Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) (Amendment) (No. 7) Regulations 2021

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to make my maiden speech while the House is considering such important matters, and also for the very warm welcome I have received since being introduced.

I am sure that, like many others here, I never expected to be sitting on these red Benches. I grew up in Darlington with my parents and brother, and I have many of the same friends now that I had then—and it is fair to say that Darlington made me who I am. It is the birthplace of the railways and the home of the Northern Echo and pioneering bridge builders. It is an exceptional place and I was proud to represent it in the other place for almost 10 years. It is where my two sons, Ted and Dan, are getting towards the end of their school education, and where they will always be proud to say that they are from. The maternity unit where they were born still has consultant-led births, and Darlington Memorial Hospital still has its accident and emergency service, because of the campaigns that I led. Hundreds of Department for Education jobs remain in Darlington because of the argument I won with the Government. Darlington and the north-east is a great place to live, to grow up and to grow old.

However, like people in too many other towns, the people of Darlington chose to turn away from my party in 2019. The party of the NHS, the minimum wage and the Good Friday agreement was no longer speaking for the priorities of the women and men working in our towns. It was our greatest defeat since 1935. When this happens, a party cannot say, “What is wrong with the electorate?”; we must ask ourselves where we went wrong. I was glad to chair Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign. He is a good leader, with integrity, compassion and experience, and he will make a great Prime Minister. He has built a good team of people, who have no airs and graces and who roll their sleeves up and get stuck in. The Labour Party’s director of communications, Ben Nunn, was at ease knocking on doors in my home town in the freezing cold in 2019. He knows, as all of us in my party know, that we need to listen and to change if we are to win. The challenges of the gig economy, demographic change, the climate crisis and now pandemic disease must be faced by political leaders and the public together.

The Labour Party does not belong to interest groups or factions. It belongs to people like my parents, who worked their whole lives looking after others; like my fellow Labour fighter and husband Nick, who grew up in the Welsh valleys in a family of steelworkers and miners and who is, like me, Labour to his core; but also to people such as my brother Robert and my sister-in-law Alison, who runs her own business in the most difficult circumstances and who is not much interested in politics. It is their party too, and it will win again only when the British people see us as a party that is theirs, and one that will build a better future with them. We must give the Labour Party back to the people of Britain.

The last year has been extraordinary for all of us, but I am looking forward to being an active working Peer, and I am sure that I have much to learn about how this Chamber and its committees work. I am keen to understand what can be achieved through the winning of votes at this end of the Parliamentary Estate. I can promise that I will give it my all, and I look forward to working with all of you in the years to come.