Westminster Hall

Thursday 18th December 2025 Westminster Hall

Thursday 18 December 2025

[Clive Efford in the Chair]

Backbench Business

Thursday 18th December 2025 Westminster Hall

Jane Austen

Thursday 18th December 2025 Westminster Hall

13:30

[Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the cultural contribution of Jane Austen.

It is a delight to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I am really grateful to have been granted this opportunity to recognise and celebrate the legacy of one of our nation’s greatest authors, if not the greatest: Jane Austen.

Many may be asking why I am the one here speaking about Jane Austen. I have been a fan, of course, of both the 1995 and 2005 adaptations of “Pride and Prejudice”; I thoroughly enjoyed the recent BBC drama “Miss Austen”, which looked at Jane Austen’s life through the eyes of her sister; I have been on a fantastic Jane Austen tour, led by my brilliant constituent, Phil Howe, who is in the Public Gallery; and I have enjoyed many of Austen’s novels over the years. I am not, however, speaking just as a fan. The truth is that although half the country like to claim her, she will always be, first and foremost, a Steventon girl. Born in Steventon in my constituency of Basingstoke, she spent her first 25 years there, where she drafted “Sense and Sensibility”, “Pride and Prejudice” and “Northanger Abbey”. I am proud to be here to commemorate her impact on our town, as well as on the country and around the world.

Throughout Austen’s work, the influence of her upbringing in Steventon is unmistakable. Her father served as the rector, and she spent her formative years deeply rooted in the small community there, observing the congregations that passed through the church and the daily life of the village around her. Many of the social and class dynamics that animate her novels are thought to be shaped by her early experiences watching, as one scholar, Brian Southam put it,

“the world—of the minor landed gentry and the country clergy”—

as they navigated their relationships with both working-class neighbours and the area’s aristocracy.

Dancing also played a central role in Austen’s novels, and that influence can be traced directly back to her years in Basingstoke. She attended lively assemblies at Worting House and at the Old Town Hall, which became the Lloyds bank at the top of town, where she also shopped for materials to make her dresses. That same bustling area was where her father purchased her now famous sloped writing desk from Ring Brothers, the furnishers on Church Street. Austen used that desk throughout her life, drafting the works that would become beloved around the world. Its origins in Basingstoke highlight just how deeply the town shaped both her experiences and her writing.

The quintessential English countryside, which frames so much of Austen’s storytelling, owes much to landscape of north Hampshire—its rolling hills, quiet lanes and natural beauty still recognisable to us today.

[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman may know that in “Emma” Jane Austen said that Cromer in my constituency was

“the best of all the sea-bathing places.”

Does he agree that if Jane Austen were around today, she would be delighted by the recent news that a record seven North Norfolk beaches have excellent water quality, making my whole coastline excellent for all sea bathers?

[Luke Murphy]

I am sure that Austen would agree and, as we do not have a sea coast in Steventon, that she may have admired the hon. Gentleman’s area more than most.

Local children in Steventon still climb the old lime tree where Jane and her brother once played more than two centuries ago—a living reminder of the world that helped to inspire her enduring works. Equally, we still feel Austen’s influence in Basingstoke today. Across the town there are countless reminders of Austen’s legacy, not least the striking bronze statue outside the Willis Museum, created by the brilliant local artist Adam Roud, who is also in the Public Gallery today.

To mark the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth, Hampshire Cultural Trust is co-ordinating wonderful tours of our area, giving us all the chance to explore the places that shaped her life and work. I am so pleased that Paul and others are here in Parliament today representing the great work that Hampshire Cultural Trust is doing. I also highlight the outstanding work of the Basingstoke Heritage Society, including the research undertaken by Debbie and Joan—who are also in the Public Gallery—into Jane Austen’s life in Basingstoke, which has been vital to preserving and celebrating her legacy in the town. My constituents handed me some helpful maps with points of interest just before the debate, should anyone want to peruse them later.

Right now the Willis Museum at the top of the town is hosting a brilliant exhibition, aptly named “Beyond the Bonnets”, on the women behind Jane Austen, shining a light on the often overlooked working women of the Regency period—the women who restored Elizabeth Bennet’s curls and washed her petticoats after that famous three-mile walk to Netherfield Park; the women who cooked for the Dashwoods at Norland Park; and the many other women whose unseen labour made the stories possible, yet so rarely receive any credit.

As we mark what would have been Jane Austen’s 250th birthday this week, there has never been a more fitting moment to visit Basingstoke and reflect on its place in her story. My sincere thanks go to Tamsin, who is also here today, and her team at Steventon’s Jane Austen 250 for their dedication to celebrating Austen’s legacy in our area, and for helping us all to discover the many ways our town influenced Jane Austen’s life, worldview and writing.

As much as I would like to give Basingstoke full credit as Austen’s muse, her life and literature were of course shaped by so many other places across the UK. Following her father’s retirement, the Austen family relocated to Bath, a setting that inspired “Persuasion” and “Northanger Abbey”. Five years later, after her father’s death, they returned to Hampshire, first to Southampton and then to Chawton. In this period Austen published “Sense and Sensibility”, “Pride and Prejudice”, “Mansfield Park” and “Emma”. Austen spent her final years in Winchester, where she was cared for by Giles Lyford during her illness. She died on 18 July 1817, at the age of 41, and was laid to rest in Winchester cathedral. I am sure the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) will comment later, but Austen’s influence in Winchester endures to this day, with the city hosting numerous events that celebrate the life and work of this very special Hampshire-born novelist.

Put simply, Austen reshaped the English novel. She perfected a narrative style that allowed readers to see the world through her heroines’ eyes, pioneering a realism that influenced writers such as Virginia Woolf and timeless narratives that inspired Helen Fielding’s “Bridget Jones” and, indeed, Heckerling’s “Clueless”, one of my favourite films. At its core, Austen’s style was characterised by her ability to weave her quick wit into her nuanced social commentary. Through interactions between her characters, she displayed the complex class dynamics at play at the time, and “Pride and Prejudice” captures it perfectly. The Bennets may belong to the gentry on paper, but at Netherfield Park they are frequently made to feel as though they do not quite belong alongside Mr Darcy and the Bingleys.

The social hierarchies of the period are also evident in the character of Charlotte Lucas from “Pride and Prejudice”—but as a vital means of securing her financial and social future. For many women of the so-called lower classes at the time, marriage was not simply for love; it was a matter of survival. As Austen so aptly reminds us:

“A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her”,

but because he can offer her security in a world that grants her few other options. By reflecting real aspects of Regency-era life back to her readers with her flair and humour, Austen was able to endear readers who saw themselves in her characters and entertain those who did not, swiftly gaining her recognition among her contemporaries.

Austen’s novels did more than entertain and enlighten her readers at the time. They also hold up a mirror to us now, revealing much about who we are as a nation today—not least because it is rumoured that the character of Mr Darcy in “Bridget Jones”, Helen Fielding’s modern reimagining of “Pride and Prejudice”, was perhaps inspired by our very own Prime Minister.

On a more serious note, Austen’s novels reveal the foundations that our society is built on today. Her contribution to feminist progress has been raised time and again when I have spoken to constituents, friends and colleagues. In her own lifetime she did not experience much of the autonomy that women today enjoy. She lived under strict legal limitations on women’s rights and within a culture that offered little recognition of women as people in their own right. Women’s voices were rarely platformed, and their lives were often tightly policed—so much so that even showing an ankle was considered improper.

Women were expected to be seen to bolster their husband’s social status, but were never truly heard, treated as secondary citizens under the law of the time. This manifested in Austen’s own life as she initially had to publish under a masculine pseudonym to be taken seriously by contemporaries. Yet in the world she created on the page, Austen centred female voices that had hardly been acknowledged before, and in her own life she broke quiet but powerful barriers. She chose not to marry, rejecting a system that often defined a woman’s worth by her husband.

It is true that Austen did not campaign for women’s suffrage or other forms of reform, but she still did something transformative. Through her stories, she invited her readers to recognise women as full people with ambition, intellect and agency. In doing so, she quietly laid the groundwork for the generations of feminists who would follow. Austen may not have lived to see the freedoms that women now enjoy, but her influence helped to shape them, one honest, courageous sentence at a time. Today, as new barriers to gender equality emerge, including from online radicalisation around the world, her message remains an important reminder to approach politics with a respect for everyone’s humanity.

Jane Austen is not only a cornerstone of our national literary heritage, but a global phenomenon. More than two centuries after her death, her novels continue to inspire readers around the world—from the United States to Japan, India and beyond. Global fan societies, reading groups, academic conferences and adaptations for stage and screen all testify to the extraordinary reach of her work. Austen’s characters, wit and insights into human nature transcend time and place, uniting an international community of admirers who find her writing still speaks powerfully to modern life.

Beyond the far-reaching cultural impact of her work, Austen’s economic legacy also endures. In Hampshire, we enjoy what the Hampshire Cultural Trust calls the “Jane effect”: every year, we welcome millions of visitors who want to experience the landmarks and areas that shaped her writing. Austen continues to inspire devotion from readers all over the world, which in turn supports our local businesses and regional economy. Most notably, this year alone more than 92,000 copies of her novels were sold in the UK—an increase of a third on last year.

Austen’s stories have inspired so many high-grossing films and TV shows spanning decades, helping to sustain a thriving British film industry: de Wilde’s adaptation of “Emma” grossed millions as recently as 2020, and there is a huge buzz around Alderton’s upcoming adaption of “Pride and Prejudice”. To this day, there is still a fierce debate about whether Colin Firth’s or Matthew Macfadyen’s Mr Darcy reigns supreme—

[The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Chris Bryant)]

There is no debate. [Laughter.]

[Luke Murphy]

Does the Minister want to intervene on that point? No? I am sure he will elucidate that in good time.

Austen’s enduring cultural impact is felt not only on a global scale, but powerfully at a local level, where it continues to shape and enrich Basingstoke’s vibrant film and arts scene. From the literary legacy of Jane Austen to the creative energy of today, the town has long sustained a strong and distinctive cultural identity. We are home to nationally recognised venues such as the Anvil, an outstanding concert hall that hosts everything from world-class performances to much-loved community events like the mayor’s variety show, and the Haymarket theatre, which continues to delight audiences with a programme of productions, from the festive sparkle of “The Crooners Christmas Special” and “Aladdin” to a wide range of acclaimed theatrical performances throughout the year.

One incredible show that came out of Basingstoke was our very own Phil Howe’s “Twelve Hours”, which depicts the story of Austen’s infamous short-lived engagement to Harris Bigg-Wither of Manydown. Our creative momentum is further strengthened by the Exit 6 film festival, a flagship Basingstoke event that draws visitors from across the globe and showcases independent short films and emerging filmmakers. Celebrating its 10th edition in 2025, Exit 6 exemplifies Basingstoke’s commitment to nurturing talent, championing new voices and sharing culture with the world. Together, all these institutions and events demonstrate the fact that the town does not simply inherit a cultural legacy but actively lives it, making Basingstoke a compelling and deserving choice for UK town of culture 2029, as I am sure everyone here agrees.

For 250 years, Jane Austen has enriched our literary heritage, our culture and, indeed, our economy through her sharp wit and romanticism, and her ability to capture the enduring nature of human relationships. What are the Government doing to celebrate and promote Jane Austen’s extraordinary legacy? How are we supporting today’s and tomorrow’s generations of female authors and artists? Given the central role that place played in shaping Austen’s life and career, and because it has also been the birthplace of other great British icons such as Burberry, and is now home to the Anvil, the Haymarket and the Proteus, and the Willis Museum, the Milestones Museum and much more, does the Minister agree that Basingstoke would be a deserving winner of the UK town of culture 2029, which is to be decided next year?

