Ceramics Industry

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for the ceramics industry.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

I shall begin with a quotation from Arnold Bennett, the Tolstoy of the potteries. In his masterpiece, “Anna of the Five Towns” he described Henry Mynors working the potter’s wheel as follows:

“He knows all its tricks and aptitudes; when to coax and when to force it, when to rely on it and when to distrust it…Clay is always clay.”

Those of us who were lucky enough to catch the recent excellent BBC series, “The Great Pottery Throw Down”—filmed in Middleport in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth)—know just what wonders clay can conjure. From the success of the British ceramics biennial to the continuing allure of Emma Bridgewater’s earthenware, Britain has rediscovered its love for cups, saucers and tableware.

More than that, the defining image of the first world war centenary commemorations has been the ceramic poppies installation, filling the Tower of London moat with a sea of red. Designed in Derby and fired in Stoke, the tens of thousands of hand-crafted poppies symbolised a revival based on not just artistic innovation but industrial might. We therefore hold this debate in a moment of optimism about the future of the ceramics industry and that of the greatest ceramics city in the world, Stoke-on-Trent. Yet, if we are to secure the continued revival of earthenware, china, clay, tile, roofing and other ceramic industries, we need a Government committed to an industrial strategy that supports and grows pottery businesses throughout the UK.

The history of pottery in Stoke-on-Trent is long, stretching back a good 500 years. Out of the brown and yellow north Staffordshire clay came butter pots and flower pots. In the sun kilns of Bagnall and Penkhull, local artisans started to glaze their wares and develop a reputation for craftsmanship. But Europe’s ceramicists remained in the shadow of China, which had long mastered the magic of porcelain, the famous white ceramic formed by kaolin, named after the hill just outside Jingdezhen. Only in 1768 did the Plymouth apothecary William Cookworthy crack the recipe. With the help of Cornish clay, Britain joined Meissen and Sèvres in porcelain production. China—Britain’s new word for pottery and porcelain—became the eighteenth century rage. No one exploited the new era of industrial production, design and innovation more than Josiah Wedgwood. From his Etruria factory, he unleashed a volley of fashionable new designs that caught the attention of Queen Charlotte and Britain’s expanding middle class. His trademark jasper and basalt production followed.

In 1934, J.B. Priestley visited Stoke-on-Trent on his celebrated English journey. He, too, fell for the elemental, timeless attraction of ceramics. He celebrated the fettlers, the mould-makers, the dippers and the master potters for

“doing something that they can do better than anybody else…Here is the supreme triumph of man’s creative thumb.”

Priestley caught the industry at its peak. The decline of the British ceramics industry arguably began with the Clean Air Act 1956 and the dismantling of some 2,000 coal-fired bottle kilns. For all the benefits of open skies and modernised plant, the law imposed sudden and significant costs on the manufacturing process. In an attempt to offset those costs, the industry embarked on a round of mergers and acquisitions, resulting in an over-concentrated ceramics sector. The high interest rates and exchange rates of the 1980s hammered exports. The rise of takeaways and the end of wedding lists undermined demand. Most damaging of all was the growing threat of the far east. Labour and energy costs in China put British production at a marked disadvantage.

Wedgwood went bust and Spode went into receivership, and between the early 1980s and 2010, some 40,000 jobs were lost in the ceramics industry. With them went Stoke’s cityscape and parts of its culture. The Minton factory, where Pugin’s tiles were fired for the Houses of Parliament, was turned into a Sainsbury’s. Then the final insult: in 2010, the entire collection of the Wedgwood Museum was threatened with disposal.

Six years on, the Wedgwood Museum has been saved and the industry is making profits, creating jobs, finding export markets and coming up with new designs. There is excitement and enthusiasm about British ceramic design. There is a new competitiveness in great companies such as Steelite, Churchill and Portmeirion. There is a new culture of partnership.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. Does he agree that Dudson, Steelite and many other companies have a strong record of exporting around the world? The last time I looked, ceramics make a net contribution to our balance of trade. It is one of the few industries that does.

[Tristram Hunt]

The hon. Gentleman is exactly right: it is a great export industry. It is interesting that the companies that stayed in the UK, did not offshore all their production, invested in research and development and design, and supported innovation, are growing. As I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North will explain, her constituency is pretty much dominated by Steelite, which grows every week. That is only to be admired.

A new culture is emerging among trade unions such as GMB, the British Ceramic Confederation and local businesses, and a new culture of research and innovation is coming out of facilities such as Lucideon in Stoke-on-Trent—our ceramics research hub. Today, as the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) suggested, the ceramics sector exports £500 million a year, employs about 20,000 people directly and enjoys annual sales of about £2 billion.

To sustain that success, I have some requests for the Minister. The ceramics industry is an energy-intensive sector. Energy comprises up to 30% to 35% of production costs. We are severely disadvantaged by the current plethora of UK and EU policies. For example, only seven ceramics manufacturers in the UK are likely to receive renewables compensation, in contrast to more than 100 German and 140 Italian companies. Policies relating to the EU emissions trading scheme are very important for competitiveness. The question for the sector is: which processes will be awarded carbon leakage status for phase 4, which will begin in 2021?

