Specialist Manufacturing Sector: Regional Economies

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) on securing the debate. We do not talk nearly enough about manufacturing in this place—I am sure the Minister would agree with that, given his personal commitment and understanding of the sector from his previous role.

I very much enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith). I am sure that parts made in my constituency, at Meighs & Westleys, Goodwin or Mantec, make their way down to her local businesses, but I say gently to her that scaremongering about the Employment Rights Bill is a disincentive to industry and a restriction on our economy. The Bill is not yet anywhere near implementation.

[Rebecca Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gareth Snell]

Very briefly, as long as the hon. Lady is going to admit that she is wrong.

[Rebecca Smith]

I am not going to do that. Many businesspeople across my constituency have contacted me to stress how damaging the Bill will be. It seems to be more of an ideological issue on which Opposition Members differ. The red tape, particularly around things like zero-hours contracts, will have a massive impact, but I guess the proof will be in the pudding.

[Gareth Snell]

I am many things, but I have never been called an ideologue. We can have a debate about the Employment Rights Bill on a different occasion, but I suggest that securing the right for people to know what hours they are working does not seem to me like a minimum ask for anybody.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley raised the importance of manufacturing to pride in place. He rightly talked about the valves made in Calder Valley, and he will know that I and my colleagues from north Staffordshire talk quite a lot in this place about ceramics and pottery—I cannot imagine your disbelief, Mrs Harris, but it is true. We talk about that because we are proud of the things that we make. We are proud to know that the tableware in our dining rooms was made by Duchess in Stoke-on-Trent, and the gifts in the Lords gift shop were made by Halcyon Days in Stoke-on-Trent. There are Wedgwood plates, Spode mugs and Burleigh prints all around this building that were made in Stoke-on-Trent.

It is not just Stoke-on-Trent that has a unique commitment and an integral identity connection to manufacturing. Think about the cutlery manufacturers of Sheffield, the jewellery quarter in Birmingham, the shoe manufacturers of Northampton, the knitwear and textiles in Scotland and, of course, the shipyards of Barrow and Belfast—clear commitments to industry that have helped to shape people’s identity. That is why we have to think about what regional investment means. We are proud of the things we make: they contribute to our local economy, which therefore contributes to the national economy. The supply chains need to stretch right across the whole United Kingdom because, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) says, this is about the nations and regions of this country coming together to do what we all do best in our localities for the greater good of the nation.

In Stoke-on-Trent we do not just make tableware, giftware and ceramics; it is also proudly home to a factory that makes all the cherry bakewells in this country. I did not know she was here this morning, but one of our guests in the Public Gallery works in that factory. The workers there are proud of what they do and their creation of pastry, frangipane, icing and hand-placed cherries.

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

Did the hon. Gentleman bring any with him?

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[Gareth Snell]

No—but those workers know how they contribute to our national economy.

When manufacturing, pride in place and identity overlap, that is something to be celebrated, because it drives innovation. Hannah Ault of Valentine Clays in Stoke-on-Trent is incredibly proud of the work she does. She is formulating a new clay that can be baked at a lower temperature for a shorter period of time, because she has an intense connection to the ceramic sector and the use of such skills. That research and development would not ordinarily happen; it happens because of her connection to a place and the support she can give to a sector that still has things to make.

I want to press the Minister on two points. First, on procurement, it is a travesty that only a third of the cars in the Government Car Service are made by British manufacturers. The proportion is even less for police cars purchased in this country. We have bus manufacturers, train manufacturers and brick manufacturers in this country, all of which make wonderful products, yet we import products from other parts of the world. Local and regional manufacturers can make them at better quality and lower cost if we give them the opportunity, but to do that the Minister—he knows what I am about to say—has to get a grip on industrial energy costs, which I know he is doing.

Small manufacturers in this country face some of the highest industrial electricity prices anywhere in the world, and although our gas prices are relatively competitive with Europe, they are much higher than they were two or three years ago. Small manufacturers need help with export finance to ensure that they can go to trade shows and exhibitions. We also have to get a grip on skills; it is brilliant that T-levels are coming online, but they have to come online quicker.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Chris McDonald)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Carolyn. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) for securing this debate, and for his opening remarks.

