(2 days, 19 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
Madam Deputy Speaker, you know that I will take any opportunity, whatever time of day it is, to champion my community and our county, as will my colleagues. That is why many of us from Staffordshire are here at this late hour.
The House has heard me talk before about the wonderful people who live, learn and work in Newcastle-under-Lyme. They work hard, pay their way and bring their skills and smarts to whatever they do, and they were wise enough to vote for me—for which I am very grateful. Over the centuries, people in Newcastle-under-Lyme and across Staffordshire made things. They built things, discovered things, and they showed a nation how things can and should be done. That is why my Staffordshire colleagues and I are here tonight. We are determined to ensure that our people, particularly our young people, are able to access the jobs and opportunities that they deserve.
I am pleased to see the Government Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner), in his place. He will be hearing lots from us about our concerns with the at-times botched and unwanted roll-out of local government reform in many parts of Staffordshire. I look forward to having that conversation with him.
Newcastle-under-Lyme is synonymous with workers and working. We are rooted in our industrial heartlands. Our coalfields community and our coalminers were driven by diligence and determination. Mining in our United Kingdom was not just about coal, though. It was about camaraderie, courage and power. It was about families and communities, bound together by shared experiences, overcoming hardships and supporting one another through thick and thin.
The worst legacy of Thatcherism was tearing industry apart, destroying communities and our industrial heartlands and not doing anything to replace them. There was no focus on upskilling, no focus on investment and no willingness to ensure that those same people and their families—who they screwed over—were not left and forgotten. It says a lot that some in politics today who pretend to care about working-class people describe themselves as Thatcherites. They are telling us who they are, and we should listen to them.
Our people back home made things work. In fact, they powered our country. Without that power, we would not have been able to emerge as a global leader in manufacturing and as one of the biggest economies in the world. As important as it is to look back at our industrial heritage with pride, today we must redouble our efforts to ensure that people in Staffordshire do not fall behind in the race for the jobs of the future.
Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
I represent the neighbouring constituency, and of course I have to mention ceramics. Since 2018, employment in traditional ceramics has fallen by 37% in Staffordshire. Advanced and traditional ceramics companies need skilled workers, but local employers are struggling to attract new talent. Stoke-on-Trent college has proposed a national ceramics and advanced materials technical college, which would create a national centre for technical education offering apprenticeships, industry placements and workforce development in traditional and advanced ceramics. Will my hon. Friend join me in recognising the value of the proposal in boosting local ceramics employment by providing the specialist skills required and creating clear pathways from education to high-value careers?
Adam Jogee
I am grateful to my constituency neighbour. She makes an excellent point, which she knows that I agree with. I will come to ceramics. She is correct to raise those points.
We hear far too many stories about our young people being lazy and unwilling to put in the graft to get on in life.
Sarah Edwards (Tamworth) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for making such an important speech on the incredible things that happen in Staffordshire. It is really important to our young people that the youth hubs that have been announced—one of them is in Tamworth—have a base and a home. That, though, is where Staffordshire county council has really failed in recent years when it could be leading the way. Does my hon. Friend think that Councillor Murray, the leader of Staffordshire county council, is asleep at the wheel and has possibly gone AWOL on this one? Does he agree that we really need to invest in young people?
Adam Jogee
As ever, my hon. Friend puts it as well as anyone else could, particularly when it comes to the sorry state of affairs at county hall. In Newcastle-under-Lyme, we are lucky to have a youth hub, too, but as she says, it is of great importance to ensure that the county council steps up and helps us to deliver those services for our people. I look forward to working with her to hold the county and whoever its leadership is to account in the period ahead.
Leigh Ingham
On the point about Staffordshire county council, I recently held a roundtable to talk about youth services in Stafford—by the way, Staffordshire was the third worst hit part of the country for youth service cuts—and youth service providers told me that Staffordshire county council categorically is not engaging with the Department for Work and Pensions on youth hubs. We are fortunate enough to have one in Stafford, and I am pleased that we also have them in Newcastle-under-Lyme and in Tamworth. Does my hon. Friend agree that if Staffordshire county council does not get its act together and start participating in conversations with services that can wrap around our young people, we will fall behind?