Basingstoke represents a notable chapter in Britain’s cultural and economic story, having produced globally recognised figures and brands. I am delighted to see so many colleagues here today to celebrate one of them—Jane Austen—and to acknowledge the vital role that our authors, artists and entrepreneurs play in shaping who we are as a nation.

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to bob in their place if they intend to speak in the debate. I want to bring in the Front Benchers at 2.28 pm. I am not going to impose a time limit now, but that will depend on how people behave.

13:45

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

It is very good to see you, Mr Efford, presiding over this timely debate. Not only is this the 250th-anniversary year, but I think this is the first Backbench Business slot available after Jane’s actual birthday, which was on Tuesday. I congratulate the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) not only on securing the debate—I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it—but on his excellent speech.

The last time I saw a production of a Jane Austen novel was “Pride and Prejudice” at the Vyne in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, as part of the 250th celebrations. It was the second-wettest outdoor event I have ever been at. By coincidence, the very wettest was “Sense and Sensibility” earlier that same summer, at Uppark just outside Petersfield.

A number of places have a link to Jane Austen, including Southampton, Winchester, Bath and, of course, the rectory at Steventon. But it was at Chawton that Jane Austen’s genius truly flourished, and where she either wrote entirely or revised and completed all six of her globally beloved novels. The house in Chawton is now, of course, the Jane Austen’s House museum, which is in my East Hampshire constituency.

The significance of Austen as a novelist can hardly be overstated. Things changed after her work. It was not that she wrote about ordinary people—they were not quite ordinary—but they were a lot more ordinary than the grand, historical figures or the Gothic characters who would typically have featured in novels up to that point. The novels were about ordinary events for those people: the subtle putdowns and the slightly tedious visits they had to withstand. She demonstrated that the domestic world holds just as much drama and just as many moral dilemmas and lessons as any royal court or battlefield. They were not quite what you would call kitchen sink dramas, but they were a social observation and social commentary, so in turn became a sort of social campaigning, because to change the world we first have to observe and explain it.

There was then Austen’s own ordinariness, coming not quite from the masses, but still, relatively speaking, ordinary. She was the daughter of a clergyman with a fairly limited formal education, which makes hers also a story of social mobility. That social mobility grew posthumously. We talk about the enduring significance and legacy of authors, but for Jane Austen that grew dramatically with the increasing interest in the 1870s and 1880s.

The huge increase then came in the mid-1990s, with the BBC adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice”. Notably, the most famous scene in that adaptation was not in the book. There is an interesting question about how new media adds to what we already have. As the hon. Member for Basingstoke said, we see the storylines in “Bridget Jones”, “Clueless” and “Bridgerton”—there may be no actual Austen link, but quite a few people probably think there is. In any event, we see a kind of genre-spawning going on.

I am not a literary critic. Were Jane Austen to describe me, she might say something like, “He was a moderately read man who happily knew the limits of his own scholarship.” I will not go further than that—the hon. Member for Basingstoke did a very good job—but I can and will pay tribute to all those who do so much to keep Jane Austen’s legacy alive, celebrate her work and its wider impact and make sure it gets to a wider and wider audience. It just so happens that many of those people are resident in my constituency and connected with Jane Austen’s house, Chawton House or the Regency day and festival.

I already spoke briefly about the significance of the house in Chawton. It was Jane’s place of stability after what had been a period of insecurity, and it was there that she received her own copy of “Pride and Prejudice”—I think she called it her darling child when it arrived from London—and read it out loud to a neighbour with her mother. Not only was the house the place where those novels were fashioned; it was also the place where that “truth universally acknowledged” was heard out loud for the first time. The house became a museum in 1949. Today, it holds an unparalleled collection of first editions, personal letters and artefacts, and receives tens of thousands of visitors from around the world. This year, for the anniversary year, there were 55,000 visitors, a third of whom were from overseas. Under the leadership of Lizzie Dunford, it has done amazing things with the team of 18 staff and 80 fantastic volunteers.

However, Chawton is not about only Jane’s own house. There is also what she called the “Great House”: her brother Edward’s house, which is correctly called Chawton House and was the reason that Jane was in Chawton. She was a frequent visitor, even when it was let out to another family. Today, it is a public historic house in the estate run by the Chawton House library trust and is dedicated to telling the stories of women’s history and women’s writing. It has the UK’s leading collection of pre-20th century women’s writing, with around 16,000 items, including the so-called Grandison manuscript in Jane’s own hand.

Chawton House is a centre of scholarship and long has been, but these days it is also a fantastic day out. It has had a great upgrade under the chief executive, Katie Childs. There are brilliant volunteers there who help to bring the place to life. Visitors will discover many influences on Jane’s novels around the house. It runs a great programme of outdoor theatre, classical music and walks—countryside walks such as the walk from Chawton to Farringdon were, of course, a great influence on Jane—as well as being a Royal Horticultural Society partner garden.

Finally, there is the town of Alton, just outside which the small village of Chawton lies. The whole of Alton is really involved with Jane Austen’s legacy. On 21 June this year, we had a fantastic unveiling of the new bust of Jane Austen, which is now in the Alton Regency garden just outside the assembly rooms and very close to the branch of her brother Henry’s bank on the high street. It was great to have there the sculptor Mark Coreth and descendants of the Austen and Knight families. The bust was made at Morris Singer foundry in Lasham, which—a little fun fact for colleagues—was the same foundry that fashioned the two unique bronze sculptures outside the door of Westminster Hall that mark the late Queen’s platinum jubilee.

Every year, the Regency day and festival bring into Alton hundreds of people, particularly those with a fondness for period costume. It is a great spectacle. The Regency ball always sells out. There is great work between Chawton and Basingstoke on some of these commemorative events. That festival is now into its 17th year and attracts people from around the world, with some 50 events. It has a brilliant organising committee, which includes the secretary, Julie McLatch. It was all the brainchild of local hero Pat Lerew.

In conclusion, and given the season, I will quote Mr Elton in “Emma”:

“At Christmas every body invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather”—

which will be a good thing if it stays as filthy as it is outside right now. Mr Efford, if I might paraphrase Caroline Bingley in “Pride and Prejudice”:

“I sincerely hope your Christmas”—

in Eltham and Chislehurst—

“may abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings”.

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

You all have roughly six minutes each. I am not imposing a time limit; just be courteous to others who want to speak.

13:54

[Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) on securing this timely and welcome debate and, to be honest, on allowing us to reread and rewatch the great works of Jane Austen, all on the grounds of pure research.

I begin by quoting Jane herself from “Persuasion”:

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures.”

Those words were spoken by Anne Elliot, a character who knows exactly what it is like to be overlooked, underestimated and quietly right all along, and they seem like an entirely appropriate place to begin discussing Jane Austen. As has already been said, we are meeting just after the 250th anniversary of her birth, and what strikes me is not simply that her novels are still read and in great demand, but they are still being argued over, still being adapted and still capable of illuminating modern debates about power, class and gender. To my mind, that is the clearest measure of her literary and cultural legacy.

Jane Austen was a woman who was often presented as a writer of romance and— sometimes dismissively—the original chick lit, but she was a woman who never wrote escapism. As we have been reminded during this debate, she was writing social commentary, delivered lightly but never casually. Her novels examine money, inheritance, reputation and power with real precision, particularly in how they shape women’s lives or, as she puts it clearly in “Sense and Sensibility”:

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”

That line does feel a bit less romantic than totally economically literate.

The clearest example of Austen’s seriousness is “Mansfield Park”, which to my mind is a novel that is often overshadowed by “Pride and Prejudice” or “Emma”. Through Fanny Price, Austen explores dependence and what it means to be grateful, constrained and constantly reminded of one’s place. Fanny’s refusal to marry wealth at the cost of her conscience is not dramatic rebellion; it is moral resistance under pressure. Austen shows us that integrity, especially for women, is rarely rewarded quickly or loudly.

Austen is never heavy-handed. Her greatest strength is irony. She exposes hypocrisy, entitlement and self-importance by letting her characters speak for themselves, often while being entirely convinced of their own virtue. It is a technique that has aged extremely well and still feels uncomfortably familiar in public life, which is why her influence today is so extensive. She wrote about structures, not fashions, which is why her work travels so easily more than two centuries later. We have already talked at length about “Bridget Jones’s Diary”, but we also have Bollywood’s “Bride and Prejudice”, modern queer retellings such as “Fire Island”, and let us not forget “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, which suggests that if a writer’s work can survive both the literary canon and the undead, their cultural legacy is in a really good place.

Most recently, historians such as Lucy Worsley have reminded us that Austen’s radicalism lay in insisting that ordinary women were worthy of being heroines and that their inner lives mattered, which is why she continues to speak so powerfully to young women today. Her heroines think, judge, change their minds and, crucially, are allowed to say no. They are underestimated, patronised and sometimes dismissed as trivial, only to prove otherwise. That theme has not entirely lost its relevance.

By writing women’s lives seriously—their judgment, their intelligence and their everyday experience—Austen helped to shift what was considered worthy of literature. Writers such as the Brontë sisters, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell went on to write very different kinds of novels, but they did so in a literary world that Austen herself had helped to open up. She showed that stories centred on women could be complex, rigorous and enduring, and that women novelists themselves deserved to be taken seriously. Her influence runs through literature, films, television and popular culture, and it continues to invite us to question how power really operates, often behind politeness and convention.

I will end with Austen herself again, who wrote:

“One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it”.

Some 250 years on, Jane Austen remains beloved, not because she smoothed over difficulty, but because she understood it, and because she trusted her readers to do exactly the same.

14:00

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Efford. What a wonderful debate to bring to this Chamber, on which I congratulate the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy). Jane Austen: what a legend, what a genius! She is still inspiring us today, and what an opportunity we have to hear from her directly, as she wanders the streets of Bath in 2025 through a little bit of time travel:

“My dearest Cassandra, you will laugh at me, I am sure, for the rapture in which I write, but I cannot help myself, for Bath is a much changed city from when you and I did grace its fair streets. I shall do but imperfect justice with my pen, but will endeavour to paint in your mind a picture befitting this changed city, which, despite the marching of time, I still find to hold immeasurable beauty.

As I wound through the streets of Bath, I marvelled at the honey-coloured stone, which did glow as pleasantly as ever. But sister, what will truly astonish you is what I did see coming towards me: I would call it a carriage, yet it is a strange mechanical one whose body is silver, and how it moves is beyond my comprehension, as there are no horses to pull it. Goodness! The noise it produced was most dreadful: a mixture of cry and roar such that I was compelled to leap from its path.

There are, too, these strange signs affixed around the town, and for the life of me I cannot decipher their meaning. ‘Clean air zone’ is inscribed upon them—what a peculiar thing to write! Sister, when I uncover their origin and meaning, I will let you know with great haste.

No sooner had I proceeded a little further than my senses were again most violently assailed, for I encountered a most merry band and of women, full of uproarious amusement; one did speak of a ‘hen party’. I shall not attempt to describe their attire, for it would, I fear, defile my pen. You may imagine them as you will, sister, but I shall leave that to you.

