Gareth Snell MP: speeches

Speeches

• 26 Jan 2026 · NHS Urgent Care: Staffordshire · Hansard source

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  I want briefly to highlight the fact that one of the perverse things in Staffordshire is that my constituency is serviced by the Royal Stoke hospital, as is Stafford. Its headquarters are within the ICB that funds it. Some of the places that the Minister has mentioned this evening include Cannock, Burton and Tamworth. Their hospitals are smaller and are linked to a much larger acute hospital in a trust that is headquartered outside the ICB. That is a perversity for cross-border invoicing, and it sometimes make us wonder what the incentive is for some of the trusts. Could a group of us MPs meet the Minister to discuss that?

• 26 Jan 2026 · NHS Urgent Care: Staffordshire · Hansard source

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  Royal Stoke hospital is in my constituency, and one of the things its staff tell me is that if it were not for the Haywood walk-in unit up in Stoke-on-Trent, Leek Moorland hospital or Stafford MIU, the A&E would simply fall over. Naturally, people in Staffordshire gravitate to the A&E when they want help, and the fact that my hon. Friend’s constituency is without an urgent treatment centre has a ripple effect across the county. Will he join me in asking the Minister to say when she winds up whether she has any data demonstrating the impact that the lack of a facility in Cannock is having on neighbouring hospitals, and therefore on the services that are experienced by my constituents and those in constituencies across the county?

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  The litany of failures under the Conservatives of Staffordshire police is too long to mention in the short time that I have for this question. The Home Secretary mentioned local accountability being done through mayors and police and crime boards. Where we will have mayors in areas smaller than those of the likely police forces, can she say more about how she anticipates that accountability working? Can she also say what accountability there will be for local policing areas? In Stoke-on-Trent, we have a really good police service that works well with local partners, but that accountability could be lost if it is moved to big, regional figureheads.

• 22 Jan 2026 · Government Insourcing · Hansard source

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  When the Government finally bring the in-sourcing process to fruition, they will have a lot more purchasing power over the services they buy and the goods they procure. Can the Minister give the House a categorical assurance that every penny of British taxpayers’ money spent using these new powers will be spent with British companies and British industries, so that we are supporting our own British economy?

• 21 Jan 2026 · Warm Homes Plan · Hansard source

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  I really welcome today’s announcement. Stoke-on-Trent is routinely ranked at No. 1 in the country for fuel poverty. We have old, terraced housing, often with single glazing and small yards, so space for heat pumps and so on is a concern, but I am sure we will work that out. We are very fortunate that Fiona Miller and the Beat the Cold team, who recently met the Minister for energy consumers, my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West (Martin McCluskey), do a lot of work on the ground. The Secretary of State says that the plan will be run through local authorities. How can good partnerships in localities already doing the work be involved in the programme? My right hon. Friend also says that he is aware of the challenges that suppliers of the ECO scheme face, having lost contracts. In my constituency, that is lots of jobs that have now been lost. How soon will the information be available to them, so they can start workforce planning for the delivery of the programme and get people back into work delivering the upgrades we need?

• 19 Jan 2026 · Business Rates: Retail, Hospitality and Leisure · Hansard source

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  The Minister says that it is the job of MPs to help publicans and hospitality businesses understand the system. I gently say to him that they do understand it. Their frustration comes not from not understanding the help that is available, but from the system they are working in. Several things can be true at once. It is true that there is a permanently lower rate and that there is a £4 billion package to soften the blow for those with increased business rates, but it is also true that, when that goes away, breweries such as Titanic Brewery in Stoke-on-Trent will have an overall business rates increase of 130%, with some of its venues seeing a 400% increase. Can the Minister set out what specific support they can look forward to in the next three years, or can he give them clarity on what they need to budget for, because as a result of these changes some pubs around the country will close, and we need to avoid that?

