Jenny Chapman

Jennifer Chapman, Baroness Chapman of Darlington (born 25 September 1973) is a British politician and life peer who has served as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office since July 2024. A member of the Labour Party, she served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Darlington from 2010 to 2019.

Chapman was political secretary to the Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer, from 2020 to 2021. As Shadow Minister of State at the Cabinet Office from 2021 to 2023, she served as a member of the shadow cabinet. She was appointed Chancellor of Teesside University in 2023.

Early life and career
Chapman was born in September 1973 in Surrey but moved to Darlington at a young age, where she attended Hummersknott School and Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College. before completing a BSc in psychology at Brunel University in 1996, and later took an MA in archaeology at Durham University in 2004. She had work placements attached to prison psychology departments whilst studying for her undergraduate degree.

Chapman worked as constituency office manager for Darlington Labour MP Alan Milburn. After a career break to have children, she returned to politics at Darlington Borough Council when she was elected as borough councillor for the Cockerton West ward in 2007.

House of Commons
In November 2009, Chapman was shortlisted as one of four candidates to succeed Milburn as Labour's parliamentary candidate for Darlington on an open shortlist, i.e. not an all-women shortlist. She was selected to stand for parliament by the local constituency party the following month. She was elected Darlington MP in the 2010 general election with a majority of 3,388. As a result of her election victory, she decided to stand down as a councillor.

Chapman made her maiden speech in Parliament on 7 June 2010, during which she asked for social network services to be regulated to stop paedophiles. She also backed the Building Schools for the Future programme. During her time as an MP, she served as a vice-chair of Progress and campaigned to remain in the European Union in the 2016 EU membership referendum.

In 2011, Chapman was appointed as Shadow Minister for Prisons. She had previously written policy recommendations on the subject of incarceration, including a recommendation that prison officers should receive training to help them rehabilitate inmates. She became Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Years in January 2016, but resigned in June of the same year among dozens of Labour frontbench colleagues. She supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Jeremy Corbyn in the subsequent leadership election. She later rejoined the Opposition frontbench as Shadow Minister for Exiting the European Union.

Chapman was one of the many Labour MPs to be defeated at the 2019 general election, losing her seat to Conservative Peter Gibson following 27 years of Labour holding the constituency.

After losing her seat, she became chair of Keir Starmer's successful campaign in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election and later accepted the role of political secretary to Starmer in his role as Leader of the Labour Party.

House of Lords
In August 2020, The Telegraph reported that Chapman was "likely" to be nominated for a peerage by Starmer, and it was announced in December 2020 that she would join the House of Lords as part of the 2020 Political Honours. In February 2021, Chapman was made Baroness Chapman of Darlington, of Darlington in the County of Durham, and made her maiden speech on 22 March 2021.

Chapman was removed as Starmer's political director in June 2021, after what The Times referred to as "months of friction" with Labour MPs, and was re-appointed to the frontbench as Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, shadowing Lord Frost at Task Force Europe and the Cabinet Office.

In August 2023, Chapman was announced as the new Chancellor of Teesside University.

Personal life
She married fellow Labour MP Nick Smith in July 2014. She has two sons from a previous relationship.