residents are repeatedly flooded by raw sewage. I am afraid it is of little consolation that the big developers, which the Tories allowed to force through applications on appeal, have been enjoying supernormal profits as a result.

The systemic failures are not unique to rural housing. Our public transport system is next to non-existent in many villages—cutting off young adults from opportunities for work and education, and stranding older residents in loneliness and isolation—because the only bus services that ran under the Tories were those that made profits for shareholders. We expect farmers to steward our land for future generations, but they have—between the monopsonistic power of the major supermarkets and the pressure of global commodity markets—been pushed into the absurd position whereby it is increasingly impossible to make a fair living out of feeding the nation. All that points to economic policy that has consistently failed to recognise the intrinsic value that my constituents place on the rurality of their communities. For too long, economic orthodoxy that is obsessed with agglomeration and utilitarian accounting has proven incapable of recognising the social value of investing in less densely populated areas.

To conclude, given the vast change in political representation of rural areas at the recent election, the Government clearly have a unique opportunity and obligation to deliver systemic change that creates a future in which our towns, villages and hamlets thrive as communities in their own right. Ministers have made an important start with policies to refocus house building on delivering new social homes, by paving the way for re-regulation of bus services, by delivering the largest ever budget for sustainable food production, and with a clear commitment to community energy. Today, I urge them to press on further as swiftly as possible by restoring services to our towns and villages and retaining their rurality; by recognising at last that, depleted as it is, the natural capital of our countryside is the better part of the wealth of our nation; and by redirecting investment, leaning into the growth of distributed technologies and remote working, and delivering a new revolution in cottage industries to once again spread economic opportunities across places such as those I represent.

Independent Water Commission

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

We have already announced plans to ringfence money earmarked for investment so that it cannot be diverted for undeserved multimillion-pound bonuses, as happened so frequently under the previous failed Conservative Government.

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

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

[Steve Reed]

The commission has a wide remit, and will look at the wider impact of damage to the water system, which got much worse under the previous Government.

Farming and Food Security

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

I do not doubt the motivation of Opposition Members, but the inescapable fact is that the Conservative party is ideologically incapable of putting forward real solutions to bolster our national food security. I share some of the concerns about the use of high-quality farmland for ground-mounted solar schemes, which is an ongoing issue in North East Hertfordshire, and we need a land use framework to give strategic direction to where we generate the solar energy that we need, instead of allowing a chaotic proliferation of profit-driven schemes wherever grid capacity, which the Conservative party failed to sort out, allows.

Under the previous Government, just 5% of houses had installed rooftop solar, and neither did they take any of the obvious steps to mandate solar panels on new build houses or car parks. For 14 years, they allowed that situation to develop unchecked, and it will be this Labour Government who deliver the land use strategy that we need to provide a framework to ensure that we are making the best possible use of our finite land.

On other challenges, it is estimated that one third of UK soils are degraded, yet the previous Government ditched the planned soil health action plan for England. On biodiversity, the previous Conservative Government authorised the use of harmful pesticides, despite knowing that that would have a devastating impact on pollinators. On new entrants, it is well known that the average age of farmers is too high, yet when it was in power the Conservative party’s austerity measures led to the closure of 15,000 acres of county farms estate, which is crucial for getting younger people into a farming career and contributing to national food security.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Opposition spokesperson.