• 19 Jan 2026 · Iran: Protests · Hansard source

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  The brutal regime in Iran is well known to be attacking its own people at home, but it also poses one of the largest credible threats to Jewish people here in the UK. As the regime is currently blaming Israelis, Jews and Zionists for being responsible for the protests, will the Minister set out what discussions are happening across Government to ensure that the proxies and agents that we know are in the UK are being monitored, to make sure that the Jewish population of the UK do not feel a backlash as a result of the protests in Iran?

• 19 Jan 2026 · A-level and T-level Enrolments · Hansard source

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  As the Minister will know, the uptake of T-levels is behind where we expected it to be and where many colleges would like it to be. At this point I should declare an interest, as a governor of my local sixth-form college. Given that the Government are still intending to defund BTECs during the current academic year, given that T-levels are not having the uptake that they should have and given that V-levels are not coming on track until 2027, is the Minister confident that every young person will have access to a relevant course this September, and if not, what can he do about it? Will he consider pausing the defunding of BTECs until such time as V-levels come on line?

• 19 Jan 2026 · A-level and T-level Enrolments · Hansard source

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  2. What estimate her Department has made of the number of young people enrolled on A-levels and T-levels in September 2026.

• 15 Jan 2026 · British Manufacturers · Hansard source

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  9. What steps the Commission is taking to increase the proportion of House of Commons purchasing from British manufacturers.

• 15 Jan 2026 · British Manufacturers · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his continued engagement with me on this important matter. The ceramic commemorative tankard on sale in the gift shop over Christmas was marked up as being decorated in Stoke-on-Trent, but what that means is that it was formed and fired overseas, imported into the UK, decorated and then sold. Under the rules of the House, that would be considered a British product, because it is based on where the last substantial transformation took place. May I encourage my hon. Friend to take back to the Commission the view that when we are buying things in this place and we want to label them as British—whether it be the food, the plates, the cutlery or any products we use here—they must be British from start to finish, so that we can showcase the best of British talent?

• 15 Jan 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  May I encourage the Leader of the House, in his roles on the restoration and renewal board and the House of Commons Commission, to ensure that when the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster takes place and there is a multibillion pound investment in the building, every penny and every pound is, wherever possible, put into a British industry, manufacturer, artisan or craftsman, starting with ensuring that we are using Stoke-on-Trent ceramics?

• 15 Jan 2026 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  I agree with the Minister that where we can digitise processes, it can release huge savings to the public purse —he has cited India’s £10 billion a year. The Government are now moving from a mandatory process to a voluntary process on the right to work, and everything was voluntary beforehand. Does the Department have any modelling that it can share—perhaps he can announce it today—on what the voluntary uptake will need to be in order to release the savings he cited against the projected cost of the service that he is putting together? He also says that although there will not be a mandatory element on digital ID for right-to-work checks, there will be a new digital right-to-work check. Can he say more about what that will be? Will that system be developed alongside the digital ID system or after it, once he is aware of the size of the market?

• 13 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am!

• 13 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  He just read my notes!

