Jane Austen
Debate between Chris Bryant and Wera Hobhouse(6 days, 8 hours ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Chris Bryant)
Well, if only the Conservatives were not full of pride and prejudice—sorry, I could not resist that. It is a great delight to see you in the Chair, Mr Efford.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Minister in possession of a good portfolio must be in want of a debate. When it turned out that the culture Minister was unavailable this afternoon, I wanted to embody another quote from “Northanger Abbey”:
“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature.”
That is why I am here on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, although I am in the Department for Business and Trade.
I am enormously grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) for securing this debate which, at one point, was in danger of becoming about tourism rather than Jane Austen. However, we had some good literary criticism later on, including going into the nature of the prose that Jane Austen wrote. It is always good to see an English degree put to use at some point in somebody’s career—I have one myself, so am delighted by it.
I am a bit disturbed, however, that we are talking about Jane Austen, and so far the character that people have referred to most and questioned the actions of is Mr Darcy. Surely we should be talking about the female actors who have appeared. The bigger question should be who is the better Lizzy Bennet: is it Jennifer Ehle or Keira Knightley? [Interruption.] Apparently there is no question about that either.
It was great to hear from the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone), although he has now disappeared, so he must be taking to heart another of Jane Austen’s lines:
“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.”
It was good to hear from him briefly, even though he has now departed. It is always good to hear from the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), who took us on a tour of his constituency as well, talking proudly about many of the tourist attractions. I will come on to the point about how Jane Austen has probably contributed to the modern economy of the UK more than any other single individual, Dickens may be able to challenge that, but hers is certainly a very significant contribution to our modern economy.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) spoke without claiming any particular identity with Austen for her constituency. I identified with her in this: I do not think that any of the characters from any of Jane Austen’s novels ever visited Rhondda, Ogmore, Blaengwarw, Blaenrhondda, Pontycymer or any of the other places that Hansard will not be able to spell.
It was also great to hear from the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse). As part of the celebrations earlier this year, I went to the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, which I think received 200,000 visitors in 2024. I am sure the numbers were larger this year. It has some fascinating items from Jane Austen’s life and the life of her family. The whole city feels like it is “Jane Austenville”, not only because of the bookshops—although Bath has some of the finest independent bookshops in the land—but because of the museums and houses there that have been used in film adaptations or television series. I will come on to “Bridgerton” later.
Wera Hobhouse
Does the Minister acknowledge the unbalanced literature that is still taught in schools, the majority of which is written by men as opposed to women?
Chris Bryant
In fact, the one book that we were recommended to read about Jane Austen was by a man, which seemed a little bit ironic. I will address some of those points later.
My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) was querying what kind of clergyman I am; I think I am more Trollope really—it has been said before. Some of the clerical characters in Trollope are more my kind of style. The hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) is right that Jane Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral. The initial gravestone referred to her mind, but not to her works. That was rectified in later years, which is really important. I suppose there was some kind of prejudice about the idea that a woman would not just have a mind but actually do something with it, which I am glad to say we have managed to overcome.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) made an important point about how this debate is taking place two days after the anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, but that it is also a day when the Government are bringing forward important legislation. One can interpret many of the scenes between men and women in Jane Austen’s books as being about coercive control—a point that my hon. Friend made well. I have already referred to the literary criticism offered the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain). It is always good to hear from a Whip—unless one is in trouble and has forgotten a vote—and was great to have her in this debate.
The hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French), of whom I am enormously fond—well, anyway—tried to claim Jane Austen as a member of the modern Conservative party. I think he was trying to hand her a membership card. It is true that she was sceptical of revolution, but she also hated hypocrisy—make of that what you will. [Interruption.] I’m joking. She was sceptical of revolution, but in many ways she brought about a revolution in that she was able to publish books and get them printed, and she has continued to be a presence in a world that has been dominated by men, by male publishers and male writers for generation after generation. Sometimes there is a radicalism in quiet conservatism, and sometimes conservatism in quiet radicalism.
Obviously, Austen was famous as an author. It was mentioned earlier that some 92,000 copies of her books have been sold in the UK this year. It might be more by now because it was 78,500 by the end of June. Her writing is sometimes referred to as subtle, nuanced, clever; there is a comedy of manners involved in it. We have already heard the reference to the sharp prose that she engaged in. One of my favourite moments is when Darcy says to Lizzy:
“But it has been the study of my life to avoid those weaknesses, which often expose a strong understanding to ridicule.”