They still hold celebrations and festivals in Bath; I watched one where ladies and gentlemen paraded about in coats and costumes of such cut and colour that I felt I had stepped into one of my own chapters. I observed them with all the greatest delight, so imagine my surprise when I found it was being undertaken in my honour. How gratifying to have unconsciously inspired so strong an affection!

You will laugh, but it continues. I inquired, and found this not a singular affair; events across the city are held entirely to commemorate me. Exhibitions in museums and balls of the sort we once danced at are held in grand halls during an annual festival. There is even a museum—they call it the Jane Austen Centre—which informs visitors of my life, work and the manner in which I lived. I ought to be embarrassed, and perhaps I am—but only just a little. Mostly, I am entertained beyond measure.

I am often detained by Bath’s excellent bookshops. One such establishment, Persephone Books, is a publisher devoted to selling neglected fiction and non-fiction text by women authors. It is admirable to see this shop promoting women writers. Imagine if when I struggled to publish my books, I had had such support. I find this accompanied with a certain vexation, though, as I see so very few women’s titles—or, indeed, their characters—within school curricula. The imbalance is unmistakable. The books of men and the stories of their heroes are bound in such numbers that it is most improper. I hear—and I do say it is frightful—that only 5% of GCSE pupils studied a text authored by a women for GCSE literature in 2024. Such figures speak plainly and require no ornament. That books written by women appear so seldom in the curriculum is most unjustifiable.

I then, most unexpectedly, found myself being carried along by a crowd, my legs no longer my own. Hurried to a great stadium and with my curiosity spurring me on I ventured within and behold, what a spectacle presented itself! A number of gentlemen most astonishingly hurled one another across the grass in pursuit of a misshapen ball. They ended up in a most undignified heap, yet the people appeared highly entertained. I, caught up in the fervour, did lend my own voice. That is how I, to my own surprise, became a supporter of Bath Rugby.

Cassandra, how a single city can change so much I cannot easily comprehend, but it is not an unhappy alternative lying before me. Far from it: Bath still leaves my heart fluttering. Until you can come again, you must accept this poor description in place of your own experience, and believe me, as ever, to be your affectionate sister Jane.”

I apologise to all Jane Austen scholars, everybody who loves her and the great author herself for this poor epistle—but my team and I had great fun.

14:05

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I sincerely congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) for securing this debate. To take a quote from my favourite Austen novel, “Persuasion”:

“I wish nature had made such hearts…more common”.

I am also delighted to see the Minister in his place, not least because it has prompted me to consider which of Austen’s clergymen the Minister might best embody. He will be relieved to know I have discounted Edmund Bertram and Edward Ferrars, but I think we might be able to agree that he embodies Henry Tilney from “Northanger Abbey”, with his quick wit.

I cannot claim a constituency link to Jane Austen, but I would draw members attention to a doctoral researcher at the University of Cumbria, headquartered in my constituency, whose doctoral research explores Jane Austen’s depiction of walking as a form of resistance by her heroines—and it is her heroines that I wish to talk about in my brief remarks. She is a creator of heroines who have stood the test of time. In an era where women were often confined by social norms, Austen gave us characters who dared to think, to feel and to act with independence and integrity.

Those characteristics were embodied by my own A-level English teacher, Mrs Nutley, who steered us through the social pretensions and moral hypocrisy laid bare in “Mansfield Park” and unlocked in me a love of Jane Austen. I come from a working-class family. Our home was modest, my parents hard working and, while storybooks were read to me as a child, the books on our shelves in my adolescence were dictionaries and encyclopaedias, not novels. Therefore, I owe a debt of thanks to my English teachers at Trinity school, Carlisle, for opening up a world of Austen, Dickens, Hardy, the Brontës and—perhaps less enjoyably—James Joyce.

However, literature does not have to adhere to Joyce’s experimentalism to be good, and I would argue that the strength of Austen’s work, and what we learn from it, lies in the gentle subtlety of her drawn characters. Her heroines are not perfect; they stumble, they err and they learn. That is precisely what makes them extraordinary.

Elizabeth Bennet, with her wit and courage, reminds us that self-respect is non-negotiable. She refuses to marry for convenience, choosing instead to marry for love and equality. Elinor Dashwood, calm and rational, teaches us the strength of quiet resilience, while her sister Marianne embodies the beauty and the peril of unguarded passion. Then there is Emma Woodhouse, clever and confident, whose journey from vanity to humility shows that growth is the true mark of greatness. My favourite is Anne Elliot, whose quiet endurance and steadfast heart reveal that patience and hope can triumph over time and circumstance. In my favourite passage, she moves Captain Wentworth to declare:

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.”

By the way, if anyone is looking for an Austen to watch over the Christmas period, I strongly commend the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of “Persuasion”.

Austen’s heroines are not rebels in the loud sense. They do not storm barricades or shout slogans. Their rebellion is subtle, yet profound. They insist on being true to themselves in a world that often demands compromise. They value love, but never at the cost of dignity. They seek happiness, but never by surrendering principle. In praising these women, we praise Austen’s vision—a vision that still speaks to us today. Her heroines remind us that strength comes in many forms: in wit, in kindness, in perseverance and the in courage to choose one’s own path. Those are heroines I feel we need now more than ever.

14:11

[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.

14:15

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I rise to speak in this debate simply because I love Jane Austen and all her works. We commemorate her in this debate, as we did on the 250th anniversary of her birth on Tuesday. Today, there has been a statement in the House on the Government’s launch of their strategy to counter violence against women and girls.

One might ask: what is the link? Jane knew about coercive control and the endless structural limitations on women without means, income or property. From Charlotte Lucas in “Pride and Prejudice” to Harriet Smith in “Emma” and the Dashwood family—a mother and two daughters brought low, fallen on hard times, because of the death of the father—there are many examples of how women have to navigate a world with the odds stacked against them.

Jane Austen is a comic genius, and I do not want to sideline her wit. It is because of her ability to describe with humour the realities of life for women in the 19th century that her stories resonate across those centuries. The context may have changed, but the fundamental truths are the same—not the idea that any young gentleman with means is in want of a wife, but the constraints, limits, dangers and insecurities of life for women. Those truths echo across time, as well as echoing through the streets of my constituency.

Jane Austen’s sense of place was as acute as her observation of the social and economic condition of women, as demonstrated by the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse). Ramsgate, in my constituency, is portrayed in her novels as a place of ill repute. In “Mansfield Park”, it is referred to as a place where bad things happen. In “Pride and Prejudice”, it plays a larger role. Mr Wickham, who as we all know is a walking cautionary tale for all young women, plans to “elope”, as they call it, with Georgiana Darcy to Ramsgate. Of the bad’uns in Austen’s books, Mr Wickham, as a walking cautionary tale, is outdone only by the red flag of Frank Churchill going to London to get his hair cut. I can tell Members that reading that at the age of 17 helped me a lot later on.

The fact is, with Georgiana Darcy, her brother had to intervene to stop that elopement happening. In the novel, that is portrayed as a proof-point that Mr Darcy is a morally strong and decisive figure, and not the terrible bore that Lizzy Bennet thought he was at first. Avoiding or surviving such an abuse of power, however, should not rely on good relatives or friends; not all women have a Mr Darcy to intervene. That is why, nowadays, we need support for all—so that risks are reduced for all women.

Eloping sounds romantic, and seaside resorts such as Ramsgate have often had a saucy or edgy reputation. Indeed, this week, a blue plaque dedicated to Jane Austen has been installed in Ramsgate to acknowledge her link to the town. Her brother, Francis—better known as Frank—was a Royal Navy officer in the town. There are some suggestions that she disliked it, given that it was disreputable, but she was able to develop characters and so forth on the basis of it.

The reality for women now, as then, is that their lives can be ruined by the actions of men like Wickham. It is therefore right for the Government to declare that violence against women and girls is an emergency. It is a problem even older than Jane Austen’s wonderful novel. On this day, when we commemorate her genius, we should also remember that her stories reveal that misogyny, violence and coercion have been a daily reality for women for centuries.

Jane Austen’s cultural contribution stretches well beyond the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) and beyond the stories of romance, helping us to understand women’s condition. Although things have improved—indeed, have been transformed—for most of us, the fear of financial hardship and the risk of being subject to the whims and power of men still loom large in the lives of many women. Let us make Jane Austen’s legacy an effort to consign that fear to history.

14:19

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) on securing this debate. I am the Liberal Democrats’ Chief Whip, so I am not given to making speeches as a Liberal Democrat spokesperson, but I have chosen to speak in this debate because my degree is in English language and literature and—as other Members have already said—I am a Jane Austen fan.

As the MP for North East Fife, I cannot claim that my constituency has any relationship to Jane Austen. If she had come to North East Fife, she might have wanted to bathe in the sea off the East Neuk, but she would have found it rather chilly. As the hon. Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington), whose constituency includes Ramsgate, just pointed out, going to the seaside was not necessarily a safe thing for Austen’s characters to do. Many of them came to harm by the sea.

Clearly, the streets and the quirks of neighbours captured in Austen’s writing are one of the reasons why we have had such a varied debate today. Walter Scott, the 250th anniversary of whose birth we celebrated in 2021, was a Jane Austen fan and described her as having

“the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment”.

I want to put Jane Austen into her historical context. Many Members have already done that in this debate, but the Napoleonic wars have not been mentioned so far. I recommend Jenny Uglow’s “In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon’s Wars, 1793-1815”, which is available in the House of Commons Library. If we map Austen’s life on to that period of time, we see that the Napoleonic wars started as she turned 18 and concluded only two years before her untimely death.

There has been some criticism of the letters that Austen wrote and of her attitudes towards death. There is a particular letter in which she comments on the stillbirth of a woman known to her by basically suggesting that the stillbirth was caused by the woman being “frighted” at seeing the face of her husband. Consequently, some people have suggested that there is a cruelness to Austen, but I would argue that that was the reality of her times: women died in childbirth; these things happened.

We see Austen’s perspective on war in many ways in her books. We see the Redcoats that Lydia Bennet encounters in Meryton, and naval officers such as Captain Wentworth and his colleagues in “Persuasion”. There were troops everywhere in Britain during that time. War was a fact of life, but it was also a fact of life that, because the war continued for so long, it became part of people’s day-to-day lives so it did not intrude on their consciousness in a way that an event of shorter duration might have done. War is part of Austen’s novels, but it is not at the centre of them. As has been said already, Jane had brothers in the Navy. She was heavily invested in their careers and understood the peril that families felt about a loved one serving overseas.

What is interesting about Austen’s writing is that it not only resonated with her contemporaries but has continued to resonate with many different generations across the ensuing 250 years. In 1918, as part of efforts to boost morale in the trenches, two of her works, “Persuasion” and “Northanger Abbey”, were selected by the War Office for the Forces book club and printed in a size that could fit in a soldier’s pocket. That does not suggest that Austen produced “chick-lit”. Indeed, a hospital worker in 1915 wrote an article in The Times about their efforts to find appropriate reading to calm the nerves of those suffering from shellshock:

“It happened that a tired soldier found her”—

that is, Austen—

“just what he wanted…We found ourselves…wishing that the dear lady had written at greater length…as the last page of ‘sense and sensibility’ came.”

The other thing I will say about war is also about empire. One of the things that we do not necessarily recognise in “Mansfield Park”, for example, is that it is quite clear that the Bertram family are profiting from the slave trade in the Caribbean.

In relation to Bath and my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), I was at the Topping & Company bookshop in St Andrews in my constituency last week and people there were talking about how popular the celebrations in Bath for Austen’s birthday had been. It is truly remarkable that a woman who in her lifetime earned only £631 from writing—the equivalent of £45,000 today—has gone on to create a multimillion-pound industry.