• 13 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  That is nonsense, frankly. Some 7,500 people work for that company in my constituency. If they were all my constituents, that would mean one in 10 people in my constituency were getting paid a salary that is greater than the average for the region. Whether we like gambling or not, that company and the people it employs are driving the economic regeneration of north Staffordshire, because those jobs are the ones that give people money to spend on our services, shops and social activities. I am sure we do not want to make this a debate about the moral rights and wrongs of gambling—that is not the nature of the debate we are having today—but I do think we need to consider the reality of the circumstances that the communities that host these companies will face as a result of the tax changes. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen on being successful in his campaign to get to where we are today, but the consequence is going to be felt in my constituency with job losses. There are people who will not have a job this time next year, either because the company that they work for will have to reduce the number of people who work for them, or—worst of all—will move overseas. There have been lots of comments about moving profits overseas and the prospect of bad actors, but the company in my constituency is probably an exemplar of how to keep the money in the UK. The owners of the company are paid incredibly well, but they still pay PAYE. They make a contribution to the state that is about equal to my entire local government budget. The idea that these are not meaningful organisations is slightly disrespectful to the people in them, and the economic damage that would occur in my city if such companies were to disappear overnight, which they could do, would be devastating. Frankly, it would cost the Government significantly more in the bail-out that would be needed than they would raise through the tax. I think it was my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) who made the point that we do not do hypothecated taxes in this country. When it comes to spending, I support every measure that the Government brought forward at the Budget. The lifting of the two-child benefit cap will benefit 4,500 people in Stoke-on-Trent Central. My city has one of the highest rates of child poverty of anywhere in the country, so the benefit to those families will be enormous and immediate. However, everything goes into one big pot and then goes out from the other pot, and we should be careful about making the moral argument that specifically taxing gambling is the only possible way to fund how we deal with child poverty. That is a slight misapprehension. Having visited bet365 and seen the work that it does, I know that it is worried about the impact that the changes will have on the black market. It—as does the entire sector—spends a lot of its time and energy doing research and development to try to work out how to keep people playing and betting in the regulated sector, where there is support for people at risk from gambling, including lock-out mechanisms for problem gamblers, and where the tax receipts from the people who bet go back into the UK. To have £6 billion going into the unregulated sector could be a huge loss to the Treasury. We are all only one or two clicks away from being in an unregulated gambling app. For Safer Gambling Week, the Betting and Gaming Council asked people to look at two comparable gaming sites, because without realising, people can easily find themselves on one site that is not regulated, whose revenue stream almost certainly goes into dark activity—probably funding some organised criminal activity—and not a regulated sector product, with all the support and safety measures that come with that. Because these things can now proliferate on phones, access to them for people of all ages is now much easier. There is a genuine concern that we must think about: if that £6 billion is going into the unregulated sector and, as the result of the tax changes—as the OBR recognises—there will be an increase in unregulated activity and problem gaming, is the £26 million for the Gambling Commission enough? Will the £1.1 billion raised by the statutory levy be sufficient? As the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) said, there is genuine concern from some charitable organisations on the ground that they have not yet had their funding for this or confirmation about how they will be able to spend it. Does it just get sucked into the NHS pot to be spent on a medical solution? That might be the solution, but that means that some of the carefully crafted mechanisms to deal with problem gambling will simply lose out as a result of big structural changes to tax.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  As has already been pointed out by a number of colleagues, my constituency is home to bet365. My hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) said something about there being no meaningful employment in gambling, but I would say to him that there are thousands of people in my constituency and in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee), who put food on the table for their children as a result of the job they do in the industry. There are 109,000 people who go to work in the sector, whether it be in a betting shop, a casino, a bingo hall, or a high-tech company like the one in my constituency. To say that the work is not meaningful makes this sound like an ideological change rather than a taxation change.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Minister has said that the tax change will disincentive the most harmful form of gambling, but can she cite any evidence that will demonstrate that? I have no problem with taxing a profitable industry to pay for the wonderful policies that we announced for the sector, but the report from the Office for Budget Responsibility states that there will be a drive towards the black market as a result of these taxation changes. That is much more damaging, will raise much less revenue and, ultimately, will be much more damaging to our economy.