Jobs and Employment: Staffordshire

Dave Robertson Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[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.

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[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.

Manufacturing Skills

Dave Robertson Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to take part in a debate with you in the Chair, Sir Christopher, and in one led by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley)—the UK’s spokesperson for ferries.

The Government are rightly talking about reindustrialisation at the moment. We can see how well supported that is by Labour Members, given the number of us who want to contribute to the debate, but too often talk of reindustrialisation can lead people to think that we are trying to go back to the past. That is not true anywhere in the country, but especially in the west midlands, where we have a proud manufacturing tradition. Yes, that has been depleted, and many communities across the region are still scarred by that, but communities are also really looking forward to a brighter future in which industrialisation can come back.

Central to manufacturing in my part of the world—Staffordshire—is ceramics. I am proud to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner), who talked about ceramics in north Staffordshire, but in my part of the world we talk about a different type of ceramics: toilets. Every single Member of this House will have spent a penny with Armitage Shanks at some point, because it has been operating for over 200 years in the village of Armitage, in my constituency. The ceramics industry as a whole supports 20,000 skilled jobs and produces toilets and plates, but also bricks, pipes and the technical ceramics spoken about earlier. Those jobs are essential to economic growth and the economic wellbeing of the entire country, but especially to communities in the north midlands, where so much of the ceramics industry is based.

That is really important to those communities, but it is also really important for what the Government are seeking to achieve. The Government rightly talk about ending the housing crisis, and about the need to make sure that there is enough housing stock available for every single person in this country. I would wager that every one of us would expect to see at least one toilet in every single one of those new houses. The last volume producer of sanitaryware anywhere in the country is in a little village called Armitage, which is not far from Lichfield. The Government have already done much to talk about the importance of industry, the importance of manufacturers like Armitage Shanks, and the importance of the skills that such companies need. We have already seen changes to the functional skills requirement for apprenticeships, which I wholeheartedly support, and that has led to an increase in the number of young people taking up that opportunity. It is a great step in the right direction, as is talking about vocational GCSEs.

As important as it is to see skills coming through, we also need to make sure that businesses provide the jobs in which those skills can be used, which is why I am so pleased that the Government were able to provide a £120 million rescue package for the ceramics industry—funding that is desperately needed to help the industry regenerate itself, look forward to the 21st century, decarbonise and continue to drive economic growth. However, that funding is no good if it is sitting in a bank account in Whitehall waiting to be delivered; we need to get it out of the door faster to ensure that both sides of the equation of manufacturing skills—the manufacturers and the skills—are working hand in hand. Will the Minister have a conversation with her colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade to ensure that we are leaving no stone unturned to push that funding out the door? We need to get it into the ceramics industry so that it can provide jobs, and so that the skills we are trying to build can be pushed forward into companies and help drive economic growth in every postcode in the country, but especially in WS15.

Pensions Triple Lock

Dave Robertson Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pat McFadden]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for campaigning on this issue. We published a document on 29 September showing that pensioner poverty was set to fall under the plans. We are not complacent about that. That is why we have asked the Pensions Commission to look at what further measures may be needed to reduce pensioner poverty in future years.

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has clearly been in this place for a few years longer than I have, so I am sure that, as with me, many people get in touch with him on a weekly and monthly basis about the problems they face in the care system. It is so bad for families out there and I have lost count, even in my short time in this place, of the number of people who have been in tears in my surgeries, talking about the difficulties of navigating personal care for elderly relatives. I thank the Secretary of State for his work on this matter. Unless we get the care system right, we are turning our face away from one of the great evils in this country. The triple lock is a difficult thing to unpick, but the steps that he is taking are proportionate and should lead to that essential care system. May I thank him for the work that he has done in this space?