Adam Jogee
My hon. Friend, who represents the town where my mother was born and raised, makes an excellent point. I could not put it better myself, so I will not attempt to do so. Many of the young people that she and my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth mentioned want to contribute to the communities they live in, and many live with the ambition of having and seeking a meaningful career, but, after being failed for so long by the generations of political leaders that went before us, many of our young people just feel forgotten. Tonight, Staffordshire’s MPs tell them that they have not been.
Young people across Newcastle-under-Lyme are facing some of the most profound challenges in the country when it comes to entering the world of work. In my constituency, there are 57 suitable vacancies per 1,000 residents aged 18 to 24, which is 47% below the national average. Those statistics make for sobering reading. We do not just need the vacancies. We need to make sure that our young people have the skills that employers are looking for.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is, as always, making a fantastic speech and banging the drum for our great county. Does he agree that if we are serious about creating and filling the jobs he is talking about in Staffordshire, we have to give our colleges the capacity to train the workforce that we need? I welcome the recent investment in South Staffordshire college, including Cannock college, but will he join me in calling for further investment in our training facilities in Staffordshire, so that local young people can access skilled jobs in construction, engineering and all those growing industries?
Adam Jogee
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I will be sure to raise that with the Secretary of State for Education at the next opportunity.
As I said, we do not just need the vacancies; we need to make sure that our young people have the skills that employers are looking for. A shortage of quality jobs, or the lack of skills required for the jobs that are available, means that so many of our talented young people feel forced to leave the community they call home to seek and find meaningful work elsewhere. Communities like Newcastle-under-Lyme lose out not just on economic growth, but on the dynamism and skill that bright local people bring to the jobs market. Those who choose to stay in their community face the entrenched inequalities typical of our industrial heartlands. Communities such as Silverdale, Knutton and Cross Heath have higher levels of health inequality and lower levels of life expectancy. So many interconnected factors are at play in communities when it comes to the challenge of ensuring that local people get the jobs they need.
In the summer, I welcomed my hon. Friend the Minister to meet the North Staffordshire citizens advice bureau in Newcastle town centre. He had the opportunity to hear all manner of things from the people he met, but particularly from young people who were struggling to deal with their money and to navigate entering the job market. Yes, we need our businesses to employ people, but if people cannot get to work, what is the point? That is the situation facing many traders and their employers in Newcastle-under-Lyme thanks to the sheer incompetence of Staffordshire county council.
Leigh Ingham
I held a roundtable—a different one—in Penkside, in Stafford town centre, to talk about the issues people face in getting to and from work, and buses came up as the major issue. The first bus is after 9 o’clock, and the last bus gets home before 3 pm. For someone trying to do a course at college, those times just do not work. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that Staffordshire county council uses the money it has been given by this Government to support young people in our areas in getting into work?
Adam Jogee
That is a good point well made by my hon. Friend. She is correct. Like her, I have many rural communities that would absolutely benefit from a sensible approach to transport from Staffordshire county council. In that fight, as in many others, she has my full agreement.
My town has been brought to a standstill by road closures on different neighbouring roads at the same time and by delayed works that just do not seem to get finished, and there has been little leadership or communication from those in charge at county hall. I have written directly to the leader of Staffordshire county council and have heard absolutely nothing back. When I have received responses, most of them are nonsense. In fact, I have 22 letters in response to my raising issues that local people have brought to me as their Member of Parliament, and they all essentially say the same thing:
“This has been added to the County Councillor’s Divisional Highway Programme or the DHP”.
Then we hear nothing more.
Sarah Edwards
My hon. Friend has a whole bundle of letters. We regularly write to the county council, and I find that responses are sometimes received four to five months later. Is he having the same issue, not just in relation to roadworks, but in relation to young people and their special educational needs and disabilities situations? That is failure from the county council.
Adam Jogee
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and it is not a party point. I suspect that the right hon. Members for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) and for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), and the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) would agree with other Staffordshire MPs on the point she has made: the county council is missing in action and is failing to deliver the services that our people deserve—and that they pay for. We are not asking for favours. We are asking for things to be done properly and in a timely way. If the county council cannot fix our roads in a sensible and ordered way, without impacting businesses and stopping people getting to work, school and the hospital, it should get out the way and let others do so.
