Gareth Snell MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 26 Feb 2025 · Online Safety Act: Implementation · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for securing this incredibly important debate. He has described in his very good speech how inconsistency can occur across different platforms and providers. As a parent of a 14-year-old daughter who uses multiple apps and platforms, I want confidence about how they are regulated and that the security measures to keep her safe are consistent across all platforms she might access. My responsibility as a parent is to match that. The right hon. and learned Gentleman rightly highlights how Ofcom’s interpretation of the Act has led to inconsistencies and potential grey areas for bad faith actors to exploit, which will ultimately damage our children.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The figure in Stoke-on-Trent is even more stark, with 22% of young people not in education, employment or training. We have a wonderful ecosystem of colleges, with Stoke sixth form college, Stoke-on-Trent college and the University of Staffordshire, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) said, we also have small and medium-sized organisations. Can the Secretary of State set out how this Bill will help an organisation such as the Spark Group, run by Dan Canavan, to tap into opportunities in order to spread his ability to help those young people into well-paid jobs in my community?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for being so generous with her time. I absolutely support her ambition of ensuring that we have the skills for the jobs of the future. Will she say a little about how Skills England will support foundational manufacturing industries, such as ceramics in Stoke-on-Trent, which will not be prioritised in the industrial strategy but still have a lot to offer our economy and are crying out for skills from local people? If we can get that right, we can grow our own economy, and that is true levelling up in my opinion.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. These points are obviously going to come from Conservative Members. Have they read the comments of the noble Lord Winston in the other place on 27 November 2023, when he outlined that while scientific equipment may be used, the analysis that comes from bone density checks or X-rays is entirely flawed? The results depend on the calcium deposits and the food that was eaten by the person being X-rayed, as well as other health reasons. Has the hon. Gentleman read those comments? If not, could he read them? If he has read them, does he disagree with what Lord Winston said and think he knows better?

• 10 Feb 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 10 Feb 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  I was in opposition when we had ferocious debates about Brexit, and Conservative Members used words like “surrender”, “traitors” and “weak”. The shadow Home Secretary is now doing the same in opposition. Does he honestly believe that such language is conducive to getting to a solution? Does he think that it makes any person in this House feel better about themselves? Does he think that it gives him the moral high ground? I think it exposes his inability to conduct an argument in a way that is vaguely civil.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the shadow Home Secretary give way?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The shadow Minister suggested that I had misled the House, by suggesting that what I said was not true. I would like to be absolutely clear that the shadow Minister mentioned police funding on three occasions prior to the election, and each of them was an obsequious pleasantry about how wonderful the last Government were. That is not what I suggested he could have said.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In today’s Prime Minister’s questions, the Leader of the Opposition alleged that a donor to my party was funding a court case challenging the consent to develop the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields. That is entirely untrue. She went on to suggest that the Government’s decision to accept the court ruling was swayed somehow by a previous relationship with Dr Rausing. This is a very serious allegation for which no evidence has been provided. I seek your advice and guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, on the recourse available to me and other Members to ask the Leader of the Opposition to come back to this House and present the evidence, and if she cannot, to apologise, withdraw the comment and correct the record.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  The shadow Minister, like so many Conservative Members, was supportive of the health and social care levy, which was a larger and more wide-ranging increase in national insurance than anything proposed by this Government. I have just checked Hansard for the entire time that he has been a Member of this place, and not once did he speak out against that tax hike and not once has he referenced police funding, until today. What is it about being in opposition that makes him think he now has the moral high ground?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  Not deliberately.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  Stoke-on-Trent will get £8 million from the recovery grant, and we are the fifth poorest city in the country. The hon. Member and I want to see services in our communities funded, so I urge him not to fall into the false trap that the Conservatives are setting by trying to pit our councils against one another. I want services, and he wants services; we need to agree to fund them properly and not be put into some sort of “Hunger Games” competition.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  How on earth does one follow that? I just wish that the hon. Gentleman had spoken up so we could all hear him. He made points about councils raising council tax, selling assets and cutting services. Does he believe that has happened to Bradford in isolation? Does he believe that his is the only council that has looked at its services and budget and said, “This is tough”? What he actually described is eight years of Conservative rule in Stoke-on-Trent, where council tax went up in eight years out of eight, town halls were closed and put up in fire sales, children’s services were on the brink, and a record number of children were in care. What he has described is a fate that every council faced, and the predominant reason is that his party in government took the scissors to the Budget, slashed the services we all had and decided that they knew better. He may make a fiery speech in this place for social media clips, but perhaps he needs to—

