The Labour MP for North Hertfordshire urges the government to stop playing it safe and take on the vested interests holding the country back.
Chris Hinchliff is the Labour MP for North East Hertfordshire.
Over the last year, the historic significance of serving as the first Labour MP representing
communities in North East Hertfordshire since Shirley Williams has never left me.
After years as a charity campaigner, some of my most fulfilling moments serving as a backbench MP have come from seeing policy proposals I had been pushing for adopted by Ministers in a progressive Labour Government.
What we’ve achieved so far
Rooftop solar as standard on new houses; proposals for firmer penalties on developers failing to build the 1.4 million properties with planning permission; a consultation on mandatory shared ownership offers for communities hosting renewable energy projects; a requirement for GB Energy to consider nature recovery alongside providing cheap low carbon electricity; and a ban on the thousands of tonnes of lead hunting ammunition polluting our countryside every year, to
name a few.
Although I have been involved in some clashes with frontbench policy along the way, I think it is important to recognise that almost every week the Labour Government has brought forward long-overdue changes to our country. For instance, finally listening to David Attenborough, giving hope for the restoration of life in our oceans, and banning ecosystem destroying bottom-trawling in marine protected areas.
Similarly, the legislation to end two centuries of injustice and repeal the 1824 Vagrancy Act which has treated the homeless as criminals and persecuted people for poverty since the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, is only being brought forward because we have a Labour government.
But, while there is much to celebrate, an honest assessment of the polls and local election results leads to the unavoidable conclusion that, for the public, our record of delivery is rather less than the sum of its parts. This isn’t just about what we’ve got wrong — we’ve also failed to articulate a compelling narrative about why Britain is broken, and why Labour values are key to fixing it.
Communicating more clearly
Part of that means communicating the policies we’ve already delivered with greater élan. From ensuring less of our national wealth goes to non-doms and more is invested in an NHS fit for the future, or ending the tax-breaks for private schools that allow the wealthy to secure their privilege generation after generation and instead repairing our crumbling state schools, we’ve rarely been clear enough that too much money and power is in the hands of the rich.
Without a compelling story about the state of nation, we are left with a disparate set of policy announcements that gives an impression worryingly reminiscent of the “vote Labour and win a microwave” retail politics that went so wrong in 2015. A defeat some of us are still scarred
by.
It doesn’t take long talking to constituents at one of my surgeries, or voters on the doorstep, to share in the sense that Britain is a country on its heels, with institutions that are almost uniformly unresponsive and resistant to the needs of ordinary members of the public, an economic system that feels palpably rigged, alongside ombudsmen and regulators that too often seem to exist to justify the status quo.
We offered change at the election last year, and voters are still waiting for evidence of an iconoclastic government prepared to take a torch to vested interests that get in the way of
the public good. Indeed, the major missteps that have been made on issues like cuts to welfare and environmental protections have come when we have appeared to make political choices that prioritise the rich and powerful over the needs of our communities.
Where we need to do better
To recover our position and earn a second term, we must do away with nervousness about falling from the good graces of big businesses and establishment commentators. Simply claiming that everything is wrong because the last lot buggered things up (and of course they did) won’t wash with an electorate highly cynical of all politicians.
Our country feels so often like it doesn’t work because in almost every major aspect of national life, the interests of ordinary people are sublimated to the profiteering of private capital.
We must say loudly, clearly, and at every possible opportunity, that the reason we are strengthening renters’ rights and delivering the largest investment in a generation in social housing is because the developer-led profit-motivated model of house building in this country has done irreparable damage whilst failing to build the genuinely affordable homes we need.
We are delivering the biggest ever increase in the minimum wage, strengthening trade union power and introducing ‘Day One’ rights for every worker because endemic low pay to protect shareholder returns has effectively forced the state to subsidise corporations through welfare payments to ensure their employees can make ends meet.
We are transforming public transport across the country, because a deregulated, privatised bus market will never find it profitable to provide regular, reliable and affordable services for rural towns and villages like those across North East Hertfordshire.
Rewiring our country to put people before profit
Going forward, the Labour Government must be indelibly connected in the minds of the electorate with policies bringing a profound break from a past orthodoxy that imagined greed is so good it would be able fulfil the hopes of the nation. Only if we mobilise the wealth of our country to deliver a National Care Service, free at the point of use like the NHS, will we be able to provide a future of dignity for all older people regardless of background.
Only if we secure a water system owned and run in the public interest will we put an end to bill payers’ money flowing into the pockets of overseas shareholders while our natural environment is simultaneously wrecked by pollution and over abstraction.
Above all, when there are financial choices to be made, we must prioritise desperately needed societal change over maintaining the lowest corporation tax rate in the G7, giving away more than £200 billion a year on over 100 tax breaks, or the more than £20 billion a year spent on subsidies to the private sector.
That is how we will show that the Labour Government is fundamentally rewiring our country so that it once again puts people before profit.
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