Jane Austen

Danny Chambers Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. As Mr Bennet said in “Pride and Prejudice”:

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?”;

so I thank my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) for securing this debate. I thought his speech was excellent, not just on the history of Jane Austen’s life, but on how relevant her works are today when viewed in terms of structural inequality, and how pioneering they were at the time. It was a very good speech, and I congratulate him on it.

The hon. Member has already talked about the links that Jane Austen has to my constituency; she is buried in Winchester cathedral. She is an immense source of pride for all of us in Hampshire—with everyone claiming their little section of her life—but particularly in Winchester. She moved there in 1817 and subsequently spent her final days there. She lived in No. 8 College Street and, to celebrate 250 years since her birth, Winchester College opened it to the public over the summer. It is a mere five minutes from the cathedral, a site that many of us here will have visited and where many people come from all over the world purely to visit Jane Austen’s headstone.

No. 8 College Street is a site where brilliant volunteers are brimming with knowledge about Jane Austen’s life in and around Winchester. It is also just a couple of doors down on the same street as P&G Wells bookshop, which is one of the longest continuously operating bookshops in the UK. It is very beautiful; Austen was probably one of its most famous customers, and it still sells beautiful collector’s editions of Jane Austen in the store. The cathedral, Hampshire Cultural Trust and many other local groups and businesses have put on excellent events and exhibitions to commemorate 250 years of Jane Austen this year. I thank everyone involved for their hard work, and everyone is welcome to visit.

The more we learn about Jane Austen, the greater our admiration becomes for a woman with such wit, skill and literary prowess. Through her work, we enter into the mind of a young woman in a society where that voice would not usually be heard—and it is not just any voice; it is bold, witty, ironic and very funny. Austen brings us a voice that had hitherto been sidelined; when it is given centre stage, we can hear all its incredible qualities. She has a sharp and honest sense of humour and a clear-minded understanding of people and society, and emphasises the importance of taking pleasure in a good novel, which should be an inspiration to us today, particularly at a time when the proportion of the UK population reading for pleasure has been decreasing significantly.

Austen delighted in the ridiculous, and was never one to take life too seriously, writing in “Mansfield Park”:

“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.”

As we celebrate her immense cultural legacy, I hope that that joy and amusement in the society of others will continue to inspire and enlighten us today. When I was younger, my mother and my two younger sisters watched the ’90s BBC adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” on loop for about a decade, and I can still quote nearly every line from it—I should thank them for making me appeared more cultured than I actually am. As Lizzy Bennet says:

“Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”

It is with great pleasure, fondness and admiration that we celebrate the life and works of Jane Austen.

Businesses in Rural Areas

Danny Chambers Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Steff Aquarone]

I am relieved that my hon. Friend asked that question, because much as funding is welcome in all forms—I know that many of my constituency businesses and their supporters have applied for funds, received them and been part of schemes—we need long-term settlements, long-term funding and local accountability. We cannot just be queuing up to make our pitches to Whitehall; we must have things decided and delivered on the ground.

The support that is needed in rural areas is different. Rural economic development can be, and must be, more exciting, inventive and far-reaching than just building and leasing business parks. Even where they are useful, local authorities and local leaders have to get to the root causes of rural economic struggles and support businesses to address them.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

In Winchester we have the fantastic Sparsholt agricultural college, which engages with local businesses and stakeholders to ensure that it trains students in the skills that the local economy will need. A good example is its vineyard management course, which takes advantage of the amazing new vineyards popping up on our amazing chalk soil. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need Government support to ensure that there are accessible courses to give students of all backgrounds the skills to drive our rural economy?

[Steff Aquarone]

I totally agree. We are developing a bit of a wine theme here, but let me return to a subject that Members might have heard Liberal Democrats talk about a lot, which is care. We are proud to have the oldest demographic in the country in North Norfolk. We should not be afraid of the fact that we have a care industry, which we should celebrate and encourage, and in which we should create career paths and provide training opportunities. Workforce development is key to tackling rural economic development.

I am delighted that some innovative, locally led programmes have been delivered by Lib Dem-led North Norfolk district council. Business owners have told me of the positive experiences they have had with the support and training that is available, and many more will benefit from the recently launched Invest North Norfolk hub. Local leaders, however, need to break the mould and provide innovative, far-reaching support and strategy to supercharge every rural economy. The rural economy is far from immune to the general business challenges that many face across the country; in fact, many of those struggles are only made greater by the nature of rural areas. Rural businesses struggle more with access to funding for investment and seed capital, and they struggle more to meet the cost of decarbonisation.

At the same time, in North Norfolk we have seen large community benefit funds from energy giants that host renewable infrastructure in our area, but the restrictions on those funds are incredibly onerous and they eventually run short of projects to fund. There are only so many bus stops in North Norfolk that they can attempt to gold plate. If access to the funds were liberalised, allowing businesses to secure the important support that they need to grow, adapt and improve, they could have a greater and wider-reaching economic impact, and they could support wider aims to secure environmental benefits and benefits for the communities that their infrastructure affects.

Oral Answers to Questions

Danny Chambers Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will have noticed that in the Budget, the Chancellor more than doubled the employment allowance to £10,500. That will mean that more than a million small businesses, many of them hospitality businesses, will see no increase in their national insurance liabilities next year.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

6. What recent assessment he has made of the potential impact of free trade deals on farmers.

[The Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security (Mr Douglas Alexander)]

Our approach to trade deals considers the impact on and opportunities for the agricultural sector, along with other sectors of the economy, and, of course, our growth mission. The Government will publish impact assessments to aid the ratification process for new free trade agreements.

[Dr Chambers]

I worked with farmers for many years as a veterinary surgeon, and now I meet them regularly as an MP, so I am aware that farmers in Hampshire and the rest of the country were hugely disappointed when the previous Conservative Government signed trade deals that undermined our high animal welfare standards. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that after future trade deals, British farmers will not have to compete with products produced to lower animal welfare standards—for example, battery hens, or products that involve the indiscriminate use of antibiotics, which is also a public health issue? It is not only vets and farmers who are proud of our high animal welfare standards, but the British public, so will the Minister confirm that he does not want to compromise on those standards?

[Mr Alexander]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing his considerable expertise in veterinary science to the Chamber today. We will not compromise on animal welfare standards as we take forward our programme of free trade agreements. Although we might well have approached the negotiations that the previous Government undertook in a different manner, reopening them would certainly create uncertainty, which we genuinely believe would hurt UK business. We are not seeing Australian or New Zealand beef and lamb flood the UK market, and we will continue to monitor trade flows under both those free trade agreements. He makes a very fair and important point about the need to maintain welfare standards.