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  Under the formula that has been proposed and on which we will vote this evening, Stoke-on-Trent city council will receive a recovery grant of £8.2 million. I hope that the shadow Minister is not saying that, were the Conservative party still in Government, we would not receive that additional cash, and would therefore be £8.2 million worse off.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  No, I will not give way. We have heard plenty from the hon. Gentleman over the last several minutes. He needs to think less about detaching his constituency from Bradford and more about reattaching himself to the reality of the situation that he put us all in. I welcome the fact that Stoke-on-Trent city council has received £8 million through the recovery grant, and I have listened with great interest particularly to the hon. Members for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) and for Woking (Mr Forster) about the impact on the rural services delivery grant. I go back to the point I have raised before: we have to move ourselves away from this confected game of Top Trumps that the Conservatives wanted us to have—that deprivation in Stoke-on-Trent is somehow in competition with the needs of rural communities. The Government’s trajectory—with the fair funding review, and a look at how and why we end up with the funding settlements we have—will take us towards that place. I know that it will not be immediate, and I fully accept that there are always winners and losers in everything, but my city is one of the five poorest cities in the country. Ninety per cent of homes in my city are band A. Every time we raise council tax by 4.99%, it raises less proportionally than when my neighbouring district council authorities and the county council raise it by 4.99%. Not only are we not getting the benefit of having band B through to band E; we are also seeing the difference of what is paid in neighbouring authorities grow every year. That is simply unfair—a system that nobody would design in that particular way. I was first elected to a council in 2010. In fact, the Minister was the peer mentor appointed to my council by the LGA. I suppose that is why I am here and not running a council. We were shown the “jaws of doom” graph demonstrating just how challenging financing was going to be over the next decade, and the predictions that my party made then have turned out to be true. Had the last Government frozen in cash terms alone—no uprates, no decreases—the amount of money we were receiving in 2010 and kept it at that rate until 2024, we would have had £411 million to spend on various projects. Instead, we lost that money. We then had this perverse idea that suddenly we had to start bidding to get some of it back through a levelling-up fund. If we had had £411 million over those 10 years, the economic regeneration of my towns and city centres would have happened. We would not have had to come cap in hand to a Government to ask for capital funding to build a car park or a new hotel. We simply would have done the things that we needed to do over time in a way that fitted with the other projects we were seeking to deliver. We did not have that; instead, we got levelling up, which in my city was basically a car park, which now costs the council more money than it raises because of where it is and how many people use it. We should learn from those lessons. I welcome every penny given to my city by every Department. The disabled facilities grant money announced by the Department of Health and Social Care is helpful, but the council administers that to keep people safe in their homes so they do not end up in A&E. We could look at how we join up public spending, in Total Place based way, in order to drive those efficiencies and productivity gains that will make the system of public sector provision much better. When we look at the funding for local government, I urge the Minister as part of the next phase to think about how we stop the shuffling of wooden dollars. As my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) said, it is local authorities that provide the youth clubs that stop young people going into crime and antisocial behaviour, which then costs much more through the criminal justice system later on. It is local authorities that do the checks on houses to make sure that they are safe and decent, so that people do not end up in A&E because they have lived in cold, damp houses. It is local authorities that make sure that the restaurants we go to meet the food hygiene standards that we want, and that the products we buy are being checked by trading standards. Those services keep us safe and well, and prevent much greater public sector costs further on, so how we fund the public sector, with a Total Place approach, has to be part of the Government’s thinking. Let me end my short contribution to the debate with this. We in Staffordshire today received the letter that the Minister sent about reorganisation and devolution. Reorganisation in Staffordshire could be a long, drawn-out process because basically no one can agree on anything, and we all pretend we like each other but the secret is that we do not. The comments from council leaders and other Staffordshire MPs about Stoke-on-Trent have been appalling. We are a lovely place and want to work with everybody. We will undoubtedly end up in some form of North Staffordshire combined authority that makes sense logically, economically, geographically and socially—it is where people live, work, and enjoy themselves. When the Minister invites new proposals from local authorities and there is an appetite for them but one or two councils are holding out—perhaps because some people are more interested in protecting their jobs as leaders than in protecting the jobs of the people we represent—I urge him to move at pace and make it quite clear that we will not wait for them. My constituents deserve the same level of investment that goes into the west midlands, east midlands, Manchester and Liverpool combined authority regions. Without it, we will get further left behind. My constituency is, as I said, the fifth poorest in England. I do not want to be standing here after the next election saying that my constituency is still the fifth poorest in England. I hope that, with this Government, we can make sure that it is not.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way—I did enjoy my time on the Public Accounts Committee. For two years, I led a small shire district council. We were often told that there would be money for county councils, because that is where the greatest need was in terms of adult and children’s social care, and various other demand-led services. I do not even think the divide is urban-rural; it can sometimes be between county and district, in the same locality. Is this the hon. Gentleman’s quiet way of telling us that when the Government bring forward the orders for reorganisation, his party will be supporting that, to take out that one element of potential divide in our funding systems?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is one of the more reasonable of his party’s Front Benchers—not that he needs my praise. Between 2010 and 2024, Stoke-on-Trent city council had a cumulative loss of £411 million. In cash terms, if the budget had been frozen and there had been no increases, we would have had that much more in spend. Does the shadow Minister accept that the damage that his party did in local government cannot simply be fixed in one settlement after seven months of a Labour Government?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Eighty-three proud pottery workers woke up on Monday morning with no job, following the collapse of the 200-year-old Royal Stafford pottery firm. It is a crisis in our ceramics industry, with escalating prices for energy, and fake and foreign imports causing a real problem. Will the Prime Minister, through his offices, arrange for the energy companies to meet Ceramics UK and the GMB, as the voice of the workforce, so that we can hammer out a new deal? Will he promote, through public procurement, buying British so that proud manufacturing jobs in Stoke can be protected?

