Higher Education: Staffordshire

Debate between Gareth Snell and Adam Jogee

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Adam Jogee]

Another example of the great decisions the people of Staffordshire made is that my hon. Friend is now sitting on the Government Benches as the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, which we are all grateful for. He raises an important point for two reasons: first, Danny Flynn is a constituent of mine, in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and has spent many years doing amazing work with his team at the North Staffordshire YMCA, based in—

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

Based in my constituency.

[Adam Jogee]

I was just about to say that it is based in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). Secondly, the organisation has an undiluted and clear commitment to ensuring that people from many different backgrounds are able to access the opportunities they need and deserve in order to meet their full potential.

--- Later in debate ---

[Adam Jogee]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for such an important point. Stability, certainty and structure are what we all want in our lives. I expect that is why our party received such a mandate from the people. But on a serious note, making sure that our higher education institutions have that stability and focus will benefit all of us.

In Staffordshire, students of black African ethnicity have, at 81%, the highest progression rate to higher education. Progression rates for students eligible for free school meals have increased in Staffordshire over the past 10 years, from 13.3% in 2011-12 to 19.3% in 2021-22.

In 2021-22, students with special educational needs in Staffordshire were also much less likely to progress to higher education than those with no identified special educational needs. Both those figures were lower than the national average and, in my view, speak to the need to get a grip of SEND provision in Staffordshire and across England. The system is broken and it is leaving our young people and their families behind.

During the election, I met many of the young people who studied at Keele. I mention Molly, Martha, Olly and Bayley, who were just a few of the young people who had the wisdom both to study at Keele and to help on my campaign. From all my visits and meetings with the students, it was clear just how much they had made a home in north Staffordshire, and that is something we all want to hold on to.

[Gareth Snell]

I find myself somewhat conflicted, as a graduate of the wonderful Keele University but also representing its rival in the local varsity in the University of Staffordshire. My hon. Friend’s point about young people going to university and making their home in the area is absolutely right. I am a testament to that. But does he agree that one thing we now have to do collectively, as a group of MPs representing that part of the world, is ensure that those high-value, good-quality jobs are then brought to the area, so that the graduates we have can stay in north Staffordshire after they graduate and make a life and a family there?

[Adam Jogee]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is something that we have discussed and that we will keep working on together. Keele, which is a subject for another debate, is home to many brilliant local businesses, and we want to facilitate more such businesses. I hope those on the Treasury Bench will look favourably on us as they look for places in which to invest in the coming months and years.

At Keele, the number of higher education staff stands at about 2,000. Like all our public services, we rely on brilliant public sector workers, and I want to pay tribute to all the wonderful people who educate, inspire and support the leaders, the vets and the doctors of tomorrow. I would like to acknowledge my constituents. It is always dangerous to start naming people, but I just want to say a couple of things. Madam Deputy Speaker, your eyes are on me, so I shall be brief. My constituents are: Rosi Monkman; Professor Peter Lawrence; Ant Sutcliffe, who is also chair of governors at St Luke’s primary school in Silverdale; and Dr Robert Jackson, who, after almost 40 years working at Keele, has just retired—a good stint that certainly demonstrates more career stability than most of us will have in this House. Our thanks also go to all those who work at Keele and at Staffordshire University. Through Professor Trevor McMillan, the vice-chancellor at Keele, and Professor Martin Jones, the vice-chancellor at Staffordshire, I want to extend our real and meaningful gratitude to all of them for the work they do.

The future of our country is in many ways dependent on the future of our universities. Although I do not expect the Minister to second-guess the Chancellor ahead of the Budget, I do want to say on the Floor of the House that we must give serious consideration and thought to our universities as final decisions are made on the Budget. As we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham), the current situation sees universities launching voluntary redundancy schemes and carrying out constant restructurings as they seek to balance the books. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) noted, the issue is also about our young people: the household income level at which a student qualifies for the maximum level of support has remained unchanged in cash terms since 2008. That means a real-terms fall of about 39%, making students from lower household income levels less likely to be eligible for a full loan and more likely to be pushed to the brink.