I want to talk a bit about the literature—how did Austen capture so many hearts and minds? I will suggest a second book to Members: John Mullan’s “What Matters in Jane Austen?” is a set of 20 essays that really track her literary genius. It is a book that I come back to on a regular basis, though not quite as regularly as I come back to the books themselves. John Mullan argues that Austen was a trailblazer in literary ingenuity:

“She did things with fiction…with characterisation, with dialogue…that had never been done before.”

We take free indirect style in English fiction for granted, so we underestimate how revolutionary Austen’s style was. Because she filtered her plots through the consciousness of her characters, we really saw real people. That is one reason that her art has endured.

It was the little things that mattered—the smallest of details. One chapter of Mullan’s book talks about blushing. That seems such a small, inconsequential thing in some ways but Emma Woodhouse—the one Austen character who is very secure in her opinions, her confidence and her sense of self—blushes when she is reprimanded by Mr Knightley for her treatment of Miss Bates on Box Hill. That is the first sign that that woman, Emma, who has been so confident in her opinions until now, has got things wrong and does not truly know herself.

Austen’s plotting of who keeps silent in “Emma” turns the book into a detective novel. That is one reason why so many people can return to her books: you find something new every time. All of that shows how crafted Austen’s work was, and that craft has allowed her work to be remade again and again. I am a woman of a certain age, so 1995 was quite important for me, whether it was “Clueless”, “Persuasion”—I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) about that production—or the very well known “Pride and Prejudice” adaptation. I have unfortunately been unable to get to the “Austenmania!” exhibition, but that would have been very popular with me. As the hon. Member for Basingstoke mentioned, the careers of some of our greatest stars, and maybe even our Prime Minister, may have been launched through such things.

What inspires so deep a devotion to Austen’s work, even in the inattentive reader? I would argue it is the way she captures human follies and scruples with genuine affection and humour. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) referenced what Mr Bennet said about how we make

“sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn”.

On Mr Bennet, I have to say that the 1995 production fooled us all. Mr Bennet is a pretty neglectful dad, isn’t he? How did he end up with five daughters and be unable to provide for them on £2,000 a year? I think he has a bit to answer for.

Towards the end of that story, Elizabeth reflects that Darcy

“had yet to learn to be laughed at”.

We, the readers, understand that under her tutelage he will learn that. We also learn to laugh at Darcy a little ourselves. Austen’s ironies attract us still, but her balance and poise often elude imitators. But while laughing at foolishness is a good way to get by, it is not ultimately the salve that brought comfort to the soldier in the trenches or to an admiral’s family. To quote Beatrice Scudeler,

“if her novels prove that moral corruption is ubiquitous, they also make the case that, despite our corrupted nature, we’re not unsalvageable: forgiveness and redemption are always within reach of humankind.”

From Emma to Anne Elliot to Mr Darcy, confronting their mistakes is a powerful factor in how Austen’s characters grow. Fanny Price is one of the least popular of Austen’s characters because she is always good and always right, and although that is a very nice way for someone to live, it sometimes makes them slightly insufferable to live with. I agree with the hon. Member for Carlisle—Anne Elliot is my favourite character and her failing is that she has not been headstrong enough, which is not often a problem for the other heroines of Austen.

Austen’s most powerful innovation was to realise that a lack of self-knowledge is the very voice of narration. Her dialogue is king of her works. The comic characters are monologists whereas our heroes—such as Emma and Mr Knightley—are supreme in their dialogue. We should also look out for the significant characters who we never hear from—they do not actually speak—because they are interesting too.

To conclude, in an age where it is less and less common to call on our neighbours and know their follies and scruples, and where the ridiculousness of Miss Bates would have potentially meant that Emma’s hot takes went viral on social media, it does us good as politicians to be reminded that community requires compassion.

14:29

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) for securing this debate on the literary and cultural legacy of Jane Austen. I also thank everyone in the Public Gallery and those around the UK, including my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), who champion her legacy.

Two hundred and fifty years after her birth, Jane Austen remains not just a cornerstone of English literature but a distinctly English voice rooted in place, tradition, social order and moral responsibility—a true Tory perhaps. Her wit and insight are timeless. As she wrote:

“It is not what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.”

That line captures something profoundly serious beneath the comedy: an emphasis on conduct, duty and personal responsibility. Those values feel increasingly relevant to Members of this place.

It is sometimes forgotten that Jane Austen was, by instinct and upbringing, a conservative figure in the truest sense of the word. She was, as we have heard, the daughter of a Church of England clergyman, deeply embedded in parish life. She was respectful of established institutions and sceptical of radical upheaval—she wrote in the long shadow of the French revolution. Her novels consistently defend the importance of social stability, inherited responsibility and moral restraint. She sought not to overturn society but to understand it and, where necessary, gently challenge and correct it. Her characters are judged not by fashionable opinions but by their behaviour towards others. Her heroines are not radicals attempting to dismantle the world around them, but thoughtful, intelligent women navigating society as it was in their time, valuing good judgment, self-control and integrity. Their flaws are acknowledged, their virtues earned, and their happy endings never accidental.

Jane Austen’s life was firmly rooted in England. She was born in Stevenson in rural Hampshire and wrote arguably her greatest works in Chawton. She lived for a time in Bath and was laid to rest in Winchester cathedral. She drew deeply from parish life, village society and the rhythms of provincial England. Those connections remain visible today across Hampshire, Bath, Southampton and beyond.

Jane Austen’s legacy continues to make a real economic contribution. Her house in Chawton attracts tens of thousands of visitors each year, as my right hon. Friend said, while Austen-related tourism supports jobs in hospitality, heritage and the creative industries. Her novels, which earned her just over £600 in her lifetime, now generate millions through book sales, film adaptations and cultural tourism. Her reach has grown further through adaptation: more than 70 films and television series have been inspired by her work, from faithful period dramas to modern reinterpretations, introducing new audiences to her stories and projecting a distinctively British cultural inheritance across the world. Her place in our national life is reflected not only in festivals and exhibitions but quite literally in our pockets. Since 2017, Jane Austen has featured on the £10 note—a quiet but fitting recognition of her contribution to our cultural and literary heritage.

Yet despite Jane Austen’s popularity, there have been attempts to sideline her work and that of other literary greats from parts of the curriculum. That would be a mistake. Jane Austen is not an optional extra in our cultural inheritance; she is central to it. The then Education Secretary said in December 2012:

“I do not see anything wrong with having the 19th century at the heart of the English curriculum. As far as I am concerned, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy—not to mention George Eliot—are great names that every child should have the chance to study.” —[Official Report, 12 December 2012; Vol. 554, c. 583.]

Two hundred and fifty years on from her birth, Jane Austen’s work endures because it speaks the permanent truths about human nature, society and the value of continuity over chaos. She reminds us that progress does not require rupture or revolution, and that civilisation is sustained not by grand theories but by character, restraint and responsibility. That is a literary and cultural legacy well worth defending and celebrating.

At the end of my short speech, I would like to thank everyone for their contributions. I wish them all a merry Christmas, and I hope this Government can find some sense and sensibility in 2026.

14:34

[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.

14:52

[Luke Murphy]

It has been a delight to debate this subject under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank all the contributors and the Minister in particular for making himself available to respond to the debate. His speech really highlighted why we should celebrate Jane Austen as an author and all her contributions to the UK. I also thank the Minister for his celebration of reading. My dad passed in the last few weeks, and in the eulogy that I gave about him, I talked about my love of reading and his love of buying books. That really struck a chord with me, because his love of reading inspired both myself and my sister, so I really attached myself to his comments. If I am lucky enough to get the same debate this time next year, I will of course follow his mandate to have read six books in advance.

I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French), who attempted his own creative fiction by suggesting that Jane Austen was a Conservative. He also highlighted how she was central to our cultural inheritance. I thank the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip, the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain); as well as setting Jane Austen’s work in historical context, she inspired me to consider which literary figures might inspire our own Chief Whip to contribute to a Westminster Hall debate.

I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington), who made a really powerful speech that highlighted structural violence and the conditions of women both today and in Austen’s day. She drew attention to the really important violence against women and girls strategy that was outlined today, and highlighted Austen’s links to Ramsgate. I thank the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) for briefly highlighting Jane Austen’s link to Cromer. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) highlighted Austen’s deep links to Chawton and the contribution of many of his constituents to celebrating Jane Austen.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) highlighted the many Jane Austen spin-offs, including “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”; the film inspired a conversation this week in my office about how one might survive a zombie apocalypse. My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) gave us a tour of some of her favourite characters, including Elizabeth Bennet, who I know is also the favourite character of Holly in my office, not least because she refused to conform to social norms. My hon. Friend’s reference to quiet rebellion really captured much of Jane Austen’s work.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for her own very creative update of Jane Austen’s work. Finally, I thank the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers), who highlighted Jane Austen’s links to his constituency. He was very generous in his praise for my speech; I have to say that the praise should be directed to Holly and Cait in my office, who I believe greatly enjoyed writing the speech.

Briefly, I pay tribute to Lucy Worsley, who is somewhat of an authority on Jane Austen. It is her birthday today, which is why she has not attended the debate—I wish her a happy birthday. I am grateful to all colleagues from across the House for their thoughtful contributions. I am incredibly grateful to all my constituents—Phil, Debbie, Joan, Tamsin, Adam, Paul, Catherine and many more—whose work and dedication ensures that Austen’s story continues to inspire new generations. Today we have helped to not just preserve Jane Austen’s legacy but affirm the enduring value of literature, creativity and the human stories that connect us all.

Question put and agreed to.

That this House has considered the cultural contribution of Jane Austen.

14:56

Sitting suspended.

Community Audiology

Thursday 18th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Martin Vickers in the Chair]

15:00

[Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered community audiology.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank those who have joined us for the debate and the Front-Bench teams for giving up their time to put in the final shift of this sitting just before Christmas. I realise that I may not be on many people’s Christmas card lists after detaining them to the bitter end, but I appreciate their giving up their time and responding to this important debate. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for securing this debate on community audiology, an under-discussed topic and a very important one in our communities.

Hearing and hearing loss are often the subject of stigma and shame, and sometimes light-hearted jokes in the media and film. Hearing loss is a serious issue—it is not a mild inconvenience—and it can be life-changing. It has a profound impact on the lives of millions of people across England and on the effective functioning of our health and care system more broadly.

Audiology services diagnose, treat and support people with hearing loss and deafness. They are critical to the quality of life and health of a significant proportion of constituents in all our communities. In 2024, 5.8% of people in England reported deafness and hearing loss. Although 94% of hearing loss is related to ageing, that is by no means the only patient group affected. In particular, I note that children’s audiology services are incredibly important to the life chances of children who are born deaf.

Untreated hearing loss has far-reaching consequences for physical and mental health, independence, employment and social participation. People with hearing loss are 2.5 times more likely to experience mental ill health related to social isolation and difficulties finding employment. Elderly people with hearing loss are 2.4 times more likely to experience falls, which in turn increases the risk of hospital admission, loss of independence and long-term care needs.

Untreated age-related hearing loss is one of the single largest modifiable risk factors related to dementia. Evidence suggests that treating adult-onset hearing loss between the ages of 45 and 65 reduces the incidence of dementia by 7%. In the context of an ageing population and the growing prevalence of dementia, that statistic alone should place hearing services firmly within our prevention agenda.