• 27 Jan 2025 · SEND Provision · Hansard source

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  I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. One of the biggest pressures on SEND funding in Stoke-on-Trent are the independent alternative providers that charge tens of thousands of pounds for single places, often with huge profit margins for themselves. We are subject to a safety valve arrangement. Could I therefore ask the Minister to meet a delegation of providers and teachers in Stoke-on-Trent, who are hungry for a new way of delivering SEND provision to ensure that our young children get the education they deserve?

• 27 Jan 2025 · Creative Industries · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman’s point about the trade unions is absolute nonsense, but that aside, he was first elected in 2019. He is on record as publicly supporting former Prime Minister Liz Truss and, according to Hansard , voted for the health and social care levy, which was a larger increase in national insurance across a much broader spectrum. At no point did he raise concerns about the creative industry then, so would he like to take this opportunity to apologise for that, or is this just naked political point scoring?

• 27 Jan 2025 · Creative Industries · Hansard source

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  The Minister has stolen my thunder! As always, he has pre-empted what I was going to say. I was going to say that Stoke-on-Trent is a city that is steeped in history, but fizzing for the future of creativity. We are home to nine Arts Council England national portfolio organisations; we have a burgeoning CreaTech cluster in the Spode building; and we have some of the best performances of theatre-in-the-round at the New Vic theatre, which although not in Stoke-on-Trent is so close to the border it might as well be. I highlight these points not for the flippant response I should have pre-empted from the Minister, but because all too often when we think about places where creativity happens and where arts and culture thrive, we do not think about places such as Stoke-on-Trent or other historical industrial cities. All too often, those places are written up as wastelands, with derelict buildings shown in articles in The Guardian , rather than the focus being on the things that make them special and strong: our heritage and our future. Stoke-on-Trent is the only city in the UK that has world craft city status for our industrial history in the potteries. Some of the great creatives of our past are intrinsically linked to Stoke-on-Trent: Wedgwood, Spode, William Moorcroft, Clarice Cliff and Susie Cooper. They are people who had creativity not only in their artistry, but in their industry. They pioneered new methods of working so that we could have the finest bone china, and came up with new techniques for design; the illustrations on the plates, cups and tiles that we all enjoy were at the cutting edge of new methods, technologies, pigments and materials. The creativity that they drew upon as part of their industrial heritage remains, and we have the same skills and burning ambition to demonstrate who we are and what we do in Stoke-on-Trent today. Some 4,000 jobs in Stoke-on-Trent are linked directly to the creative sector; if the supply chain is included, it would easily be two or three times that number. Some 638 artists and artist organisations are recognised by the Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire Cultural Education Partnership. In 2019, there were 5.5 million tourist visits to Stoke-on-Trent—a narrative that we do not often hear from those who seek to denigrate the city I am proud to call home and represent in this place. Sadly, some of that snobbish approach to my city comes from our nearest neighbours, who seek to use the challenges that our city faces for their own short-term political gain. I doubt that will stop any time soon. However, we are home to “The Great Pottery Throw Down”, which is on Channel 4 on Sunday evenings; Keith Brymer Jones and the team have made pottery glamorous Sunday night TV viewing. It demonstrates that the history of who we are is still very much part of the society and city that we want to be.

• 27 Jan 2025 · Creative Industries · Hansard source

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  Madam Deputy Speaker, if I were to ask you to name a city in the UK that is a hotbed of creativity—

• 27 Jan 2025 · Creative Industries · Hansard source

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  I am enjoying the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, but while he is talking about the last Government’s record, could he tell me how their plan to defund dozens of creative BTecs and their denigration of creative subjects as Mickey Mouse degrees gives people seeking to study those subjects any confidence that they can go into the pipeline of talent he has talked about?