And Lizzy says:
“Such as vanity and pride.”
That is a burn—a real burn on a very arrogant man who is not able to see his own ridiculousness.
Austen has been vital to today’s creative industries. We have referred to several different versions of “Pride and Prejudice”. If we include “Clueless” and productions like that, probably $1.2 billion-worth of revenues have been generated from film and television adaptations. There was a great new production of “Emma” at the Theatre Royal in Bath earlier this year. Incidentally, the Theatre Royal in Bath is a wonderful institution that does not take a single penny from the Arts Council, because it has decided that it can do things on its own.
And then we have “Bridgerton”, which everybody recognises as sort of being by Jane Austen, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with her. One of its triumphs is not only that successive series have given us phenomenal storylines that feel Jane Austen-like—we kind of know where it is going to end up; it is not the twist that matters, but the getting there—but it has also given us Adjoa Andoh and a very brave moment of television where a black woman is cast as a queen in a period that clearly would not have had a black queen in the UK, and yet it is entirely characteristically Jane Austen. And of course it has given us the most beautiful man in the world, Jonathan Bailey—not according to me, but according to lots of other people—who plays one of the main leads. I see several Members smiling, so I think they agree.
Austen has done a phenomenal amount for tourism in the UK. I have already referred to the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. Many TV and film locations have managed to do extraordinarily well in recent years, including several aristocratic homes such as Lyme Park, which featured in “Pride and Prejudice”. It had 300,000 visitors last year, many of whom will have come because of the connection with the film. My hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke asked what the Government are doing. Well, VisitBritain has been trying to build on this sense of “starring Great Britain”. A lot of international visitors to the UK—we set a target of getting to 50 million visitors by 2030—have done so specifically to visit places they recognise because films were made there, including many of the Jane Austen adaptations. It is a really important part of what we do.
Likewise, Arts Council England has supported many literary-based projects, including quite a lot of Jane Austen ones this year. Alongside providing funding for the Jane Austen Fan Club and the “Sensibilities on the Bonnet” project, it has supported Southampton Forward, and God’s House Tower, which presented her writing desk as part of the Jane Austen 250 celebrations earlier this year, as has been mentioned. The Forest arts centre in Hampshire received support to research collections of early music, including that owned by Jane Austen and her sister, and the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery held a “Jane Austen: Down to the Sea” exhibition using funding from ACE, with support from the Government indemnity scheme, which ACE administers.
Several Members referred to one element of Jane Austen that I think is really important. We have heard half the quote I am about to give, but I will say the next line, which is just as important. On women, one of her characters said:
“I hate to hear you talking…as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures.”
The next line is:
“We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.”
The sense that a woman is far more than just the stereotype so much literature had created up to that time is a really important part of the radicalism inherent in Austen.
Jane Austen has not been the only woman writer in our history. Before her, the great playwright Aphra Behn wrote some phenomenal plays. Daphne du Maurier’s book “Rebecca” is one of the most read novels in our history. There are George Eliot, who often confuses people by being called that rather than Mary Ann Evans, and the Brontës. Agatha Christie, who made one of our biggest contributions to world literature, is renowned across the world—not only in the UK and the United States of America, but in large parts of Africa, China and south-east Asia. In recent years, we have had Hilary Mantel. Only a few days ago, I saw yet another version of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, which I think is probably the closest to the original, and Iris Murdoch is one of my favourite novelists. Austen’s role as a woman novelist who survived and managed to make a living, and who had female characters with three dimensions to them rather than just one or two, is such an important part of what she gave us.
The hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup read this quotation from “Sense and Sensibility”:
“It is not what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.”
That is true. It is not just having a debate here today that defines what we think about Jane Austen; it is what we do, and I think we need to celebrate reading far more.
One of the problems for many young people—the right hon. Member for East Hampshire, who used to be Education Secretary, will know how important this is—is getting them to read anything longer than a post or a tweet, or to watch something longer than two minutes, but being able to concentrate on the whole plot across 200 or 300 pages, or whatever it may be, is really important. We must have parents reading to their children and reading in schools, and we must have libraries in schools and in communities, because enabling people to read is a really important part of what we do. As Members of Parliament, we need to do far more to celebrate reading itself.