Hon. Members may have thought, when they heard that Stoke-on-Trent had been “moulded by ceramics”, that it was the worst joke they would hear in the Chamber today, but I will try my best. When I heard my hon. Friend refer to valve valley, I wondered, as a cornet player, whether it was a reference to the famous West Riding brass bands: the Brighouse and Rastrick brass band, the Elland Silver band and my personal favourite, the Friendly band of Sowerby Bridge. I am sure that they use their cornet valves to lower or raise the tone just as effectively as we did in this debate. Cornet valves, of course, respond well under pressure—I shall see how I do with that.

Maybe, after this debate, the particular expertise of the valve industry in Calder Valley will be better known to the country. It is not difficult to see the impact that manufacturing, and the valve industry in particular, has on Calder Valley. I have seen, as I am sure those watching will have, the pride and importance that hon. Members across this House recognise in the manufacturing industries in their particular areas. These companies are the heart of British manufacturing.

In the valve industry, we have companies such as Hopkinsons, established in Huddersfield in 1843, which continues, as part of Trillium Flow Technologies, to export valves globally. Its valves are used in applications ranging from boilers to power plants, in oil and gas, and in petrochemicals. In Fort Vale, founded in Calder Valley, we have a global manufacturing presence making valves for transportable tanks. Last year, Fort Vale received its fifth King’s award—formerly the Queen’s award—for international trade. Blackhall Engineering is another astonishing story of a link between our Victorian heritage and modern engineering. It supplies valves for the New York City water board, replacing originals installed by its predecessor company a century earlier.

We need to recognise the local pride in Calder Valley, and in all parts of the country with a strong manufacturing heritage, and recognise the economic opportunity of wages and real value that manufacturing brings to these communities. But there are, of course, significant challenges, including those that hon. Members raised in this debate. I wish to address the challenges in procurement, skills and energy costs, as well as the challenges that have been mentioned for small businesses.

The framework through which the Government are working with industry and manufacturing is, of course, our industrial strategy, which attempts to respond to those challenges and to deliver productivity and growth, and is unashamedly place-based in the regions that matter to manufacturing. Some 84% of manufacturing jobs are located outside London and the south-east. I want to mildly disagree here with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner), because she mentioned deindustrialisation—a word that I do not particularly like to use in this sense. The UK is very much an industrial country; we have just chosen to locate our industry elsewhere, and part of my mission is to ensure that we regrow and restore that manufacturing here in the UK. I know that she would agree with that.

The hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) spoke of regional growth, which is also vital. Our industrial strategy is about securing competitiveness not only for sectors, but for regional prosperity, and we recognise that manufacturing is key to the resilience of our national economy.

[Gareth Snell]

A lot of Members have talked about the importance of defence manufacturing; the Minister has talked about our economic resilience, but a big part of this is our sovereign capability and our national security resilience. I know that he has done work on that, so can he say more about how his work aligns with the work of the Ministry of Defence team to ensure that the manufacturing capability in the UK is about not just economic growth, but our national security and safety?

[Chris McDonald]

That point is well made. Of course, alongside our industrial strategy, we have our defence industrial strategy. When I come to talk about procurement, I may say more about that, and many hon. Members have talked about defence.

When we talk about our manufacturing sector, it is important to highlight some of the headline statistics. Manufacturing pays higher wages and has generally higher productivity in the areas where it is located and, when it comes to the balance of trade, although around 10% of our employment is in manufacturing, it accounts for around 50% of our exports. Those outputs, jobs and exports consist of thousands of specialist manufacturers, large and small, up and down the whole United Kingdom. Those exports are global and, as we have heard, we also export into space.