There are significant economic implications to poor service provision. The UK loses an estimated £25 billion a year in lost productivity and unemployment as a result of untreated hearing loss. On average, a person with hearing loss will see around £2,000 less a year than a non-disabled person, and 40% of people with hearing loss will retire early due to the challenges of communicating at work.

The demand for audiology services will only increase over the next few decades. The incidence of hearing loss increases by approximately one percentage point for every year of life. That means that at the age of 50, around 50% of people will experience some level of hearing loss, while 80% will by the age of 80. As our population ages, the pressure on audiology services will grow. As we embark on our mission to rebuild our NHS so that it is a first-class health service fit for the 21st century, it is crucial that we get our approach to audiology services right and in line with the Government’s three key shifts.

Audiology is exceptionally well suited to a nationally directed, community-based model for care, for five key reasons. First, most audiology services are low-risk procedures that can be easily carried out in community-based settings. Currently, 50% of national referrals to hospital ear, nose and throat teams are for uncomplicated non-surgical procedures such as earwax removal and age-related hearing loss. That is difficult to justify clinically or operationally, and sending those patients through complex hospital pathways places unnecessary pressure on ENT services, contributes to longer waiting times and is an inefficient use of specialist capacity. Instead, such procedures can be managed in a safe and effective way by audiologists in community settings.

Just this morning, as if perfectly set up for this debate, I met a constituent at the Christmas present-wrapping event for the fantastic ShopMobility charity in Uxbridge. This gentleman shared with me his wife’s experience in accessing audiology services in our community. His wife faces a more complex hearing issue—not something run of the mill that could be dealt with on the high street—that requires specialist intervention. She has been waiting around a year for a specialist appointment and follow-up at NHS ENT services to have the issue resolved. Shifting less complex cases out of secondary care settings would mean more capacity, more appointments and quicker health for my constituent’s wife, and many more people like her.

Secondly, delivering audiology services in community settings is far more cost-effective. Research by the University of York found that NHS adult audiology pathways delivered by community providers cost between 15% and 25% less than the same pathways delivered by an NHS hospital-based service. There is an obvious financial case for reform to a community-based model.

Thirdly, because audiology services are commissioned at a local level by integrated care boards and have in some cases already been transferred to community services, community audiology is not a new concept. We already have many good examples of good practice to build on, but unfortunately provision is variable and patchy. Thirty of the 42 ICBs in England already commission community-based services, with NHS services delivering assessment, hearing aid fitting, rehabilitation and long-term aftercare in primary care settings, community hospitals, outreach clinics and high street locations. Those services are delivered in partnership with GPs and private providers such as Specsavers. For example, the ICB in my constituency in north-west London commissions community audiology services, with self-referral across our whole area, providing a more consistent and accessible model than many parts of England have today.

Fourthly, delivering audiology in community settings assists the preventive healthcare agenda. People are not always forthcoming about seeking help for hearing loss. On average, it takes around seven to 10 years to acknowledge hearing loss and seek help, meaning that by the time most people present to services, the impact on their health and wellbeing can already be significant. Any barriers or difficulties in getting help can put people off asking for it, further delaying treatment and increasing their personal risk of things such as dementia, falls and mental health challenges, which I have outlined already.

Lastly, audiology provision in the community, especially models that enable patient self-referral without a GP appointment, are better for patients. They empower patients and support the early identification of hearing loss. They reduce travel time and other geographical barriers to access, particularly for older people and those with mobility issues. Community audiology services are particularly impactful for deaf children and their families. Children with hearing loss issues require more frequent appointments than adults—for example, to replace ear moulds for hearing aids as they grow—so community provision with appointments closer to home is particularly helpful for those families.

Taken together, the case for driving a quick shift to community-based audiology is clear. However, despite the opportunities, there remain several structural barriers to the rapid roll-out of community audiology services in every area. The recent Kingdon review of children’s audiology services set out many of the barriers in great detail. Its findings, which I would argue are relevant to audiology services in our country more generally, can be summarised in the words of the introduction: audiology is

“a ‘Cinderella’ service…often overlooked, undervalued and underfunded.”

The most significant issue is that the current system is fragmented and inconsistent, with a clear lack of national oversight. That is apparent from the fact that, astonishingly, the Kingdon review found that there is no national audiology lead in the Department of Health and Social Care, resulting a lack of ownership and accountability for the performance of services. It found that communication between the DHSC and NHS England on known service issues did not meet expected standards. I hope that the merging of the functions of NHS England and DHSC will be a key opportunity to resolve those challenges.

There is patchy coverage of audiology services throughout the country, with a significant postcode lottery of access. NHS audiology services are commissioned locally by ICBs, with tariffs set locally. Although local commissioning can support responsiveness to local needs, in this case it has resulted in wide variation in availability, quality and value for money. As I have said, only 30 of 42 ICBs commission adult community audiology services. In around half those areas, coverage is only partial, and in 12 ICBs no service is commissioned at all. In those areas, patients who are concerned about their hearing must first visit the GP and then be referred to a hospital-based service.

As I have set out, the lack of community provision leads to longer waits, poorer services and more expensive provision in some areas of England. NHS England’s 2023 guidance encouraged direct access and self-referral to audiology services to reduce pressures on GPs, yet evidently not all ICBs have implemented that guidance. Local commissioning and tariff setting has also created substantial inconsistencies in tariffs. In some areas, audiology service tariffs have been set below the cost of delivering care, which has forced some providers to reduce and compromise service quality by, for example, cutting follow-up appointments, outcome measurement and rehabilitation support.

In some areas, local commissioning within limited financial envelopes has resulted in activity caps based on financial envelopes rather than patient need, resulting in predictable waiting list growth. Some services have reportedly been asked to reduce throughput or pause the issuing of hearing aids entirely in order to remain within their contractual limits. This practice undermines the principle of care based on clinical needs and risks storing up greater costs for the future.

The lack of national oversight has produced issues with quality assurance. While many independent and third sector providers deliver high-quality services, there is clearly variation in quality of service, and currently no mandatory system-wide quality assurance requirement for all NHS-funded audiology provision. That lack of oversight has also led to certain services falling through the gaps of NHS provision. The starkest example is earwax removal, about which I am sure many of us will have had emails from our constituents. It is perhaps not the sexiest of issues, and not one that we often like to talk about. I will hold my hand up: I have had earwax removal several times—historically from my GP, and more recently in private Specsavers-based settings—so I can speak at first hand about the impact of these services, or the lack of them.

Historically, wax removal was carried out by GPs and nurses in GP practices. Following a change to the GP contract in 2012, it was no longer designated as a core service, and now, over a decade later, the majority of GP practices no longer provide it. As a result, patients who cannot self-care or self-fund their treatment in a private setting often have no option other than to refer themselves to specialist hospital ENT services when the problem gets much worse, unless they live in one of the very small number of ICB areas that do still commission the service as part of the community audiology pathway. Wax removal is a simple, basic procedure, and it is nonsensical that it is not always delivered in the community.

Data collection and oversight is also extremely poor. NHS England recently decided to stop referral-to-treatment waiting time reporting for audiology services, which has removed visibility of the full patient pathway. Diagnostic data suggests that audiology is now a poorly performing diagnostic service, with over 70,000 people waiting and some regions experiencing delays of more than 40 weeks. Without consistent data, commissioners and providers, and policymakers such as us, simply cannot understand where pressures are greatest and where intervention is needed most.

Like many areas of community services, audiology services are also seeing significant workforce planning issues. There are fewer than 10,000 audiologists and hearing therapists in the UK, and work by the National Deaf Children’s Society and the British Academy of Audiology found that 48% of audiology services have seen a decline in staffing since 2019, equating to an overall reduction of around 8% of the total workforce.

The Kingdon review described the audiology workforce as having been “neglected for years”, with low status, poor professional representation, limited governance and insufficient investment in research and training and development. Coherent workforce planning could be facilitated by the introduction of a single professional register for audiologists, as well as a much more consistent approach to professional development, training pathways and retention measures. This is incredibly important given the predicted increase in demand for services, and I hope that audiology services, and community and primary care workforce issues more generally, will feature centrally in the Government’s promised new workforce plan, as we seek to shift activity away from secondary care towards primary and community-based care.

I welcome the steps the Government have taken to move forward improvements in audiology services. The commissioning and publication of the Kingdon review was a very helpful step. The 10-year health plan for England, published in July, committed to enabling self-referral to clinical audiology, using the NHS app where appropriate, which is welcome. NHS England is supporting providers and ICBs to improve audiology services through capital investment, upgrading audiology facilities, expanding testing capacity via community diagnostic centres, and direct support through the national audiology improvement collaborative.

All those developments are welcome, but clearly there is much more to do. We now need a coherent national framework that gives audiology the strategic attention it deserves. That should include, first, a national commissioning framework for audiology services, including standardised tariffs and activity planning to reduce unwarranted variation and ensure that services are commissioned on the basis of patient need rather than short-term financial constraints locally.

Secondly, the framework should mandate system-wide quality assurance for all NHS-funded audiology services, regardless of provider, building on existing frameworks. Thirdly, it should require a clear national direction on the movement of audiology services into community and neighbourhood health models, setting out how services should integrate with primary care, ENT, social care and broader support services. Fourthly, it should require the reinstatement of referral-to-treatment waiting time reporting for audiology, so that performance is transparent and improvement efforts can be properly targeted.

Fifthly, the framework should require sustained investment in the audiology workforce, including for expanded training places, improved retention measures and the implementation of the Kingdon review’s recommendations on professional registration and governance. Finally, it should require action to ensure equitable access to core interventions such as earwax removal, so that access to basic hearing care is not determined by postcode or ability to pay.

Audiology services may not often feature prominently in political debate, but they matter deeply to millions of people. They matter to older people striving to remain independent, to working-age adults seeking to stay in employment, and to children, whose language, development and life chances depend on early and effective intervention. Community audiology offers a practical evidence-based opportunity to improve access, quality and value for money, but realising this opportunity will require national leadership, clear standards and some sustained investment.

I thank all Members and the Front-Bench teams for being here. I hope the Minister can address the issues in his response. If we are serious about prevention, reducing health inequalities and delivering care closer to home, then community audiology must be part of the conversation. I hope that, as we do so often in this place, we can all say “Hear, hear!”, not only as a mark of agreement, but as a promise of a better future for hearing services in every part of our country.

[Hon. Members]

Hear, hear!

15:16

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) on moving this timely motion. I declare an interest: I am someone who suffers from hearing loss—it is good to be honest about these things. I recently found a picture of myself in uniform in the pouring rain, looking very miserable in Germany or on Salisbury plain, leaning against a 25-pounder. I can assure Members that those guns went off next to my ear on many occasions, and it is a very loud bang indeed.

I am not alone in suffering from some hearing loss. As the hon. Gentleman made clear, if we group together deafness, hearing loss and tinnitus, some 18 million people in the UK are affected by hearing conditions. Of those among us who are 55 or over, more than half suffer from hearing loss, as he said. Of those of us who are 70 and older—Mr Vickers, you and I were born just weeks apart—over 80% have some form of hearing loss. Some 2.4 million adults across Britain have hearing loss that is severe enough for them to struggle with conversational speech in some situations.

We all know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That is even more true in medicine than in any other walk of life. I am one of 2 million people in the UK who use a hearing aid. People should not be ashamed of using a hearing aid. People are not ashamed of wearing glasses—the Minister, Mr Vickers, and the distinguished consultant from Suffolk, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley), are all wearing glasses. It is a fact of life, and we should support people.