We should also celebrate publishing, because it is one of the things that the UK does phenomenally well. We export more books than any other country in the world, which is partly because we are a really good crossroads of the nations. Some of the best writing in the English language is written by people in India or Pakistan, or in Africa. We celebrate that as part of the publishing that we give to the rest of the world. Some of it is technical publishing, of course, but we should celebrate that part of our creative industries, and we should of course celebrate the knock-on effect of having so many of our great films and television series spring from books that have been written in the UK and by British writers.
Above all, I want us just to celebrate novels. Fiction is so important because it is so easy for us to be trapped in our own little world—the world that we know, are comfortable with and have chosen because we follow certain people and not others. I want people to go into a bookshop and browse. They should browse, and find something they would not otherwise find, or a novel telling a story that they would not otherwise know anything about. I remember reading a book a few years ago about a migrant coming to the UK on a small boat, and it completely changed my understanding of what somebody else’s life might be like. I am sure everybody who is listening to this debate will recognise the experience of seeing life from a completely different angle, because they read a fictional account. It is so important to be able to walk in somebody else’s shoes, empathise and sympathise, and embrace a wider set of possibilities in life. Of course, Jane Austen herself wrote:
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
She really did have a point.
I am thinking of instituting something for next year. Next Christmas, when we have a debate like this, nobody should be allowed to take part unless they have read six good novels that were written that year—not just things from 500 years ago, 300 years ago or 100 years ago. No Member will be allowed to take part in the debate unless they have read—bought or from a library—six new novels.
I am going to make four recommendations of my own, all by women authors, from the last 18 months or so. The first is Samantha Harvey’s “Orbital”, which is a magnificent short novel; it is almost like poetry, the way that it is written. The second is Yael van der Wouden’s “The Safekeep”, which I have just finished reading. It is absolutely beautiful; it is set in the Netherlands, and the story is completely and utterly surprising. The third is Maggie O’Farrell’s “Hamnet”, the film of which has just been released. It is so moving and a beautiful rendition of another part of our literary history. The fourth is the book that I finished just before “The Safekeep”: Elizabeth Day’s “One of Us”. If anybody else wants to take part in next year’s debate, including you, Mr Efford, they have to have read six new novels by British authors.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Chris Bryant and Wera Hobhouse(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Chris Bryant
I agree with my hon. Friend that gnats— I would not want to cast aspersions on any other kind, obviously—can be a terrible problem in Scotland.
The aviation industry in the UK is an important sector and is part of one of the key sectors that we have identified in the industrial strategy. We want to ensure that all our advanced manufacturing prospers. It was good to see significant extra investment in GE Aerospace in Nantgarw, made only the other day, and I am happy to meet my hon. Friend to see how we can drive forward our ambitions in the sector.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The Minister mentioned earlier the disaster of Brexit, and I will add the loss to the UK economy of £250 million a day in tax revenue, according to research from the House of Commons Library. We Liberal Democrats want the Government to focus on a golden opportunity to grow the economy by considering a new customs union with the EU. Is it not time that the Government look at a new customs union with the EU? We will be told that there are deals with India and New Zealand that would be in peril. [Hon. Members: “There are!”] Those are nothing compared with the lost trade with the European Union.
Chris Bryant
Far be it from me to agree with a Lib Dem but, broadly speaking, I do. The truth is, as the Leader of the Opposition has now admitted, Brexit was a self-inflicted shock—and not just a small shock. It is as if the Conservatives decided to throw the three-bar electric fire into the bath while it was plugged in and they were sitting in it. The hon. Lady is right: it is a 4% drop in productivity, a 15% drop in trade and a £100 billion hit to our GDP, and there are 16,000 fewer businesses now exporting into Europe. I am sorry but they are not Cinderella—instead, we are having to clear up the mess left by the ugly sisters.