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  There is a danger here of getting into the inevitable jokes about champagne socialism, but I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. He is right: there needs to be fair play. If we even out the taxation across the sector, that means that we can have targeted support in other areas where we know that there should be an unfair advantage for certain things. For instance, as the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire said, we should encourage and support making greater use of the draught relief for those selling alcohol in a pub. Currently, 61% of cider producers produce less than five hectolitres of alcohol, which means they get a 100% reduction in the duty they pay. That is why we could increase or level out the rate of alcohol duty on cider and beer producers without impacting the small cider producers in this country. It would only impact the global manufacturers which, frankly, are taking a profit and making, I would argue, a substandard product, or trying to hide a mass-produced product behind a local label, which is often the case. Under the Government’s proposal, the duty will be £10.39 per litre for cider and £22.58 for beer, and that differential grows every year. Because it is uprated by an inflation percentage, over the past few years the rate between the two in cash terms has just got bigger and bigger. It is a disadvantage to small brewers, who produce good quality beer, that they pay a rate of alcohol duty equivalent to the global cider manufacturers. SIBA estimates that the levelling of that figure could generate £360 million per year. That money could either go towards reducing the rate overall for all levels of duty, or it could further reduce the draught relief so that there is a clear and meaningful differential between those selling alcohol in pubs and those selling it in supermarkets. There are some brilliant pubs in my constituency, the Greyhound in Hartshill being the one that I frequent the most. It is a community venue, and if it has to pay greater levels of duty on alcohol as a result of this Budget, I am sure it will find a way of doing so, but if there was a way of encouraging more people to go to that pub because the rate of duty on that pint was lower and it was subsidised by the big cider producers selling to the supermarkets, it seems to me that that would be a fair thing to do. There is also a non-tax measure that the Government could introduce to support small brewers across the country, and it would cost the Government nothing. The market access review is currently sitting on a desk in the Department for Business and Trade, and it would guarantee that small brewers could have access to pubs in their locality to guarantee guest ales. I believe that Scotland already has this mechanism and that it is working well—unless someone can tell me otherwise. If we could replicate that in England and Wales, it would mean that those small independent brewers would have an opportunity to sell more beer in pubs, where a lower rate of duty would be applied to the product. That would help them with their business. It would give publicans an opportunity to increase the range of beers they sell, which would then help to attract more people into those pubs. It would mean that we would have more small independent brewers in this country selling more pints of beer, which supports them as employers and as good companies, such as Titanic in my own city.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to follow my county colleagues, the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) and my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier). Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire as a county are rich in the heritage of brewing. Burton is a prime example of that, but in Stoke-on-Trent we too have some wonderful small brewers, such as Titanic, which has sadly shared with me the business rate increases that it faces, with a 450% increase in some of its venues. That is a challenge that those venues have to face, and I hope the Government will look seriously at finding a realistic workable solution. The value of pubs in our communities is not just about the pints that they sell, but about the people they look after, such as the old gent nursing a pint for a couple of hours and being looked after by the bar staff. We lose that at our peril. I will restrict my comments to the differential between cider rates and beer rates. One of the things that the Treasury has done for many years, including under the Conservative Government, is to keep an unfair differential between the rate of duty applied to cider and that applied to beer. That came in during the coalition Government and I can only presume that it had something to do with the number of Lib Dem seats in the south-west. The point remains, however, that a small beer producer—a small brewery—in the UK will pay more in duty on the pints it produces than a global cider manufacturer, because of the differential points at which the relief comes in.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  Absolutely, we do need to do that. I am an old-fashioned state regulator; I like the idea that the state can regulate things. I like the idea of tax and spend as well, which is what we are doing in the Budget. It is a good thing— [ Interruption. ] I was so close—I raised the hopes of the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) and then dashed them. We should think about some of the changes that came in through the White Paper, including the whistle-to-whistle ban on promoting certain products, the premier league’s voluntary opt-out on gambling company sponsorship, and the soon-to-be banning of gambling companies on football shirts. Again, that uniquely affects Stoke-on-Trent, because bet365 sponsors Stoke City. Therefore, should we ever make it to the premiership—we came so very close at the beginning of the season, but we are not quite there now—we would have to have a complete change of kit. There is more that we can do about the unregulated