The British Academy of Audiology estimates that there are 6.7 million people who could benefit from a hearing aid but do not currently use one. The impact is not limited to wives, irritated that we have not heard them—although I must admit that if someone is known in the family to have hearing loss, it is very convenient. I am frequently ticked off by my wife because I am generally completely useless, and sometimes I pretend I have not heard her, so there are some benefits.

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

The right hon. Gentleman is busted now.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

At the risk of giving in to economic reductionism, there is a significant impact on the economy. The Royal National Institute for Deaf People has estimated that untreated hearing loss costs the UK economy around £30 billion per year in lost productivity. Adults of working age with hearing loss have an employment rate of 65%, compared with 79% for those without any disabilities. Hearing loss has a social cost as well, as it has an impact on daily life and often increases isolation. Too often, we are embarrassed by hearing loss when we should be tackling it head on.

Another problem is a lack of audiologists. Unwisely, the Government have maintained the cap on the number of people allowed to study medicine—a restrictive measure that the doctors’ unions cling to regressively. The first priority should be the health of the public. We should allow anyone who meets the high standards that we expect of those studying medicine to do so.

Instead, the doctors’ unions ensure there is a lack of domestic supply to protect their bargaining position, but that means we are forced to make up the shortfall by importing doctors from other countries, often less developed ones. Many countries, not just fully developed ones, have high standards of medical education. It seems to me, and to many others, morally dubious for the NHS to pick the cream of doctors from any developing country and bring them here. Their diligence, training and expertise are much needed in their home countries. Meanwhile, we have excellent people here who cannot get into medical school—not because they are not good enough, but because the numbers are capped.

The shortfall in audiology is yet another reason why we need to address this issue. We have over 3,000 registered audiologists working in the UK, across the NHS, the private sector and educational settings. Figures from the British Academy of Audiology show that 48% of services have reported reduced staff, with an overall decline of 8% in the audiology workforce. Nearly one in 10 clinical posts in audiology are currently vacant, and 65% of audiology services have at least one vacancy. Those shortages exist across multiple salary bands, from junior to senior clinicians.

I am not blaming this Government, by the way; I am not being party political. This problem is the fault of successive Governments and Health Secretaries, who have failed to address it. Back in 2006, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People pointed out in evidence to the Health Committee:

“A recent NHS workforce project has suggested an additional 1,700 qualified audiologists are required to cope with current pressure. This could take between 10 and 15 years to realise under the current training programmes.”

That was back in 2006, so what has happened since then? It will not surprise the experienced observer that not enough action was taken. Hearing loss is one of the most prevalent long-term conditions in England, yet it is often treated as a low-priority service. If we treated it as a core part of prevention and independence, the rewards would be innumerable. As I said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Demand for audiology services is rising, and the International Longevity Centre estimates that by 2031, one in five Britons will have hearing loss. There is at least increasing public awareness, but with an ageing population, the demand for audiology services is rising. That puts additional pressure on the workforce and on service capacity. Community audiology should not be a marginal service. It is a preventive intervention with clear implications for the wellbeing of individuals and families, economic productivity and long-term public spending. Delivering audiology close to home is ideal, particularly for older patients and those managing long-term conditions.

The current model relies heavily on local commissioning decisions. There is wide variation in access, as well as in the scope and quality of provision across England. Patients in some areas benefit from straightforward self-referral and timely community services, while others face longer waits or unnecessary hospital referrals. I suspect that the service in London and other big cities is better than that in our home county of Lincolnshire, Mr Vickers.

We need to improve the way we collect data on audiology services, so that we can evaluate their impact across the country. Good data will help us to focus on outcomes, as any reform should. National minimum service standards would provide clarity without imposing uniform delivery models. We should preserve local flexibility while ensuring that patients know what level of service they are entitled to expect. Community audiology should be integrated into broader prevention and healthy ageing strategies.

Hearing care supports people to remain economically active and socially connected for longer. That is immensely central to maintaining human dignity as we all get older. Early intervention reduces downstream costs in social care and mental health services. The social and economic impact is huge. There is much we can do now that will produce worthwhile results, so we need action from the Minister.

15:25

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) for choosing this as a subject for debate.

It was fascinating to hear from the Father of the House about his time in the Honourable Artillery Company, listening to the guns and then perhaps regretting it in later years. It reminds us of our responsibility in this House to try to prevent problems that may emerge later. Last weekend, I was reading about a former colleague of mine, Lieutenant Colonel Rob Page, who has suffered 20% hearing loss off the back of his time testing the Ajax vehicle. Plainly, that is something we have to watch out for.

This debate is about community audiology. In my Devon constituency, I represent people who care a great deal about hearing health. Honiton and Sidmouth has the sixth oldest constituents in the country by demographics. Local health data shows that 7.3% of residents in the Devon ICB area report hearing loss or deafness. That compares with an average in England of 5.8%.

In an ageing population, this is about the older age profile of all of our communities. In my constituency the median age is 57, so hearing loss is very common and hearing care is essential. Johns Hopkins University found that people with moderate hearing impairment are more than twice as likely to experience a fall as those without hearing loss. Falls in older people often lead to hospital admissions and then to a significant loss of independence.

The Health Secretary has characterised the plans for NHS reform as being partly about a shift from sickness to prevention and from hospital to communities. Plainly, community audiology will have to sit at the heart of this. In Devon, community audiology has been complicated by some major changes in provider arrangements. Until March this year, Chime Social Enterprise delivered NHS audiology services and routine community audiology. Chime had its challenges, but it had a local presence, including in a lot of towns that I represent. It had drop-in clinics for people who needed urgent repairs or had urgent issues. However, from 1 April 2025, NHS Devon integrated care board commissioned several new providers in place of Chime for routine and specialist audiology, and that changeover has caused a lot of problems.

One elderly constituent, who has relied on hearing aids for more than 25 years, told me that she had to wait from June until September before she was able to see her usual audiologist. When she finally got to her appointment in Sidmouth, she discovered that the new provider had no access to her medical records, and she was told that she would have to come back in November to have new hearing aids fitted and supplied. Something that should not have taken very long at all took a total of five months. That was not just five months of inconvenience waiting for an appointment; it was five months of struggling to communicate with the rest of the world. I wrote to NHS Devon after being inundated by similar reports, and I received a reply to my letter of 16 June saying that the changeover was happening as fast as NHS Devon could make it happen.

Although waiting times appear to be improving, this disruption is not unique to Devon and it reflects wider pressures across the community. Across NHS community audiology in England, 38% of people were waiting six weeks or more for audiology appointments. That is set against the fact that the national hearing loss charity the RNID reports that about 70% of people who go private receive hearing aids or support within two weeks. Plainly, we are seeing that when community audiology breaks down, patients wait longer for appointments, continuity of care is lost, and those who cannot afford to go private get left behind.

That is not supporting the transition—from hospital to community, and from treatment to prevention—that the Government want. If the NHS is truly to prevent hearing loss in the community, community audiology must work for patients every time, and that includes in rural and coastal areas such as the one I represent.

15:29

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) for securing this interesting debate, and I declare a series of interests. I am an ear, nose and throat surgeon, so I have been interested in audiology for 40 years. In this place, I chair the deafness all-party parliamentary group. Until I came here, I was the chair of the Norfolk Deaf Association, which is also called Hear for Norfolk, and I will say a bit about that as we go on. I have worked overseas dealing with patients with hearing loss, and I have been a specialist ear surgeon for 30 years or so. Audiology has really been much of my life.

As many Members have already said, deafness is a hugely common problem and is often much neglected. The statistics that have been cited regarding the percentage of elderly people who begin to develop hearing loss are quite familiar to me. What happens is that couples age together, but they might not always appreciate that fact. There is the story of the man who decides to test his wife’s hearing. He comes up behind her and says, “Mavis?” There is no response, so he says, “Mavis”, then “Mavis!”. She turns around and says, “For the third time, what is it that you want?” It is very familiar to me that many elderly people have hearing loss.

As I think has already been said today, about 2 million people in the country use hearing aids. There are probably about 6 million people in the country who would benefit from a hearing aid and probably about another 2 million hearing aids that are in drawers; they have been distributed to people, but are simply not used. Some people have a lot of hearing aids. They come in and say, “I’ve got all these hearing aids. None of them are any use, doctor.”

The story of NHS hearing aids is that we started with great big cream-coloured plastic boxes with little plaited wires that led to earphones; some of us will remember children at school who had those. Then, of course, the so-called BE hearing aids came later. When I was a young ENT surgeon, I never knew what “BE” stood for. A few years later, somebody told me that it just stood for “behind the ear”. Those were analogue hearing aids and they were quite good. They were extremely inexpensive and were distributed in their millions in NHS hospitals, which is how we ran hearing aid services.

Then, about 25 years ago, digital hearing aids were invented. They were not immediately available in NHS hospital clinics, because they were a little more expensive, so they started to be distributed by private hearing aid providers that sprung up all over the place. Members will know that in many high streets there is an audiology service and in the window there will be one hearing aid in a little box on a felt cushion. Curiously, hardly anybody ever goes in and out of those services. The reason is that those companies do not need to sell many hearing aids to stay in business because of the difference in cost. The digital hearing aids provided by those private providers often cost in the thousands, so they need to sell a hearing aid only once or twice a week to stay in business. At first, those hearing aids were a bit better than the ones we could provide in the hospitals.

Some time later, we began to distribute digital hearing aids through the NHS, which was brilliant. People would come to me and ask, “Do you think I should get a private hearing aid?”, and I would say something like, “Well, you can get a private hearing aid, but it is a bit like a hi-fi.” Someone can go to Argos and get a hi-fi or they can go to Bang & Olufsen and get a hi-fi. There is a big difference in price and they do actually sound quite different. I would say to people, “The hearing aids that we can give you are like John Lewis hearing aids; they are pretty good, and they are good enough for most people. I don’t think you should go and spend £4,000 on two private hearing aids. You should have the hearing aids that I can give you for nothing in my NHS clinic, because most people will be very happy with that.”

That was the model we used until a particular Government came along—I cannot remember which one—and decided that we ought to have something called the “any qualified provider”, or AQP, system. Suddenly, all sorts of people could provide hearing aids willy-nilly. We had a different acronym for it: “any willing provider”. Anyone who wanted to provide hearing aids could do so because, as has been said, there was not a particularly close supervisory mechanism. I have a feeling that anybody could set themselves up as a hearing aid provider, if they wanted to. We had this completely variable system in which some people spent large amounts of money on hearing aids that they kept in a drawer, and some people received hearing aids for nothing from hospital services.

That was how we went on, until somebody mentioned earwax. As some people may remember, general practices used to remove earwax with large stainless steel syringes that had a spout on the end. Those procedures were done by nurses until about 2012 when it stopped being part of the GP contract. There was a problem with the syringe: the little stainless steel nozzle on its end could become a bit worn, so it would not be completely connected. As a result, when somebody pushed the syringe, the stainless steel nozzle could fly off into the ear. I have repaired numerous eardrums over the years that had been smashed by syringing, so that system was not completely without its problems. Of course, we had aural care nurses in hospitals looking after patients and coming to take out their earwax, or if a patient had undergone an ear operation, the nurse would have to clean out their mastoid cavities.

We then, however, began to see all sorts of community providers of earwax services, sometimes set up by people who had been nurses in ear clinics, and sometimes set up by somebody from another occupation—they could have been a Member of Parliament who decided that they were now going to do earwax removal. There was a fee to be gathered from this, and some people did fairly well from removing earwax, but the provision was of very variable quality.