When those of us in this place were students, some longer ago than others, most people were able to scrape by, but now our young people are being forced to rely on food banks or worse—go hungry if the bank of mum and dad is not an option. That should never be an option, in my view; our country should work properly, fairly and decently.

I congratulate Keele University on its 75 years of groundbreaking research, thought, ideas and change. It is an important milestone that I did not want to pass the House by. Thanks to the staff, the communities and most importantly our young people, higher education in Staffordshire is in good shape, but it can and should be made much better, and that is where this new Labour Government must come in. They will have my full support.

Creative Industries: Stoke-on-Trent

Debate between Gareth Snell and Adam Jogee

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman, who is my friend, is absolutely right. With the right structure, creativity and public art can go a long way to helping to reduce some of the structural problems we see in our communities, whether that be antisocial behaviour or derelict buildings. If he would ever like to join us for a tour around Stoke-on-Trent, I can show him some of the wonderful public art and particularly some of the murals on our buildings, which not only succinctly tell the story of the city but do so much to brighten up the place in a vibrant way.

I had reached G in my A to Z, so I shall talk about “The Great Pottery Throw Down”, which is not only a wonderful demonstration of the heritage skills we have in Stoke-on-Trent but proof that blockbuster television can be made in Stoke-on-Trent. We are privileged that it is filmed at Gladstone Pottery Museum, which was also the set for “The Colour Room”, a wonderful Sky adaptation of the life of Clarice Cliff. That demonstrates that with the right imagination anything is possible in Stoke.

That imagination is what has allowed us to take some of our heritage buildings back into use. The Spode site in the middle of Stoke town is becoming a createch hub—a place where creative industries and organisations are coming together to work together, not only to share their ideas and aspirations but to put their creative skills to use. That is producing this microcosm of energy and ideas that is having real dividends for those organisations, particularly as they now have a shared apprenticeship scheme that allows individuals from Staffordshire University to see different areas of the creative industries that could be available to them once they graduate.

One of the organisations involved is i.creation. It is run by the wonderful Andy Jackson, who does so much work in terms of community news and helping organisations to tell a better story about who they are.

Just down the road from Andy’s i.creation we have Junction 15, which is technically in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee), but we are one big, happy north Staffordshire family. One of Junction 15’s directors won an Emmy for the work they did at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. [Interruption.] The Minister corrects me—not for the first time—but we will hear his speech later.

We are fortunate in north Staffordshire that underpinning the creative industry are two wonderful universities. Next year, Keele University is bringing in a music production, game design and digital media course, because it realises that growing a pipeline of local talent is important for growing the local creative industry.

One of the companies looking for that pipeline is Lesniak Swann, an award-winning business-to-business marketing organisation. The company has asked me to point out that the creative industry is one of our best export markets because the work we do in the UK is highly desirable to organisations around the world. Lesniak Swann does wonderful B2B marketing work, which is incredibly creative, from its home in Stoke-on-Trent but for companies based in Norway and America. We need to think about where our creative industries can contribute to UK exports.

All this is part of Made in Stoke, a network of entrepreneurs, philanthropists and individuals who have a connection to our city and who want to come together to make it better. One of the strands they are looking at is how individuals who have gone away from Stoke-on-Trent and done wonderful things in arts, culture and creativity can come back to the city to help to inspire the next generation of new and aspiring creatives.

If people do come to Stoke, one of the best places they can visit is the New Vic Theatre, a purpose-built theatre in the round. Again, it is just over the border in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, but, again, we are one big, happy north Staffordshire family. The work the theatre does is not just about award-winning stage productions that often come down to London’s west end. It also does outreach work through Borderlines, which uses creativity and culture to tackle community cohesion issues and community prejudices through art, drama and music. Both as a theatre and through outreach work, the New Vic has been able to demonstrate that, if they want to be involved, there is a role in culture and creativity even for some of the toughest communities that may not immediately have thought about it.

[Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend both on securing this debate and for acknowledging the wonder that is north Staffordshire, and not least for acknowledging the brilliant work that takes place at the New Vic Theatre, which is in Newcastle-under-Lyme but not too far away from the Stoke-on-Trent Central border. Through my hon. Friend, I extend to the Minister an invitation to come and see for himself the wonderful New Vic and the great work it does in the community.

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend has stolen my thunder, as I was going to offer the Minister an invitation at the end of my speech. The New Vic is wonderful, and with a creative boundary review it may one day be in Stoke-on-Trent Central—but that is for another debate.

The wonderful and creative heritage of Stoke-on-Trent has produced an Oscar winner. Rachel Shenton, who is currently gracing our screens in “All Creatures Great and Small”, has demonstrated that being from Stoke-on-Trent is not a barrier to creative success or something that should hold people back. I am grateful for the work she does in coming back to the city to talk to young people about the potential for creative careers, be that in acting or theatre.

The process of learning through creativity is something we could all benefit from across the country. That is why I am glad that in my constituency I have a group called the Popcorn Learning Agency, which uses digital design and animation to create high-spec training and learning videos that go around schools throughout the country. The group is also working with some big-name organisations to create in-house opportunities. That is something thousands of people will see day in, day out, and it is all made in Stoke-on-Trent from a lovely small unit with people who are incredibly dedicated to their craft.

The Minister will be wondering what more questions there are—this is the only way I could fit a Q into this alphabet soup. He will know that I will put lots of questions to him at the end.

First, though, I will tell the Minister about Restoke, a civic arts organisation that has been using art and culture to engage some of our most disengaged communities. Its recent production of “The Lotus Eaters” was done in collaboration with the National Theatre, and saw people from Stoke-on-Trent come down to London and perform theatrics and creative industry work in the National Theatre. That is something people do not often associate with Stoke-on-Trent when they think about what we are and what we do.

There is so much going on that one organisation—Stoke Creates, run by the wonderful Susan Clarke—is taking a lead in trying to pull it all together. It is a cultural compact that is basically sitting in the middle of the sector and thinking, “What can we do to bring organisations together?” One of the challenges we have in north Staffordshire is the splendid isolationism in which people operate. Stoke Creates is teasing out the different aspects of what we can achieve and how we can achieve it. It is making the case that if someone wants to do culture and creative industries well, there are few places better than Stoke-on-Trent.

That was demonstrated recently by the exhibition Stoke on Clay, run by a gentleman called Simon, which brought together new ceramic artists for a wonderful display of creativity, making people rethink the material my city is synonymous with. It was a wonderful exhibition at the old Spode museum, bringing together the old and the new and demonstrating that what was our past and heritage is also our future.

Across north Staffordshire we are blessed with some wonderful theatre companies. I want to give a nod to the work of Claybody Theatre, run by Deborah McAndrew and Conrad Nelson. Claybody Theatre has started to think about the story of who we are in Stoke-on-Trent and what makes us who we are, and then to write plays so we can tell our story better. One of our challenges has always been how we tell our story in a way that is engaging. The theatre has put together “Bright Lights Over Bentilee”, a play currently being shown at the Dipping House in Stoke-on-Trent. It talks about the bizarre array of UFO sightings that happened over one of the largest council estates in my constituency. It is a story that in any other circumstances would be unbelievable, but it has been translated into a wonderful piece of theatre, for which I am grateful.

I need to mention the University of Staffordshire, because it is leading the country on e-gaming and high-quality creative design work. It now has a campus down in London, as well as the work that it is doing up in Staffordshire. It recognises that this is a growth industry and is working incredibly hard with partners, agencies and business—crucially, all this is with business —to ensure that the e-gaming industry in north Staffordshire is vibrant, buoyant and suitable for growth. A lot of the people trained by the university go on to work for VCCP, which is another organisation that ought to be name-checked. VCCP relocated from London up to Stoke-on-Trent because it knew that the quality of the graduate work it could get in Stoke-on-Trent was equal to, if not better than, anything it could get out of the London universities, but staff would also get the quality of life that comes with living in north Staffordshire.

