Technology in Public Services

Debate between Allison Gardner and Caroline Nokes

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate the hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches tonight. I, too, am honoured to make my maiden speech during this debate on the use of technology in public services, coming as I have from my previous role in the NHS AI and digital regulations service.

Mine is a new constituency, with the majority of the old Stoke-on-Trent South and the northern part of the Stone constituencies within its boundaries. The new Stoke-on-Trent South is hence a diverse area, combining a great industrial heritage of mining and ceramics with the agricultural and rural communities of Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire. Our urban area centres around one of the six Staffordshire pottery towns of Longton, which proudly boasts the largest number of our iconic bottle ovens, including those of the Gladstone Pottery Museum, where “The Great Pottery Throw Down” was filmed. Naturally, ceramics and tableware are a major part of our history and culture. Indeed, you can spot a Stokie anywhere in the world, for they will be turning over any cup or plate to see whether it comes from Stoke-on-Trent—you know it! I invite Members present to join the “turnover club” and investigate the provenance of pottery and china right here in the Palace of Westminster.

Of course, our industrial strength extends beyond ceramics and includes innovative firms such as Goodwin, with high-tech mechanical and refractory engineering divisions, which I had the pleasure of speaking to last week. Goodwin, along with other excellent businesses, including Trentham’s Minuteman Press, offers dozens of high-skilled apprenticeships, giving our workers award-winning opportunities to develop key skills for the future. Indeed, within north Staffordshire we have Keele and Staffordshire Universities, a medical and veterinary school, and excellent further education colleges offering great courses and apprenticeships.

The rural part of the constituency includes Blythe Bridge and Barlaston, and extends to Tean, Swynnerton, Yarnfield and Oulton, with many villages in between. It is where my partner Jim’s family have lived and run their sawmills for generations. Walk anywhere in our countryside and you will see public footpath signposts made by Jim himself. History, land, family and a love for our north Staffordshire home—I am going to get emotional—are embodied in those signs.

Indulge me too as I mention my daughters, Chrissie and Lucy, and my sister Siobhan, and thank them, alongside Jim and his children, William and Sophie, for putting up with me in my passion to build a better future for everyone’s children in my constituency. Thanks are also due to the great team that supported me throughout.

With this new combined constituency, I must acknowledge the hard work of the two former Conservative Members, Jack Brereton and Bill Cash. Jack was MP for Stoke-on-Trent South from 2017. I commend him for his work in tackling the scourge of monkey dust, and for his ambitions for better transport across Stoke and north Staffordshire. I commit to continuing that important work, and welcome the moves being made by this Government to rebuild our transport services to be run for the people, benefiting our economy, opportunity and the environment. Bill Cash has had a parliamentary career spanning 40 years. Indeed, Bill was an MP before Jack was born. I wish Bill well in his retirement.

In Stoke-on-Trent South, Jack was preceded by the Labour MPs Rob Flello and George Stevenson. I thank George for his no-nonsense advice and support. I should also mention another MP called Jack: Jack Ashley, a Labour MP who I have the honour of being compared to. This is a formidable challenge to meet. Jack was elected in 1966, the year I was born and the year that we won the world cup, in which the great Stoke City player Gordon Banks played a key role. His statue stands proudly outside the bet365 stadium in my constituency. So 1966 was a good year all round, by my reckoning, as we can now add me to its accomplishments as the first female MP for Stoke-on-Trent South.

Jack Ashley became profoundly deaf while he was an MP and was reportedly the first deaf Member of any elected assembly. Although he initially thought that he would need to resign, he turned to technology, using a Palantype transcription system. Jack’s visit to the BBC’s Ceefax department even inspired a project to develop a computer program to convert stenographic outputs to TV subtitles. As a hard-of-hearing MP who wears AI-enabled hearing aids, it is fitting that I remember Jack Ashley in today’s debate.

It is the norm for MPs to claim in their maiden speech that their constituency is the most beautiful. I could, of course, argue that, describing our quintessential countryside, pretty villages and farms, the canals and of course the River Trent, or I could talk of the beauty I find in our industrial landscape—I am going to get emotional again.

However, I want to talk about the people, because it is in their spirit, their friendliness and their sense of community that true beauty lies—in the heart of the people. From Tracey, who runs Meir Watch, and Arfan, who owns Sizzlers pizzas, coming together to feed and clothe children in need, with no expectation of thanks or profit; to the fantastic PEGiS—the Parent Engagement Group in Stoke—who I had the pleasure to meet at their summer picnic, working to support SEND families, with no-nonsense women such as Michelle and Keeley cracking on and getting stuff sorted; or Jason, passionately fighting to clean up our waterways; Craig, battling grief from the loss of a friend to campaign for safer roads; and the village who reached out to me, worried about asylum seekers, not because they had given in to the politics of division and hate, but because they were worried that the children were not getting any schooling. When I attended their summer fête, they had reached out and invited the refugees to come and join in the fun—and come they did.

This is the heart of the people of my constituency, reaching out and caring for those in need without judgment, with friendly, no-nonsense, practical support, and believing in the power of community action. This is true beauty. I pledge to all the people in my constituency that I carry them in my heart and mind at all times. I am acutely aware of the trust they have placed in me. I will get some things wrong, no doubt, but know this: I will always do my best. I will work hard, I will always hold the vision of a better life for them and I will always fight for the place that is my home.

Before I turn back to the topic of this debate, technology in our public services, I will take one more little trip into history, if I may. In Barlaston we have the World of Wedgwood, where I like to treat myself to a genteel cream tea, drinking out of Wedgwood china and pretending I am posh. I heartily recommend visiting. The founder, Josiah Wedgwood, was a great innovator and entrepreneur who invented creamware and green glaze, to name just two. He understood that science—in his case, chemistry—practically applied in an industrial context turbocharged innovation and development. He was also a master marketeer, apparently, pioneering money-back guarantees, illustrated catalogues and buy one, get one free. If he were alive today, we can only imagine what his innovative and entrepreneurial spirit would make of this digital world.

Josiah was a polymath, and that is something worth noting. It is important that we recognise that in considering technological innovation, we must take a multidisciplinary approach, with the full participation of those who will implement, use, govern and be impacted by the technology day to day. Technology in the public services offers huge potential, but there are also risks if it is not properly developed and deployed, as we have seen with biased risk assessment models for child welfare and benefit fraud models.

In my previous career with the NHS, I saw the great potential that diagnostic technologies can offer, particularly in radiology, which I saw in action when I visited the radiology department at the Royal Stoke, for example. Such technologies can be transformative, streamlining pathways and saving hours of work, but they do not and should not replace human oversight. Proper governance and regulation are required, and always with a “safety first” principle. It must be transparent and accountable. I hope we get it right; in fact, we must. In delivering transformative change in our public services, we must develop the governance and regulation that will maximise the benefits and mitigate the risks—not just for the people of my constituency or the country, but because by moving forward to a bright new age with modern and innovative public services, as they once were and will be again, we can be an example to the world.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call Chris Coghlan to make his maiden speech.