Post-industrial Towns

Allison Gardner Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jo White]

I have heard from all my hon. Friends from Stoke-on-Trent, who are currently seeing the demise of the ceramics industry. That cannot go on, and the cause is high energy prices.

[Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

The most recent data, from 2023, showed that 25% of manufacturing jobs in Stoke-on-Trent were in ceramics. Ceramics—especially advanced ceramics—is critical to strategic industries such as defence, nuclear energy and steel. Does my hon. Friend agree that the industrial strategy must recognise the foundational industry of ceramics, which is vital for the future not only of Stoke-on-Trent but the country?

[Jo White]

I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution. I hope that Ministers are listening, as the products produced in the three constituencies of my hon. Friends from Stoke-on-Trent are critical for our industrial future.

My challenge to Government is to bring forward an industrial strategy that allows the whole nation to grow, but also resources and targets the towns that are crying out for change. I begin by demanding a skills revolution in our post-industrial areas. For much of the past century, areas such as mine were dominated by key industries. In Bassetlaw, we had thousands of men working down the pits while their wives, sisters and mothers headed into the big textile factories. The history of key industries is not exclusive to Bassetlaw—there are vital and historic British industries with their roots in many red wall areas. Ceramics, fishing, automotive, steel and shipping all dominated the midlands and the north of England. While some still remain, they are struggling, fighting an ongoing international race for cheap labour and parts, with successive Governments failing them time and again.

In Bassetlaw, as the mines closed and the textile factories moved to countries with cheap labour, the employment opportunities shifted, with warehousing and logistics springing up on the old pit sites. At that time, skills provision, under the auspices of the Manpower Services Commission, developed into a simplistic system. It was literally controlled by the main employers, who wanted to mould the workforce into their own needs from age 16. In Bassetlaw, it was Tony Wilkinson of Wilko and Richard Budge of Budge Mining who ran the system. For a small number, skills training was via the university route, with most never returning. The middle ground between the two was a low priority for Government, and the lazy solution has been to import the skills we need. That is the history of the past 14 years, where cheap imported skills have been used to meet industry’s short-term needs, methodically sidelining local young people and adding to soaring legal migration. We have the kernel of an alternative, with high-skilled apprenticeships, but they are not yet ingrained across the system or the country.