All of this comes together because we are a craft city. I am happy that we were recently awarded world craft city status to recognise that our ceramic work and our creative approach to industry is in our DNA. It is who we are and it is what we do. Importantly for our younger generation, it is also about how we translate the opportunities that exist now into real opportunity. That is why, having run through all the letters of the alphabet bar two, I will move on to a couple of questions for the Minister.

First, will he visit and meet some of the organisations, so that he can see first hand the excellent work that we are doing not only in pursuit of our own economic development, but in pursuit of the Government’s own agenda to ensure that creative industries and culture are available to all? Will he consider recognising north Staffordshire as a cultural cluster—something that the last Government were not able to do, but which would give us the standing we need to demonstrate that we are here for the long run?

Will the Minister speak to his colleagues at the Department for Business and Trade to ensure that any industrial strategy that comes forward to encourage growth in the UK looks seriously at creative industries? The creative industries in Stoke-on-Trent are where our growth can come from. That is where we can make a difference to all the organisations that are currently looking to take the next step to becoming vibrant, big, national groups.

Will the Minister also speak to his friends in the Department for Education to ensure that we keep art and creative subjects on the curriculum at B-tech, higher education, further education and A-level? The pipeline of talent that we need to service the expectations that the Minister has will come from young people who are already in education. I will leave him with those three points. I hope he has enjoyed the little tour around my constituency, and I thank him for listening so diligently.

Waste Crime: Staffordshire

Debate between Gareth Snell and Adam Jogee

Thursday 5th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Adam Jogee]

In a parliamentary context, I feel that I have come of age, having been intervened on by the hon. Member—

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

You never forget your first time.

[Adam Jogee]

You never forget your first time with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—there we are. My wife is indeed from Northern Ireland—but we will stop that one there. I am, however, grateful to him for his intervention, because he makes an interesting point. Lots of people in my constituency were told that everything had been done within the law, so the simple response for me is: let us change the law. The Minister already knows some of my thoughts on that. Although we have a very busy legislative programme following the election, it is something I will push strongly and proactively.

My remarks to the inquiry continued:

“The investigation into the fire concluded that it was most likely caused by a lithium battery, but two things on this, Chair—no battery was found, which raises some very serious questions and Walleys’ permit doesn’t allow for lithium batteries to be disposed of.

My call is simple—we need the site closed, capped and restored. And we need that done now. I have made that point to anyone who will listen and will keep doing so.

Today, I am here as the Member of Parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme, and I am here to give voice to all the people who have raised this issue with me directly over the last couple of years.

We now need the Environment Agency to honour its responsibility to the people who live, learn and work here.

Simply put, Chair”—

that chair is in the Public Gallery, Councillor Bettley-Smith—

“enough is enough.

I look forward to answering your questions.”

I acknowledge the work of the cross-party committee leading the inquiry, and I welcome the invitation to speak before it, because I wanted Newcastle’s MP in the room helping to shape the way forward and delivering the results that local people want and desperately need. The stress, concern and fear about hydrogen sulphide emissions coming from the site cannot be overestimated. It is having a real impact on people’s lives and has done for many years now. There have been more than 100 breaches of the permit held by Walleys. Mr Vickers, imagine a citizen breaking an agreement, breaking the law or getting caught speeding more than 100 times? Imagine if there had been more than 100 parties in Downing Street. There must be real penalties and real enforcement.

In advance of this debate, the chief executive of Newcastle-under-Lyme borough council provided me with the number of complaints received by the council from 2019 to the end of August 2024: 32,315. Some 32,315 of my constituents have shared their rage, anger and frustration. Residents are also encouraged to report complaints to the Environment Agency, so I suspect there will be many more complaints. More than 30,000 people over five years have said that enough is enough, and we—the relevant agencies, from borough and county councils to the Environment Agency and Whitehall—must listen.

I acknowledge the work of the former Tory MP in my constituency for his work on this issue, but the simple fact is that the people of Newcastle-under-Lyme have been let down and left behind, and that must change.