The new Chair of the UK Parliament’s languages group on how judgements over his Geordie roots, a year abroad in post-Pinochet Chile and a love of language learning contributed to his political awakening and dedication to sociolinguistics

So, Darren, what made you want to join the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages (APPG ML)?

I was first elected as an MP in 2024 and as part of the induction into Westminster, we heard about APPGs. Having been a university lecturer for 20 years and a researcher in languages, and being married to an MFL teacher, I knew that I wanted to join the APPG ML. There’s so much that’s new as an MP, it’s nice to have things you already know about and hit the ground running on those issues. I began as Vice Chair with Tonia Antoniazzi as Chair and Baroness Coussins as Co-Chair, and took over as Chair this year.

What has the work entailed so far?

One of the things that strikes me about the way this APPG works is that there’s a lot of external speakers; you’re never just talking to yourselves as parliamentarians. I was really interested to hear an array of speakers, and to learn how Baroness Coussins asked questions in the Lords, and Tonia in the Commons, and about written parliamentary questions. There is also planning and being involved in events.

Since taking over as Chair, I’ve been asking: what are our priorities for the coming year? One was to get a meeting with Department for Education (DfE) officials, representatives of Ofqual and Ofsted [the qualifications and schools regulators] and senior civil servants to examine the regulatory framework around the teaching of languages in schools. In politics, as in business, lots of things take place in piecemeal ways; this was an opportunity to get everyone around the table at once.

Another part of the work is to feed into some big changes in education, which include the Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR). There are also fantastic opportunities to get out and engage with frontline teachers, educators and researchers, for example as a keynote speaker at the Association for Language Learning’s annual conference.

You are a member of the Education Select Committee. Is that useful for your APPG ML work?

Absolutely. The main focus of the Education Select Committee is to scrutinise the DfE and make sure any government plans – for example the CAR – are as good as they can be. More widely, we’re looking at better opportunities for young people. I’ve been able to bring both those worlds together, drawing on my own experience: I was the first of my family to go to university and languages were my route to that.

We’ve got to make sure that our education policy is functioning properly and we don’t focus on too few subjects. We need to ensure that those who are more of an artistic leaning – including kids for whom languages might be their spark – get those opportunities as well, because that could be the thing that really opens doors for them.

What would you see as a successful term as Chair of the APPG ML?

My main priority is to showcase the need for languages in Britain in the 21st century, particularly post-Brexit. Some people think we need other languages less. That’s nonsense. Various things have become problems since Brexit, including the mechanics of children taking part in overseas trips, and recruiting overseas teachers and support workers. Basically, I want to go some way to sweeping up the mess of Brexit!

We need to change how we think about languages; to move on from seeing them as a problem or a difficulty or something that you need a specific gene to be good at. It’s about saying, “Let's make sure that languages are an opportunity for all children in all schools.” That means getting the excitement and capacity for languages as early as possible. What we have at the moment is a focus on Year 7 [ages 11-12] and then within two to three years, we’re asking young people if they want to do one of their first high-stakes public exams, the GCSEs, in that subject. We would want some well-resourced, planned, statutory language provision from Key Stage 1 [ages 5-7]. It can be done. It’s done in a lot of other countries.

Do you have advice for readers about how to engage politicians on this topic?

Don’t stay quiet. Do contact your MP – let them know that this is an important issue to you as a constituent. Please follow the work of the APPG, suggest things to us that we might be missing. Make your voices heard. Use all the professional and research bodies – invite them to look at the context where you are.
 

Darren Paffey at Language World Conference. Photo: Dickon Clark

Could you tell us a bit about your early experiences with languages?

When I was growing up in the ‘80s, there was no primary languages initiative. I owe an awful lot to Mr Garwood, my first French teacher at secondary school, who enabled me to discover this is something I really enjoy. Then I did German in Year 9 and decided to learn Italian outside school too. We went on trips to Normandy and Spain. I found it really exhilarating to be able to engage with people who were 1000% as human as anyone I’d ever grown up with but just came from a different country, with a different background and history. Communication is empowering, so I found it empowering to go out into the world with more languages than I’d grown up with.

So how did you become a lecturer in Spanish and sociolinguistics?

I studied French and Spanish at the University of Southampton, attracted to its wider studies about the history, politics, society of the places where those languages were spoken. A lot of this was linked to my personal experience. I moved to the South of England when I was 10 and when I told people “I’m originally from near Newcastle”, they said, “You don’t sound like a Geordie.” It got me thinking, “What do different groups sound like, and why do we tend to pigeonhole them?” It was when they started adding judgements, saying “Well, you speak very well for someone from the North,” I thought, “Hang on, what on earth do we mean by these kinds of value judgements?”

At Southampton, sociolinguistics became my thing, where language and society meet; where people make decisions on which languages to promote, to put in the education system, to put on public signage – which languages are or aren’t allowed in public discourse, in parliaments etc. All of those things came alive. I was fascinated by it all.

It almost sounds as if languages were part of your journey towards becoming politically active…

I would very much say that languages are part of my political awakening. My family wasn’t actively political. For me, learning the recent history of France, and what that had meant more widely, made me start to think politically. I spent my year abroad in Chile, which had been out of a dictatorship for just over a decade, so you still had a very politically divided country. People’s experience of before, during and after the dictatorship was something I could access because I was able to speak their language, read and understand how they documented those politically turbulent times, and reflect on it. It made me much more determined to be engaged with what goes on in my own country.

When I came back, I joined the Labour Party during my PhD, and eventually stood for election as a local councillor. So the route to politics for me has certainly been through languages. 

Do you think your language skills have helped in your career as a politician?

There are absolutely transferable skills. Communication, if done well, is incredibly empowering. Equally, the way people use languages can be very disempowering. In my research, I looked at the communication of politicians, and also of people who are trying to do the same thing as politicians: to set out a vision, to persuade people of that vision, to get people to act on that vision. It’s what advertisers do. It’s what good, benevolent salespeople do. It’s also what manipulative dictators do.

There are skills around how language works and what we have to be aware of. If someone says, “Well, everyone knows that this claim is just fact”, by framing language in that way they’re trying to exclude any alternative view. I am very aware when other politicians are doing that, particularly in this age of populism. I try not to do it because I’m more open and democratic. I think politics can be better if we harness the good of language.

Being trained in learning from other cultures, asking the critical questions and thinking more deeply about the issues have given me a lot of skills that are helpful as a politician. For example, comparing what British history is about, as opposed to French history, Spanish history, Chilean history… learning from the human experience elsewhere. This helps to get a rounded view of all the issues – to take a far more critical, sensible and nuanced approach to politics and policy.

Do you have any thoughts on the future of the languages professions?

It is a sector where things are changing, with things like automatic translators and AI, but I am absolutely convinced these will never fully replace the need for humans. Communication is, at its heart, its root and its future, a human activity and a human experience. Machines can imitate but ultimately the need for good, well-trained, dedicated professional linguists will not disappear, and it’s what I hope the work of this APPG will continue to champion. I hope the CIOL will continue to work with us to understand what the best future for languages and technology in the modern world can look like.

Philip Harding-Esch is a freelance languages project manager and consultant in education and language policy. Philip provides the Secretariat to the APPG on Modern Languages.

This article has been reproduced from the Summer 2026 issue of The Linguist. Download the full edition here.