sector, but that should be a collective effort. We should also not kid ourselves that what we are doing today is about trying to get on top of the unregulated sector. We are talking about the taxation of the regulated sector. As a consequence, we may inadvertently push more people into the unregulated sector. The consequence of that will be bad for society and bad for people who are problem gamblers. It will also be a challenge for the Gambling Commission to them try to regulate, and we need to be up front about that. I recognise that there are some very addictive games that people can get hooked on and spend an absolute fortune, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen said, they are affected psychologically; they get drawn in, spending more money to make the experience worth while. But we may be in a perverse situation, because the machine gaming duty rate for a land-based product will be 20%, but the remote betting duty—for products where people can bet on a football match using one of the apps at home—will be 21%. Although we recognise that the gaming side is much more damaging than the betting side, we are going to have a lower rate for land-based gaming than for remote betting, when we recognise that betting as a product presents a safer, more cost-intensive situation. Was that by design, or is it a consequence that the Treasury has not considered? Will the Minister address that point? The Minister has said that this is a fair levy, taking the gaming rate to 40%. That will make us an outlier compared with our European neighbours. The next on the list are Czechia at 35%, the Netherlands at 34% and Denmark at 28%. There is a point at which the taxation of a product becomes so de minimis in its return that it ceases to have an effect. I have never believed in the Laffer curve—I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member for North West Norfolk again—but I can see that we will get to a point where we are trying to squeeze an increasingly large amount of money out of a shrinking tax base because more people are taking their spend elsewhere. That would be damaging for everybody. It would be damaging for my constituents, because if the demand for the service and products made by the companies in my constituency dry up, the jobs also dry up. It would also be bad for the Treasury because the amount of money it can raise from the regulated sector will decrease, and that is not something that we want to see. Has the Minister looked at the evidence from the Netherlands? When the Netherlands increased its rate, which it did for good reason—a decision around tax and spend in order to raise money to pay for parts of its social programmes—it actually saw a huge spike in the use of unregulated products, with something like a fivefold increase over three years, and a huge decrease in the expected rate of return for its revenue. There are similar examples in other European countries. I do wonder whether we have looked at those before making some of the decisions that we are making today. Do we have a contingency? It is not that we are hypothecating taxation in this country, but we have said that these changes are, quite rightly, to fund the reduction of child poverty through the removal of the two-child benefit cap. If the revenue rates from the changes decreases, where will the additional money come from? Finally, will the Minister touch on the impact on Gibraltar? The decisions on gambling tax rates that we make today will have an effect on Gibraltar. Nigel Feetham, the Minister for Justice, Trade and Industry in Gibraltar, has repeatedly pointed out that 3,500 people in Gibraltar derive their job from the gambling sector. It makes up 30% of GDP there; one third of Gibraltar’s tax receipts comes from the gambling sector. He has said only this week that the change will remove tens of millions of pounds from the Government of Gibraltar’s budget. There is absolutely no way they can replace that from domestic sources in any reasonable time. Given that Gibraltar is one of our important overseas territories, will the Minister set out and explain what conversations the Treasury has had with counterparts in Gibraltar? What are the contingencies if we find ourselves inadvertently creating a massive black hole in the budget of the Government of Gibraltar? Again, if we have to bail them out in some way, where will that money come from? If it is taken out of the revenue that is expected to be raised from this particular rate, that then undermines the figures in other parts of the Budget, which, in its entirety, I support.

• 12 Jan 2026 · House Building: Stoke-on-Trent · Hansard source

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  16. What steps his Department is taking to help support house building in Stoke-on-Trent.

• 12 Jan 2026 · House Building: Stoke-on-Trent · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for that answer. Stoke-on-Trent has benefited from money from the brownfield regeneration fund. However, there are many brownfield sites across the city that could be used for local planning development, but the owners are simply not engaging with the process. Given that we are not in a mayoral combined authority, compulsory purchase powers are limited. Will the Minister consider devolving those powers to authorities like Stoke? If not, will he consider allowing interim development corporations, until such time as we have a mayor in place?

• 12 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  No, that was not what I was going to ask, but I am glad that the hon. Gentleman got to the “It was all covid’s fault” argument so early in the debate. I was going to ask whether he has an in-principle objection to freezing the rate, or whether he objects to it because he thinks it is somehow a breach of the Labour party manifesto. Those two things are different. I would be genuinely interested to know whether he has no issue with the rate being frozen, and more people paying tax as they earn more money, and whether this is about the party politics of previous manifesto commitments.

• 12 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?