We know the challenges before us, but what do we do about them? There are examples of best practice within organisations such as the King’s Trust, which for half a century has given young people across the kingdom and the Commonwealth the confidence and skills they need to succeed and thrive.
Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)
I am not quite a constituency neighbour, but it is always great to see a fellow Staffordshire MP in this place. Will my hon. Friend join me in thanking organisations such as AKG, which operates in my constituency? It is a private company, but it provides services to those who have been out of work for a long time through the restart scheme and the connect to work scheme, both funded by the Government, which are very much designed to provide people with the employment support they need so they can get back into work—doing the real work, not just trying to solve this problem by soundbite. Will he join me in thanking AKG for helping people find those opportunities?
Adam Jogee
It is all in good time when it comes to being neighbours—we will happily expand our boundaries to reach Lichfield. My hon. Friend knows my constituency well—he comes to see us often enough—so he is an honorary Newcastle-under-Lymer. I agree very much with his point about what we need to do to get our people the skills they need to get into work.
Last year, I saw the excellent work of the King’s Trust up close at Stoke-on-Trent college in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). More than 400 programmes have been run there by the King’s Trust over the last three decades, benefiting young people from Newcastle-under-Lyme and right across north Staffordshire and the county.
Earlier this month, I joined a number of local institutions and authorities and the Department for Work and Pensions in supporting the north Staffordshire jobs fair, held in our town centre and open to people across the north part of our county and, I suspect, everyone else. It was great to see so many people energised and enthused, demonstrating that there is no lack of ambition or work ethic in our part of the world.
Our education institutions help keep us on the right path in ensuring that our people get the job opportunities they need and deserve. Our county is home to two universities: Keele University in my constituency and the University of Staffordshire in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Those two institutions bring young people to our area, and many from our area stay there.
I must declare an interest—I probably should have done it when I responded to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham)—as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Education. In doing so, I pay tribute to Newcastle college and the Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group. Our local college’s successful bid to become an advanced manufacturing technical excellence college is so important to ensuring that our industrial heritage is respected and that talented young people from across Staffordshire are at the heart of Britain’s industrial future. I would like to extend my very best thanks—I know you will agree with me, Madam Deputy Speaker—to Craig Hodgson, the principal of Newcastle college. He has served in that role for three decades and some. Service of that length just does not happen very often these days, and certainly not in this place.
Adam Jogee
I will see my hon. Friend in 30 years—I will be sitting here and he will be sitting there.
Earlier this year, Craig announced that he was retiring after one heck of a stint. We will always be grateful to Craig for his commitment to our community, our young people, our county and our collective future.
We must look to our industrial heartlands to make the most of what we already have, ensuring that real growth, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister would say, is felt in all postcodes in Staffordshire and that growth is translated into well-paid, meaningful career opportunities for local people. The growth potential that comes from investing in British industry and the skills required is massive in communities across our county, and there is no better place, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) noted, than our ceramics industry. It provides the building blocks of and for our United Kingdom, and without it we could not manufacture steel, glass, cement, bricks and many other important things.
I am grateful to Staffordshire chambers of commerce for its work helping deliver fully funded business start-up training for budding entrepreneurs across the county. By the end of this year, approximately 300 people will have completed that programme in 2026. Later this week, the chambers and I will welcome Baroness Foster and the board of Intertrade UK to Staffordshire, and to Newcastle-under-Lyme in particular, to meet Staffordshire’s businesses and employers to see what more we can do to increase trade between Northern Ireland and our fair county. Like the chambers, my colleagues and I from Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent want to see the establishment of a mayoral strategic authority for our area at the earliest opportunity. It will set us firmly on the path to helping unlock investment and the creation of well-paid local jobs and employment opportunities. I want to let the Minister address some of these points so will skip some of my speech, but I want to raise a couple of further issues.
There is a geopolitical need for us to get this right. Our international competitors—we know who they are—are investing in education, training and equipping the workforce of the future with the skills needed for that future, and we must do the same. It is vital that British manufacturing is at the heart of our trade agenda and that we redouble our efforts to buy British, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central would say, every step of the way, and all of that will help job creation in Staffordshire.