On procurement—I know that this area has been a major concern for many hon. Members, and particularly Government procurement—I have great sympathy for the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), and I am happy to pursue the specific issues that he raised. I see it as vital to our manufacturing and industrial sectors that we ensure that the money that we as a Government, or our regulated sectors, spend is significant and is concentrated as effectively as possible in the UK, for both its economic and its social value. We need to raise awareness of the opportunities. We must ensure that those opportunities are open to UK manufacturers and that our UK companies are competitive enough to win those contracts. The industrial strategy plays a part in ensuring that those companies can do that.

To increase business investment, we must also ensure that we have a real market opportunity, both at home and overseas. Our clean energy strategy is introducing measures aimed at directly increasing UK beneficiaries in Government procurement. The clean industry bonus for offshore wind, for instance, is designed to encourage investment in Britain’s coastal industrial areas and supply chains. We also want to see robust local content targets. We are examining market demand guarantees to encourage UK scale-ups and introducing a clean energy supply chain fund to support UK-based clean energy manufacturing.

The defence industrial strategy, which I mentioned earlier—the defence industry is, of course, another user of valves—sets out a major reform agenda for procurement to grow our UK industrial base. We will be speeding up procurement processes and reducing bureaucracy, while ensuring greater visibility of defence procurement and taking steps to ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises will have greater access to our supply chains. Our procurement and capital programmes are key to anchoring manufacturing here in the UK and then encouraging businesses to secure investment and export overseas.

UK manufacturing, however, ranks just 24th globally for robotics and automation. Here I move to the topic of productivity, which is of course a key element in profitability and competitiveness. That is an area where, as a nation, we need to work more. If we are not working digitally, we cannot adopt automation and move as fast as our competitors. Our Made Smarter adoption programme, with up to £99 million of additional funding, will help with this. It will support more manufacturing SMEs to take up new technologies and improve their digital capabilities. We have had reference today to the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, which I know from personal experience is a great supporter of improving competitiveness, robotics, automation and productivity in our supply chains.

Skills was also an important feature of today’s debate. They were raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley, with his inspiring story of Stuart Billingham —maybe we all need to see more Stuart Billinghams in our lives. The hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) also mentioned regional skills development. I know that persistent skills shortages and the availability of good applicants are a concern felt across our manufacturing sectors. That is certainly an area for Government and industry to work closely together on, to encourage talented people from across the UK to seek jobs in our manufacturing sector. Fort Vale in Calderdale has a strong tradition in apprenticeships, and I understand that it receives over 140 applications each year for the opportunities it provides. That experience of high numbers of applications for apprenticeships is something I see across the country. I applaud the work of the West Yorkshire Manufacturing Services charity and its partnership with Calderdale college on the Industry 4.0 hub, which addresses exactly those digital issues.

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[Chris McDonald]

Small business owners might be concerned, but I know from personal experience that with the right level of support, it is perfectly possible to manage a business with these employment rights. I suggest support, rather than scaremongering, is the way to go. We heard from the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) about the support a previous local industrialist gave to their community. Although I commend that, Labour Members think that good pay and conditions are a right rather than a gift.

Energy costs are clearly the major competitiveness issue for industry. I agree with the shadow spokesperson, the hon. Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul), about the lack of competitiveness of UK energy costs—she cited a figure from the International Energy Agency showing they were 46% above European averages, and that is a figure I recognise. However, our clean power mission will ensure that we are weaned off the international gas markets, to which we were enslaved by the previous Government for such a long time. The shadow Minister mentioned Mossmorran, which is a good example of a business that sustained losses for years and was unable to justify investment as a result of the previous Government’s neglect of manufacturing and industry.

We recognise that, beyond our clean power mission, we must do more and act quickly to support sectors with high growth potential and significant exposure to high electricity costs. We are increasing the support available for energy-intensive companies through the British industry supercharger, and from 2027 we will introduce the new British industrial competitiveness scheme, which will reduce electricity costs.

[Gareth Snell]

I make my regular plea to the Minister to consider extending the supercharger scheme to energy-intensive industries that are not currently covered, ahead of the introduction of the British industrial competitiveness scheme.