Fairtrade Certification
Debate between Chris Bryant and Wera Hobhouse(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Chris Bryant
I suppose, on the whole, I was trying to say that I want to try to take down tariff barriers where I possibly can, so that we can engage in free trade, but that only works when we have fair opportunities underlying it. The hon. Member for Strangford will correct me if I have this wrong, but I think there is a phrase in the Bible about justice and peace kissing one another. Sometimes we strive for justice, but it is not real justice if we do not get peace with it; and sometimes we strive for peace, but it is not real peace if it is not based on justice. That is the combination of Shalom and Tzedek, to use the Old Testament terms, that we are striving for with free and fair trade.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North said, the Fairtrade Foundation has been around for more than 30 years. It has done an amazing job in certification. Indeed, I think there are now more than 5,000 Fairtrade-certified products in the UK, and many of our constituents search them out every day of the week.
I, too, was approached by the Brew it Fair campaign, which has raised specific challenges around tea, including the living conditions of workers, gender inequality and a series of other issues. I praise it for raising those issues and bringing them to everybody’s attention.
I am delighted that Rhondda Cynon Taff county borough council in my constituency was made a Fairtrade county in 2007. It has therefore had a considerable period of time to roll out these policies. I am sorry to keep referring to the hon. Member for Strangford, but he asked about procurement. Of course, procurement is a key issue. We often have discussions in Parliament about what consumers do, but it is also about what the Government do.
The hon. Member is quite right that we produced a new national procurement policy statement in February this year, which lays out new ways in which people can drive this agenda into procurement, on the back of taxpayers’ money. Similarly, the Procurement Act 2023, which came into force on 24 February this year, has a new central debarment list, which Ministers can put people on if they have been involved in modern slavery. In that way, we can make sure the supply chain is cleaner.
Fair trade is not just about the issues I have mentioned. The International Labour Organisation says that, around the world, 28 million people are in situations of forced labour. I am sure that any of us could cite some of the places where that might be true. Similarly, every minute we are losing forest area equivalent to 11 football pitches, which is a challenge to all our climate change ambitions.
Of course, the impact of climate change will be felt most intensely among the poorest peoples on Earth. To see that, we only have to look at places such as the Carteret Islands, off Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, or the outlying poorer lands of Thailand, where some of the very poorest people are in danger of losing their homes, their livelihoods and their access to clean drinking water. Similarly, a million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction, which is a threat to biodiversity, and whether biodiversity loss happens in our country or in any other country, it is a threat to us all.
There are two other issues that have not been referred to much so far today. The first is corruption. The danger of corruption in some political systems around the world, particularly where there is an authoritarian regime, is intense. That is why it is so important that, under the Bribery Act 2010, we have particular responsibilities to ensure that British businesses trading elsewhere in the world are not able to engage in corrupt practices.
The second issue is displaced people, which is slightly different from the issue of forced labour. I remember visiting Colombia in 2018 with ABColombia, where I was struck by two things. First, as we flew over vast territories, I was struck by how much of the land had been taken for palm oil. That massive agribusiness had effectively displaced many millions of people who had lost their property thanks to the activities of militias and the FARC, and the battle between the two.
Similarly, when I went to El Porvenir and La Primavera, which are not far from Colombia’s border with Venezuela, it was striking how people found it very difficult to make a living when they had been deprived of large amounts of their land—they had effectively been living in a warzone for the best part of 20 years. That is why it was so important that, when Colombia was able to bring about peace with the FARC, it was very keen to bring forward the idea of land reform—that work has never really been completed—so people have access to land again and can make a living.
I have a few principles that influence how I look at all of this as we go through the process of our responsible business conduct review. First, I believe in a seamless garment. Again, I am sorry, but that is another biblical phrase. When Jesus was on the cross, lots were cast for his garment because it was seamless. I think it is important that we look at all these issues together, in the round. As I said, it is not just one issue.
This may seem a slightly flippant way of looking at it, but I was watching “Do they know it’s Christmas?” the other day on a Christmas compilation TV show. Of course, it is great because it is dealing with human rights around the world, the lack of clean drinking water and people starving from famine, but I was struck that only three women were asked to take part in the filming of the 1984 version. That could be a test for anybody, but it was the three members of Bananarama: Sara Dallin, Siobhan Fahey and Keren Woodward. That made the point to me that we need to look at all these issues in the round. Gender inequality, human rights issues, corruption and environmental concerns all need to be addressed in the round when we are looking at the whole of our supply chain.
Secondly, I commend the voluntary efforts. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul), referred to how the previous Government recognised them, which is true. I think we have all done that, and we have done it for many years. I doubt that there are many MPs who have not been to some kind of Fairtrade event and shown willing.