I ask the Minister to touch on a few specific areas. Staffordshire is home to many rural communities. I am proud to represent a number of them in Madeley, Audley, Betley and Wrinehill and would be grateful if the Minister could set out, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford did, what we are doing to ensure that rural communities do not fall behind. Will the Minister also encourage his colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to get on with giving us a mayoral authority and to prioritise that over local government reorganisation, and what is being done in Government to make sure that all relevant Departments are talking to each other? For those who live in a rural area and do not drive and who need a bus—there is some consistency of thought here, because I promise I had not shown my speech to my constituency neighbours—a chance would have been a fine thing over the last decade. So some clarity and inter-Government working would be helpful too.
How are we ensuring that Government understand what employers are looking for and ensuring that what they are looking for is reflected in our skills and training? I welcome the billions of pounds of investment in the youth guarantee and the growth skills levy, as well as new youth hubs from, as we have heard, Tamworth to Stafford to Newcastle-under-Lyme, but we need more of that.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is not just about the young people; it is also about the adult reskilling opportunities. The Chancellor’s announcement of the union learning fund was incredibly welcome, but with an ageing workforce in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, and with technological advances often outpacing the skills of the people already in work, we must make sure we keep those people who are in jobs trained to the level that means that they can carry on working. If the Minister could respond to that, I would be very grateful.
Adam Jogee
We are seeing tonight the consistency of view right across Staffordshire, from colleagues up and down, north and south, east and west, who are determined to make sure that all of our people have the skills they need, however old they are, to be competitive in the jobs market, to help fuel growth in our communities and ultimately to demonstrate to the rest of the world what they are capable of.
This is Budget week—as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker; you will be in the Chair on Wednesday—and I urge the Minister to send our right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer a copy of Hansard tomorrow, so he can read this speech and all the interventions and ensure that the fight for Staffordshire’s people and their ability to access the jobs and opportunities they deserve runs through his speech on Wednesday because our people deserve nothing less.
The Minister for Employment (Andrew Western)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing this important debate and his tireless advocacy for the people of Newcastle-under-Lyme and the wider Staffordshire area. He has consistently championed the importance of creating opportunities for local people and ensuring that growth brings tangible benefits to local communities.
As my hon. Friend said, I was pleased to visit his constituency with him earlier this year to see at first hand the work being undertaken by local partners, including Jobcentre Plus and, as he reflected, Citizens Advice, to support people into employment, education and training. We heard directly from residents and young people about the opportunities and challenges they face and the work he has done to support them. They were indeed, as he so humbly set out, very wise to send him to this place, and if nothing else, that is reflected by his ability to create such a crowd for an Adjournment debate at 10 pm on a Monday night—on a one-line Whip no less. That is truly titanic.
Adam Jogee
I am very conscious that we want to hear from the Minister but, as he acknowledges the number of Staffordshire MPs, we hunt as a pack so it is no surprise we are all here together at 10 pm on a Monday on a one-line Whip.
Andrew Western
Indeed, and it is for that reason that I am treading very carefully with the words I use. I hear my hon. Friend’s message loud and clear: do not mess with Staffordshire.
My visit underlined the importance of ensuring that everyone can access the support and opportunities they need to achieve their potential, but too often in the past this has not happened and whole communities have been left behind. As my hon. Friend said, people should not be forced to leave the places that they are from just to have the chance to get on in life. That is why the Prime Minister has set out our ambition to deliver growth in every postcode in Staffordshire and beyond.
Growth is not an abstract economic concept; it is about whether people can find good work, whether businesses can access the skills they need and whether communities, such as those across Staffordshire, can realise their full potential. Staffordshire has significant strengths to build on, with a skilled workforce and strong businesses across advanced manufacturing, including ceramics and logistics, construction and energy.
Dave Robertson
The Minister is right to raise the importance of ceramics to our industries. In my part of the world, it is sanitaryware and Armitage Shanks, and we know the Stokies are all about flatware—it is a huge part of the economy. Will the Minister urge colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade to get the funding for the ceramics rescue package out of the door faster than currently planned? We need that rescue package in the hands of companies, not sitting in a bank account in Whitehall.
Andrew Western
I have heard my hon. Friend loud and clear, and I will ensure that DBIST colleagues do too. The industrial and logistics specialist Indurent plans to invest £800 million in Staffordshire over the next few years—a clear vote of confidence in the county. As he highlights, the ceramics industry remains central to the area’s identity, with companies such as Lucideon, Mantec and Ross Ceramics helping to apply north Staffordshire’s world-leading expertise in advanced materials to industries including aerospace, defence, electronics and nuclear energy.