There are particular worries about the tiering on just a handful of sectors, and concerns, which my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) might pursue, about the roof tile and brick businesses. The Government’s much-vaunted house building programme should not be carried out on the back of Polish, Belgian or Dutch bricks. We should produce them in the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. May I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) on securing this debate? I congratulate everyone who has taken part in it. A number of issues have been raised, and I will try in the time available to address all of them.

First, I would like to pay tribute to all those working in our ceramics industry. It is a very important part of the manufacturing base of our country and, as we have heard, a significant part of various products. More than just cups, plates and bowls are made in the ceramics industry and exported, and that is very important to us. The industry is not just about beautiful cups and saucers made over decades by outstanding British companies such as Royal Doulton and Spode; it is also about the funky ware—if I can put it in that way—being made by people such as Emma Bridgewater, who has been doing a sterling job in Stoke-on-Trent, and about tiles and bricks. There are also technical ceramics. The electronics, aerospace, automotive and healthcare industries all benefit from this wide and very important sector. Several high-profile firms have unfortunately closed, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central described, in giving us—as I would expect from him—a very eloquent history lesson. I need not repeat the fact that unfortunately, in north Staffordshire, the number of jobs fell from 52,790 in 1979 to 7,200 in 2008. That really does speak volumes about the decline of an industry, certainly in terms of the huge numbers of people affected.

As we have heard, there is a lot of good news. We have heard about investment in technology and factories and about distinguished names such as Waterford, Wedgwood, Royal Doulton, Wade and Steelite—that company is new to me, I have to confess; I hope that nobody holds that against me. I am very happy to go and see it, if it is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford—

[Jeremy Lefroy]

indicated dissent.

[Anna Soubry]

Wherever the company is, I am more than happy to go and see it, if I can. I would love to—[Interruption.] Stoke-on-Trent North is where it is; it sounds very interesting.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

Just very quickly, I point out to the Minister that she can see these products all over the world, because these companies have made huge inroads into the hospitality sectors around the world. If she cares to look in pretty much any tourist hotel anywhere in the world, she may find these products there.

[Anna Soubry]

As you might imagine, Mr Hollobone, I do not have time to go swanning off around the world; I am far too busy. I can barely get out of my office where, I can assure you, I do not have food on plates.

We will move on, because there are some seriously important issues to be discussed and debated—I am going to cut the next part of my speech, because I want to get to the real heart of this debate. As we have heard from a number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), there is very serious and real concern about the high cost of energy. Like many industries that rely heavily on using a lot of energy, the cost of energy is of serious concern, as is carbon leakage, tiering and a number of other issues that look as though they are coming down the track, if I may put it that way.

On the positive side, it has to be said—if I may say this to Opposition Members— that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be congratulated on announcing, in the November 2015 spending review, the exemption of energy-intensive industries from indirect costs of the renewables obligation and small-scale feed-in tariffs. We have made all those advances over in the EU, with compensation coming forward. In fact, we have now said that from 2017, EIIs will have an exemption from those particular obligations—those particular taxes.

Hon. Members then say, “Well, that’s all great, wonderful and brilliant, but unfortunately, it doesn’t affect the ceramics industry enough.” I absolutely hear that message and understand that that is deeply concerning for all those who work in the industry. However, we have something called the industrial 2050 road map—that is a very good example of Government using dreadful language. “What on earth is a road map in the ceramics industry?” I asked, and my brilliant officials, as ever, helped to tell me. I went to a conference yesterday in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which was attended by the equally brilliant British Ceramics—I cannot remember the next part of its name. Somebody will tell me in a minute, but anyway, it is brilliant. It is basically the industry’s group, which gets together all the businesses involved in the ceramics industry and represents them extremely well. Its representatives have been to see me, and I am more than happy to see them on a regular basis.

Yesterday, by way of example, we had a conference in which we looked at what we are doing as a Government and how to improve, such as by achieving more compensation, perhaps, and by looking at how we get cheaper energy, because that is the real solution—ensuring that we have an abundance of cheap energy. However, it is also about ensuring that we do everything that we can to reduce the amount of energy that these industries use. The road map is basically a plan—it is a strategy—that looks at how we can reduce the burden of high energy prices through the reduction of usage and through better usage, and so on and so forth, for ceramics and others.

I attended that excellent event only for a short time, unfortunately, but that is the sort of work we are doing, because we certainly get that there is a problem, and I am absolutely determined to do all I can to be a champion for this excellent part of our manufacturing sector, to achieve a better deal and to ensure that we indeed achieve that level playing field. In that respect, I think the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North and I absolutely agree, as I think the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) does, that all this industry asks for is a level playing field—not subsidies or special treatment—and I agree with it.

Opposition Members and I are now going to have a falling out, because they make much of the market economy status and China. I do not intend to use a pun, but that is a complete and total red herring, because Russia has market economy status but it is not precluded from tariffs being imposed on it—and rightly so—by the European Union. Therefore, the idea that tariffs cannot be imposed on China if it were to receive MES is not true—it really is not the case.