I would like to talk about Hear for Norfolk, or the Norfolk Deaf Association, which I chaired for quite a few years before I came here. It is a community-based audiology service that employs qualified nurses who have previously worked in NHS hospitals, and they perform what we call aural care, which includes removing earwax. People can just turn up to have that done; if they are referred by their GP, it is free on the NHS as there is a contract, or they can pay £50. We have vans that go around the district into nursing homes and small villages to do that work.

We now have a contract for hearing aid provision from the NHS, meaning that our not-for-profit charity provides thousands of hearing aids and treats thousands of patients in a community-based setting. I think that such a model could be developed and rolled out around the country so we have community-based, county-wide, not-for-profit aural care services that provide hearing aids.

I am not confident about simply distributing the contracts for hearing aid provision to a whole lot of private providers—Specsavers is one but there are many others—because the quality of their services is variable, and there will always be an incentive to provide private hearing aids. If someone walks into a service, they will be told, “Well, you can have this NHS hearing aid, but you know what? You could have this private one.”

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The hon. Gentleman is giving an absolutely brilliant speech. It is such a pleasure to hear a Member of Parliament speaking from direct, personal experience. I want to emphasise one important point that might come out of this debate: a lot of people are paying a lot of money for private hearing aids, but I know from personal experience that, nowadays, NHS hearing aids are perfectly satisfactory.

[Peter Prinsley]

I could not agree more, given the number of people who have come to me with handfuls of hearing aids on which they have spent thousands of pounds, telling me that they are just not working—and there is no proper follow-up for many of those people.

The issue with a hearing aid is that it needs to be looked after: it has a mould, it has batteries and it needs cleaning, so there needs to be an arrangement for follow-up. That is the sort of thing that an organisation such as the Norfolk Deaf Association, or Hear for Norfolk, is able to provide—it knows that that needs to happen. We need to be cautious about the quality of community audiology provision. We must not think that just because we are distributing it to respected private providers such as Specsavers, we are necessarily doing the right thing.

It has rightly been said that there is no national lead for audiology. Audiology is in a pickle, and it would be brilliant to get a proper national lead for audiology in the Department of Health and Social Care. There are issues with shortages of audiologists, but when questionnaires ask which healthcare professionals—or even which professionals—have the happiest lives, audiologists come out right at the top. Audiology is a particularly lovely occupation because people come in deaf and you send them out hearing. You hardly ever make them worse; it is not like going to the dentist, where it hurts. There is really nothing not to like about doing audiology, and it is a very interesting career, so I would like us to think of ways of encouraging people into it.

There is a bit of a confusion between medical practitioners and audiologists. The right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) referred to the issues relating to how we recruit medical practitioners from overseas. I am not aware that we are recruiting large numbers of audiologists from overseas; I actually think that we are not, although we did have audiologists who came from the EU when we were members of it. We can train enough of our own audiologists, but we need to get on and organise it.

I could talk about this for the rest of the day but it will be Christmas soon, so I shall sit down. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip again for securing this important debate.

15:43

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. This is an important debate, secured by the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales), but it is quite something to have to follow an eminent and experienced ENT surgeon, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley), when speaking about hearing and hearing loss—especially as I am just a rudimentary vet.

It is quite common that people bring in a dog that they assume has hearing loss because it can no longer hear its name being called in the park, yet for some reason it can still hear a treat packet or a fridge being opened in another room. On comparative anatomy, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket may be interested to hear that one reason why up to 20% of a caseload in a day of treating small animals can be on ear-related issues is that in humans the ear canal goes straight to the eardrum whereas in dogs it bends around 90° before it gets to the eardrum. Around that corner it is often quite warm and moist, and a lot of bacteria and yeast grow in those conditions.

[Peter Prinsley]

I am very interested in the story of dogs and the shape of a dog’s ear canal; that is such a helpful explanation. I was often brought dogs, particularly spaniels with big floppy ears, who had ear infections and blockages, and I was always puzzled why it was that the dogs got into such difficulties. The hon. Gentleman’s explanation of the right angle at the bottom of the ear canal is so helpful and I thank him for it.

[Dr Chambers]

I am honoured to have educated an ENT surgeon. Spaniels do have worse ear problems, given that there is a lack of airflow, and one thing that vets can get experienced at is taking a swab so that we are not using unnecessary antibiotics or inappropriate antibiotics. With a bit of experience, it is fairly easy to smell the difference between Malassezia yeast, pseudomonas bacterial infection or streptococcus intermedius—to anyone who thinks being a vet is glamorous, I say, “Spend a day sniffing ears to determine what type of microbes are down there, and it will change your mind.”

It is very interesting that many Members spoke today about the impact of hearing loss on dementia. We know that dementia is multifactorial—there is no single cause—but certainly my father had hearing loss for a long time, and he developed dementia. Hearing loss certainly affected his quality of life, dementia aside. He lost the confidence to go out to socialise and barely left the farm unless he had to. We are pretty sure that a significant factor in that was that he felt he could not hear what other people were saying. He could not perform business at the market as he used to, because markets are very noisy places.

The Father of the House touched on the fact that one in three adults have either deafness, tinnitus or some other type of hearing issue. What surprised me was that only 38% of people who suspect that they have hearing loss themselves have contacted a professional about it. I read that stat and was quite surprised, but I then realised that for years my partner Emma and other family members have often said, “Why do you have the TV so loud?”. I have also often noticed in a pub everyone else is talking, and I find it really hard to hear the conversation over any external noise, yet I have never gone along and had a hearing test. Quite clearly, I do not hear as well as everyone else in my vicinity, so I should probably get one. That could be a new year’s resolution for me—to go and work out whether I actually have some kind of hearing issues as well.

I also note the weight given to the importance of community audiology, especially when such a high percentage of hearing loss is age-related. Those people have no need to go to a hospital to get the initial assessment, and community audiology could free up hospital time for children and other people with more acute hearing issues that need to be investigated. Audiology is one of the worst performing diagnostic services in the NHS for speed of assessment, with 40% of patients waiting more than six weeks simply for the initial assessment. That is one reason respondents to the British and Irish Hearing Instrument Manufacturers Association are advocating for open self-referral and expanded community clinics simply to minimise those delays. Delivering audiology services in the community costs 15 to 20% less than from a hospital, so it is an economically sensible model as well.

We often call for more community-based services for a whole variety of medical issues to keep costs down. It should be the default for most people with age-related hearing loss. We also urge the Government to consider trialling hearing tests as part of routine health checks for people over 70 and at-risk groups and to investigate how best to support everyone, from GP surgeries to high street pharmacists and opticians, to deliver free earwax removal. They are already being successfully run by some GP practices with positive impacts on health outcomes, and the cost can be small, especially where GPs co-ordinate to pay for a service that covers a large area.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point that we often hear about national screening programmes. It has just occurred to me that if everybody over the age of 70 was sent a text message through the NHS, summoning them into a screening programme, we could make huge advances in this area, particularly with things such as dementia—because, as he made clear, many people are either embarrassed by hearing loss, or not aware that they have it.

[Dr Chambers]

I completely agree. As we approach the busiest and loudest time of the year and every shop and pub has music playing, which is fun for most people, it is a good time to urge people to go for a hearing test in the new year, as I will be doing. We urge the Government to look at supporting community-based services so that everyone can get the hearing assessment they need. People need information to be able to act, and if someone does not know their hearing status, they will not know what other problems they will be dealing with in the future.

15:50

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers, and I wish you and your team a merry Christmas. I thank the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) for inadvertently creating what seems like a medical symposium; I feel as if I am back at one of my Christmas grand rounds—they often used to pick something a little bit strange and wacky to debate. I did not quite expect to be talking about spaniels’ ear canals, but I enjoyed the flashback none the less.

The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) rightly talked about couples. When I was a GP, I saw couples become yin and yang, supporting each other on the basis of who had the hearing loss, who had the brains and who had the dexterity. If one of those problems is not sorted, there can be real impacts for the others. We should consider that when we deal with patients. The hon. Gentleman’s point about drawers of waste was a personal hobby horse of mine too—though it was not hearing aids, but often medication brought back to me, or seeing thousands of bandages or eye drops left over when I went on home visits, for example. That is a really important point and the NHS is not very good at picking up on it.

I thank the Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), for raising the issue of stigma. My grandfather was particularly bad and stubbornly did not want to get a hearing aid, and even when he did get it, he would not wear it. My right hon. Friend also joked about his wife not hearing him, which reminded me of “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin”; at the start of the film, the pea is taken out of the ear, but at the end, because of all the nagging, he is desperate to get the pea reinserted.

My right hon. Friend also raised the issue of workforce, which is incredibly important when it comes to trying to solve some of these problems. The hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip set out clearly and coherently both the landscape and where we find ourselves. That is really important because, when people think about care delivered close to home, hearing loss services are among some of the most visible examples on the high street and in our community settings across the country. I visited the Specsavers on Hinckley’s high street, as well as the pharmacy in Newbold Verdon, only a couple of months ago to see what they provide.

There is a real opportunity to bring care towards people, which makes high streets a good bellwether for this Government’s ambition on prevention and community care and how that is being translated into practice. There are three issues I would like to press the Minister on. The first is the funding pressures on the ICBs, the second is access and self-referral, and the third is national oversight and data.

On access and self-referral, under previous NHS operational planning guidance, ICBs were asked to increase direct access and self-referrals into audiology services. That was a good move; it meant that people concerned about their hearing could go straight to specialist care without needing to see a GP first. In many areas, that has been a success. However, as we heard during the debate, 12 ICBs that commission hearing loss services still require a GP referral. That adds delays for patients and places unnecessary pressure on general practice, not necessarily for any clinical benefit. Against that backdrop, it is a little disappointing to see that self-referral was not included in the most recent operational planning guidance for 2025-26, nor in the medium-term planning framework. The question is why. Would the Minister explain why self-referrals seem to have been deprioritised, and what concrete steps the Government are taking to ensure that access to audiology does not depend simply on where someone lives?

On funding pressures and core services, Members have rightly highlighted the significant variation in access to routine audiology services, particularly earwax removal. In too many parts of the country, people are either being pushed back to the ENT departments or told to pay privately. I am glad that we have an eminent surgeon in the Chamber, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket; from a GP’s perspective, I understand why some were reluctant to go back to having their ears syringed and I often dealt with complaints about why it was not suitable, as suction is the gold standard.

The question is how we provide that in a way that is deliverable to the community and provides to the patients, but is also at least cost-neutral for primary or secondary care. There is a conundrum there. That situation will be made worse, as the Father of the House pointed out, by our ageing population. When ICBs are under pressure and their budgets are changing—they are being cut by 50%—how do we ensure that that it is deliverable? That poses the question of how sustainable it is to place the responsibility of the full range of audiology services on ICBs, considering they are under constraints, and how will the Government square that circle. There is also the opportunity of public-private partnerships and neighbourhood centres to help to deliver audiology services. That could come as sites or services. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out what his vision is in this space, considering we are trying to take a leftwards shift.

There are also opportunities for new thinking. As I mentioned, I went to see a pharmacist. What supports have been put in place for new providers to come in? Pharmacists seem keen to be able to take on more services, and they often have sites directly in the heart of our communities—the closest place to our residents. Is there some consideration of what can be done to innovate in that space?