We have recognised the contribution of advanced manufacturing in the Government’s industrial strategy and are working with industry to develop a jobs plan for the sector. This will help to address workforce challenges and strengthen recruitment pipelines, and it will also help to ensure that more people can access the opportunities being created in one of our most important growth sectors.
Turning to partnership, I welcome the role played by local colleges, training providers and employers across Staffordshire in developing the next generation of skilled workers. The selection of Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group as an advanced manufacturing technical excellence college demonstrates the important contribution the area is making to meeting future skills needs and helping people access high-quality technical careers. My colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions have been working with manufacturing employers to promote apprenticeships, work experience opportunities, careers events and employability activity, including activity targeted at young people who are not in education, employment or training.
Gareth Snell
I have spoken to the Minister about this issue before, and I have spoken to the Minister for Skills in the other place as well, but the DWP could help to move this forward by looking at the restrictions on apprenticeship provider and assessment register registrations for new apprenticeship providers, and by changing the £100,000 de minimis for subcontracting. There are companies and employers in Stoke that want to take on apprentices but cannot do so because the contracts are already at the limit. If the DWP could look at that, we could revolutionise apprenticeship providers in the county.
Andrew Western
My hon. Friend makes an important and valid point. I will share his contribution with my noble friend the Minister for Skills.
In the interest of time, I will turn to the questions raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme. He was particularly keen to understand how we ensure that people in rural communities can access jobs and opportunities. The Government are supporting employment in rural areas through localised get Britain working plans, a reformed jobs and careers service with expanded digital, phone and in-person support, and increased outreach through a flexible delivery network, including jobcentre vans. We have over 650 visiting officers who carry out home visits for customers with complex needs who cannot engage via digital or telephone channels, or attend a jobcentre. We have outreach work in place with local providers and community organisations to help to reach rural areas so that customers who might otherwise miss out on jobcentre services can access facilities.
On a cross-Government approach, my hon. Friend is entirely right to talk about ongoing dialogue with the Department for Transport. Bus services are incredibly important, and it is key that we retain strategic routes wherever possible. A particular, broader example of cross-Government working is our new jobs plans, which is a key part of the industrial strategy. Last Monday, the professional and business services jobs plan set out an aspiration to deliver 100,000 jobs in the coming years, including 22,400 apprenticeships. Departments involved include not just DWP and DBIST, but the Department for Education as well as Skills England. Departments are really working together to shape these plans, ensure that employment priorities are built in alongside skills and identify where DWP’s employment offer can help sectors to recruit the workforce that they need.
Leigh Ingham
My experience with Staffordshire county council is that funding has been allocated to it to deliver employment programmes, which is great, and we have the DWP jobs hubs as well, but they will not talk to each other, so there is real disengagement. If the Minister could push Staffordshire county council to have conversations with partners, it would really help the rest of us trying to do this work.
Andrew Western
I had made a mental note, from the contributions earlier, of the issues that colleagues have outlined with Staffordshire county council. It appears to be heading towards a meeting without coffee, but in the meantime, I am very happy to give it a chance to rectify its shortcomings when I write to it setting out some of the concerns that colleagues have raised.
On engagement more broadly, we want to consistently ensure that candidates come forward with the right skills to meet the jobs that employers wish to fill, to rebuild employer confidence in our services and to reduce skills shortages. The crucial thing there is a strong local understanding of the labour market needs. The Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire local skills improvement plan has been shaped collaboratively with employers and other partners to shape a plan for a more productive, inclusive and future-ready regional economy.
On the universities, I give my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme the assurance that the University of Staffordshire and Keele University are important partners for the local skills improvement plan. It is absolutely right that they are, and I reassure him that they are and will remain fully engaged.
Finally, on the point from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), it is absolutely correct to stress the importance of reskilling and upskilling, as well as giving young people the skills that they need. I am passionate about that, and I know that my noble friend the Minister for Skills is too.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme for bringing forward the debate this evening. The level of interest shows the passion that Members across Staffordshire and beyond have for this important issue, and I will take away the actions that I have committed to this evening.
Question put and agreed to.