I pay tribute to Howies, a Welsh clothing company, because sometimes it is not easy to prosper in this world. It is great that the company is owned by its staff—I, too, am a member of the Co-op—and it says that its
“award-winning men’s and women’s clothing is ethically produced using organic, recycled or natural fabrics wherever possible… we want to be a company that does things differently to others—one that does things honestly, responsibly and quietly.”
I think an awful lot of UK consumers would love to be able to think that, whenever they go into a supermarket or any of the major chains, that would be what influences the company they are buying from, going all the way back to the beginning of the supply chain. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that companies are more successful when they adopt that kind of attitude. Consumers like it, so the companies can prosper. For that matter, it also gives a sense of purpose to everybody who works in the company.
Thirdly, as several Members have mentioned, we do not want a race to the bottom. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North said that if we have worse standards or weaker requirements than elsewhere, the danger is that all the least-ethically sourced stuff comes to the UK. It would be a form of ethical dumping—similar to subsidy dumping or carbon dumping—into the UK. We are very keen that it should not happen, so of course we want to work alongside international comparators.
Fourthly, I am very keen for the UK to have requirements that are both effective and proportionate to the harm being dealt with. I have a question in my mind that was raised with me a couple of weeks ago, at a roundtable involving quite a few of the sorts of organisations we have talked about, including the anti-slavery body. I am not sure that having another annual report that is never read by anyone—including the person who wrote it, possibly—would be either effective or proportionate. Reports are costly for an organisation to produce, and they might not make the blindest bit of difference to whether a consumer or the company takes action on this.
Fifthly, notwithstanding that, section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires large organisations over a certain threshold to publish transparency in supply chain statements, and we provided new guidance on that in 2025. As has already been referred to by the Liberal Democrats, some of that is good, but there is a danger that it is just ticking a box, not driving forward change; and I am far more interested in driving forward change than I am in simply ticking boxes.
My sixth point is—there are not too many more, honestly—[Interruption.] I do not know why you are all laughing. We are engaged in a responsible business conduct review, and this debate is a very helpful part of that; it feeds into what we are hearing from businesses, because we want to make sure that what we eventually come forward with will be proportionate and effective. I was asked specifically whether we will also look at mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence reports. Yes, we are looking at how those would work, what would be most effective, and how they relate to requirements for multinational companies in other countries as well.
Seventhly, since we came to power, we have opened the Office for Responsible Business Conduct, which is a one-stop shop for industry. Again, I am interested in driving change, and sometimes businesses do not know where to turn. Smaller businesses might have no idea how to meet the law or best effect the kind of change we are all looking for. The Office for Responsible Business Conduct has a strong mandate there.
I have already referred to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North and the hon. Member for Strangford—who of course is a friend to us all, as we meet him in so many debates. It was great, too, to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) and from the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Dr Chowns), and from the man from Del Monte—or rather, from my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq); indeed, the one point she did not make was that it would be quite nice if there were a woman in charge. Maybe one day there will be a woman from Del Monte—although I note that Del Monte went into chapter 11 proceedings in July, so it is not clear what state it is in now. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray).
Many of us have effectively given the same speech, because we all feel quite passionately that we want to get these issues right. I know that many people work in retail in the UK in a whole series of sectors; quite a few of our discussions have been about food and beverages or fashion, but the same is true for furniture and other sectors, too. We simply want to get this right, because our aim here in Government is to ensure that British businesses have an opportunity to export and import, and that this is always based on free and fair trade.
Wera Hobhouse (in the Chair)
I am enormously grateful to the Minister for leaving plenty of time for Martin Rhodes to wind up.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Chris Bryant and Wera Hobhouse(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Chris Bryant
I think Kate Bush was running up that hill, too. Look, the truth of the matter is, as I have said many times, that we will not progress in this area unless we are absolutely certain that we will secure more licensing of content by British creatives, rather than less. That is absolutely key to what would be success for us. I hope that people will take us at face value on that.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Chris Bryant and Wera Hobhouse(11 months, 1 week ago)
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Chris Bryant
Yes, I congratulate the church. I know that lots of people are interested in the future of the fund. The best way of describing how the Department is approaching that is to quote a hymn:
“God is working this purpose out,
As year succeeds to year…
Nearer and nearer draws the time,
The time that shall surely be”
when we announce.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)