On data, oversight and accountability, one of the most striking features of audiology is how difficult it is to assess the performance nationally. The Government were right to set out their ambition to meet the NHS standard that 92% of people should wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment, and in most specialties we can clearly see how the system is performing against that ambition. However, in audiology it is harder, especially as the referral-to-treatment waiting time data, which was paused during the pandemic for understandable reasons, has since been retired by NHS England.

Looking ahead, given that the Government have confirmed their intention to bring forward legislation to abolish NHS England, with the statutory functions being taken into the system, will the Minister consider looking again at reinstating the referral-to-treatment waiting time data for direct audiology as a way to monitor the leftward shift that the Government are pushing for? If so, will that be done at ICB level or under the Department of Health and Social Care?

I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify two points. First, when does the Government expect to introduce the legislation in 2026? Secondly, it would be helpful to understand when we can expect the workforce plan: we were told that it was coming in the summer, then the autumn and, now that we are on the last day of business before Christmas, I expect it is coming in the new year. Knowing when that plan is coming, and how audiology will play a part in that, is really important.

Given the Kingdon review only came forward in November, it is unfair of me to ask whether the Government have fully assessed it yet. The review had 12 recommendations and also pointed out the oversight, and there is a question about how that will be resolved. With all the changes to ICBs, NHS England and the Kingdon review, I would be grateful to know when we will likely hear whether all recommendations have been accepted and will be resolved.

Audiology may not always attract attention in this House, but it is a vital part of our community healthcare and a real test of the Government’s commitment to prevention and access. I hope the Minister can provide clarity on the questions I have asked today. I wish you, Mr Vickers, your team, your colleagues, everyone in this House and my constituents a very merry Christmas.

15:58

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) and congratulating him on securing this important debate. Having now been in the same room as a specialist in ear, nose and throat, a former GP and a vet, I am not sure that I am entirely qualified, and I approach this debate with some trepidation. I certainly enjoyed the debate and, as the Father of the House rightly said, it was a privilege to be able to hear some of the insights, direct experience and expertise of hon. Friends and Members.

My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip has also been doing a huge amount of good work in promoting the flu vaccine ahead of winter, in his constituency and more widely, and I pay tribute to him for that. It was a pleasure to visit his constituency a few weeks ago, where I met the incredible team at the Pembroke centre in Ruislip Manor to hear about how they are delivering, designing and developing their thoughts about neighbourhood health hubs and the neighbourhood health service, which will be a pivotal part of our 10-year plan.

The Royal National Institute for Deaf People estimates that one in five people in the UK—almost 12 million adults—are deaf, have hearing loss or experience tinnitus, and by 2035 that figure is projected to rise to over 14 million. For people with cognitive disabilities, hearing loss can have a real impact on their quality of life, causing confusion for people with dementia, making communication and social interaction more difficult and increasing loneliness and isolation.

That is why our community audiology services are so important. They represent a comprehensive range of hearing care delivered in local, accessible settings, such as GP surgeries, community clinics and community diagnostic centres. They help people of all ages, offering assessments, hearing aid fittings and support for those with tinnitus and balance issues. They advise on equipment such as amplified telephones and alerting devices, while working alongside occupational therapists to support people to stay independent. They form part of a wider team with speech, language and other community services, acute care, and the ear, nose and throat department for issues that cannot be managed in the community.

Community audiology services face challenges, particularly on waiting lists and inequality of provision. Members across the Chamber raised some of those points. The Father of the House rightly pointed out that there are 6.7 million people who should use a hearing aid but do not. We must overcome the stigma associated with hearing loss.

The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) was right to talk about the connection between hearing loss and the propensity for falls. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) shared his tremendous expertise as an ear, nose and throat surgeon, and I thank him for his insights about the Hear for Norfolk project, which is a very interesting model indeed. Perhaps we can follow up on it in the new year.

The hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) gave a remarkable exposition on hearing loss in dogs—I have to say that I did not have that on my bingo card for this afternoon—from which we all learned a tremendous amount. He also made a number of important points about hearing loss in humans, and we absolutely take them on board.

The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) rattled off a number of questions for me, and I desperately tried keep track of them. I got some of them and did not get others, so I will happily write to him on the points that I am unable to address now. He raised an important point about self-referral, which of course depends on local commissioning arrangements. There is inequality and unwarranted variation in the ability to self-refer. We want more self-referral. We think there are opportunities in upgrading the functionality of the NHS app. Our objective is absolutely to be able to do this without having to go through a GP. There are some technology-related solutions, but I want to assure him that there is no conscious decision from the Government to deprioritise self-referral; I just think that there are some variations.

The old chestnut that we are constantly trying to crack is around devolving to ICBs the power and agency that they should have because they are closest to the health needs of their population, while ensuring that they are clear about the outcomes, frameworks and standards that we expect. We honestly hold our hands up and say that we have not got that right in all cases, but we are committed to self-referral as a principle and as a really important part of the shift from hospital to community.

On ICB budgets, we have secured £6 billion through the spending review process for capital upgrades. A lot of that will help us to ramp up what we are doing on community diagnostics. That is one way to square the circle around the investment that we need on the ground for ICBs to be able to do more in terms of the services they provide by improving the equipment, the kit and the technology they have. Part of the answer to the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth’s question relates to capital investment really helping to boost the services provided.

The workforce plan is coming in the spring of 2026. I absolutely hear what the hon. Member says about the need to move forward on that. It has been a complex process. Obviously some of the changes and restructuring around what we are doing on NHS England have also had an impact on the process of putting the workforce plan together, but I am reliably informed that that will be in the spring of 2026.

Timely access and effective support to services can make all the difference to someone’s quality of life, wellbeing and independence. As part of our effort to shift care from hospital to home, this Government want to support people to live independently in the community, and community audiology will play an essential part in making that happen. Community audiology is commissioned locally by integrated care boards. Funding is allocated to ICBs by NHS England. Each ICB commissions the services it needs for its local area, taking into account its annual budget, planning guidance and the wider needs of the people that it serves.

This year, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor confirmed the Government’s commitment to getting our NHS back on its feet and fit for the future, with day-to-day spending increasing by £29 billion in real terms over the next five years. By the end of this Parliament, the NHS resource budget will reach £226 billion. That funding will support the growing demand for community health services, including audiology. It will help integrated care boards to expand diagnostic capacity, invest in local estates and equipment, and sustain the workforce needed to deliver high quality hearing care for patients of all ages. For the first time, we have published an overview of the core community health services, which include audiology, for ICBs to consider when planning for their local populations and commissioning processes.

Our medium-term planning framework for the next financial years sets out our ambition to bring waiting times over 18 weeks down, develop plans to bring waits over 52 weeks to zero, and to increase capacity to meet growth in demand, which is expected to be around 3% nationally every year. We are asking systems to seek every opportunity to improve productivity and get care closer to home, from getting teams the latest digital tools and equipment they need so they can connect remotely to health systems and patients, to expanding point-of-care testing in the community. Systems are also asked to ensure that all providers in acute, community and mental health sectors are onboarded to the NHS federated data platform and use its core products.

Our 10-year health plan sets out how we would make the shift from analogue to digital by making the NHS app the digital front door to services. We will make it easier for patients to access audiology services through self-referral. This will transform the working lives of GPs, letting them focus on care where they provide the highest value-add. This is how we will make sure everyone can self-refer—not just the most confident and health-literate. Patients can access NIH-funded audiology services directly without having to wait for a referral from their GP. That means improved access to care and shorter waiting times.

My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip and other hon. Friends stood, as I did, on a manifesto to halve health inequality between the richest and poorest areas of our country. I know he will agree that access should not be based on where we live. A key part of our elective reform plan, published at the start of the year, is transforming and expanding diagnostic services so we can reduce waiting times for tests and bring down overall waits. NHS England is working closely with services to improve access to self-referral options, aiming for a more consistent offer right across the country.

[Dr Luke Evans]

I am grateful that a comprehensive plan is coming forward. One problem we have is joining the leadership up. The Kingdon review, which was launched in May and finished in November, made 12 recommendations that will help align with all the missions the Minister is bringing forward. Can he tell us when the Kingdon review will be accepted and analysed by the Government, and their position on the recommendations, because it is a key thread to delivering all the ambition that he has rightly put forward?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I can—we are absolutely committed to responding to the Kingdon review next year. We are working on pulling together our response to the report. It is extremely important, and there are serious lessons to be learned from it. We think Dr Kingdon has done an excellent piece of work, and we are very keen to build on it and take it forward.

Community diagnostics, such as local hearing assessment clinics and testing in community settings, are being rolled out more widely through the expansion of our community diagnostic centres. We are opening more of these centres—12 hours a day, seven days a week, offering more same-day tests, consultations and a wider range of diagnostics. I am very proud that we now have 170 CDCs across England.

Almost 2 million audiology assessments have been carried out by NHS staff since this Government took office, including 136,000 tests in October—the highest number of audiology tests for a single month in the history of the NHS. This is a crucial step in supporting the NHS to meet its constitutional standards and deliver quicker care to patients. I also want to salute the work of the Welsh Government, who have been pioneers in many respects with their plan, published this week, showing how Wales is also leading in audiology services on care in the community, training and infrastructure.

The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth asked about the Kingdon report, and in this debate on audiology services, I must take this opportunity to thank Dr Camilla Kingdon for the excellent review that she chaired into failures in children’s hearing services. As I have just told him, the Government are committed to responding to the recommendations made by Dr Kingdon, and we will publish a comprehensive response next year.

Community audiology services face challenges, with long waits and inconsistency in access to services, but we are taking action through the medium-term planning framework, by expanding community diagnostic centres and as an integral part of our 10-year plan. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip and I come from a political tradition based on solidarity, and this Government stand for a health service that leaves no person behind. I know that he shares my determination to get timely access to community audiology services for all 12 million of our compatriots who need them.

I thank my hon. Friend once again for bringing forward this extremely important debate, and I thank all Members who have spoken. It only remains for me to wish you, Mr Vickers, as well as your entire team and everyone else in the Chamber, all the very best for Christmas and the new year.

16:12

[Danny Beales]

We certainly heard about some issues today that I did not expect to be on the agenda. The waxiness or not of dogs’ ears will certainly stay with me for a while. I am glad that the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) clarified that he is a vet. I wondered whether checking dogs’ ears was a particularly Lib Dem thing to do to, so I am glad he clarified that he does it professionally rather than personally.

We have had contributions from experts across the health sector and experts by experience of hearing loss, and I think we covered many of the key issues for audiology, such as workforce challenges and occupational hearing loss, as well as rural areas, regional variation and unacceptable delays. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) made a powerful point about the importance of quality assurance of services. Yes, we want more community access, but it needs to be quality community access.

I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), and the Minister for their kind remarks. I thank the Minister for visiting what he called the fantastic development of neighbourhood health services in Hillingdon. We are fortunate in that, as well as the developing neighbourhood hubs, we have an ICB community-based audiology service. Hillingdon is very fortunate in having community audiology services, and I hope such services will be provided in all ICB areas.

I welcome the Minister’s recognition of the importance of self-referral and the Government’s continued commitment to it. I also welcome his recognition of the need to deal with the issue of variation across the country. In his response, he mentioned the key opportunities in developing the workforce plan, which we expect in the spring, and this Government’s broader neighbourhood health agenda, and I hope that audiology will feature strongly in those developments.

Thank you, Mr Vickers, for your time and the Clerk for their time. I wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered community audiology.

16:15

Sitting adjourned.