Gareth Snell
MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“My hon. Friend is touching on something really important, because the other part of the issue is the length of time that people have to sit in front of a screen in order to get to the front of the queue.”
“The Minister says that there will be a review within six months, but can she be clearer to give us certainty? Will it start within six months or will it have concluded within six months? If it starts within six months, how long does she anticipate it will take?”
“I would like to declare an interest as the vice-chair of the Unison group of MPs. The Minister rightly says that it is a false choice between good employment relations or growing the economy.”
“The Minister has not touched on the cap on fines for big companies. Does she think that is sufficient? Amazon’s turnover this year was £30 billion—that is 30,000 million. The maximum fine that it could get in a calendar year is half a million pounds—one sixty-thousandth of its turnover.”
“When the Labour party went through a terrible time with our own antisemitism crisis, the hon. Gentleman was a staunch friend of the Jewish members of my party, and I know that many of them remember him fondly for that.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on making a wonderful speech. He will know, because he is from Leeds, that one of the people spending most of their time propagating that sort of virulent antisemitism is the deputy leader of the Green party in Leeds, who once posted a list of British people—some Jewish—saying “bought and sold by Israel”, pur…”
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“If you wish to come back to politics or to Parliament, you can be nominated to the House of Lords for a life peerage, or you can seek election to this House.” If the Conservative party really wanted to ensure that some of those hereditary peers were able to come back to this place, they could say, “We’re going to make sure you are our candidates” for the 25 safest Conservative seats—if there are 25 safe seats for any party these days. It could say, “You can make a valuable contribution to politics in a way that gives you a seat in one of the two legislatures.” There are ways of doing it that simply do not allow for the withering of the situation that we have.”
“Again, there will still be 151 Cross-Bench peers even after the number of hereditary peers have been expelled from the House. That is a large number of peers, all of whom bring an expertise to the House that should be looked at. If there are new Cross-Bench peers to come in, I am sure that the commission will make that recommendation. The idea that the House of Lords will somehow cease to function by virtue of the immediate abolition of hereditary peers does not hold water or make sense. We should simply say, “We are going to have a clean break. Thank you very much for your service—we appreciate it.”
“It is hard to overestimate the valuable contribution that the Cross-Bench peers make to the House of Lords, not least the number of retired members of the judiciary who come in to fulfil certain judicial or pseudo-judicial responsibilities. The hon. Gentleman probably has an element of a point that I would almost agree with: there is a conversation to be had about how we ensure that the Cross Benchers continue to have representation that reflects the breadth of the country and the skills that Parliament needs. Obviously, there is a role for the House of Lords Appointments Commission, which can make recommendations for new Cross-Bench peers. How that works going forward I am sure is something that will be considered.”
“The hon. Gentleman poses a fair question. I would argue that having a ringfenced number of seats reserved almost exclusively for white men sends the wrong message to my constituents. I fully accept that there are Members of the House of Lords at whom my constituents can look and think, “They have done something spectacular with their lives.” [ Interruption. ] Before the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire jumps up, there are Members who have come in through the by-election process after making good contributions in their careers, and their being there does bring something, but I do not believe that my constituents would be diminished or harmed by their expulsion. I cannot see any justification for keeping 92 people in this legislature by virtue of appointments made many decades ago.”
“The Opposition amendments do nothing to improve the Bill; they would simply slow the pace of reform and add bits that do nothing more than frustrate the passage of the Bill when it goes back to the other place. I urge the House to reject the Opposition amendments and to support the Government in bringing dignity to those who need to retire with capacity issues, so that we can progress with building a more modern and successful democracy.”
“The amendment, which was accepted by the Government and the Opposition in the Lords, is an important way of recognising that we can make small changes every day to the House of Lords, as the previous Government did on the ability to retire and take a leave of absence. This Government are ensuring that resignation can be granted for Members subject to power of attorney—that is an important change and I hope that it gets cross-party support. To summarise what my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead Central and Whickham (Mark Ferguson) said, this legislation has been a long time coming and is part of the evolution of the House of Lords.”
“The principle of establishing titles and styles for reward and recognition without tying them to seats in the Lords already exists, so the amendment is entirely unnecessary. My final point, which has not been the subject of much discussion—as it is not a party knockabout issue—relates to Lords amendment 4, on the capacity of colleagues in the House of Lords. It is clear that many Members of the House of Lords have served our country and their communities well, but some find themselves in old age and declining health. They deserve the dignity of being allowed to retire from that place without it becoming a story of capacity.”
“I will move on the point about giving out titles as rewards. I do not believe that the amendment is necessary to achieve the Conservative party’s aims, not least because the monarch, as the font of all honour, can create whatever titles and styles he likes, with whatever caveats he likes, through letters patent. It does not immediately mean that one has to become a Member of the House of Lords by virtue of having a life peerage if the letters patent say something different. I am sure that the shadow Paymaster General is well read up on the Wensleydale decision of 1856, when a life peerage was created for Sir James Parke but it was specified that he could not be a Member of the House of Lords.”
“It is a small element, as the hon. Gentleman says, but by that same logic, the removal of that small element will not have a big impact. We are grasping at straws. Let me address the suggestion that this is an attack on the hereditary principle. The hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) is probably one Member of the House who understands quite well the role of the Earl Marshal. He will continue to be an officer of the House of Lords, and the role will still be intrinsically linked to the families of the Duke of Norfolk, but he will simply not be able to vote in Divisions or participate in debates. I do not believe therefore that this is necessarily an attack on the hereditary principle per se; it is simply about saying that there is no place for the hereditary principle in a modern-day democracy.”
“The Minister will be aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) and I have been working on a replacement system for the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust in north Staffordshire, which would improve public and patient experience, and productivity, at those hospitals. Will the Minister meet us so that we can consider how further to unlock that funding to improve productivity and patient experience in good time?”
“T3. My constituency of Stoke-on-Trent Central has some of the deepest ingrained health inequalities anywhere in the country. My constituents are just as deserving of first-class healthcare as anyone else, so can the Secretary of State set out how the 10-year health plan will help reduce those health inequalities and ensure that, across Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire, my constituents have the healthy lives they should expect?”
“Will he give them some indication of what help and support is available now, before the new schemes come online, so that we do not have more statements about closed factories in the next few months?”
“Much like the ceramics sector, the refinery sector is an energy-intensive industry that is at the mercy of industrial energy prices, which are beyond its control but have a huge impact on its viability. It is welcome that the Minister thinks that the energy-intensive certification programme could expand to include the refinery sector, but he will know that the business level test is a huge barrier that needs to be overcome; it means that many companies will not be eligible for the programme. He will also know that the British industry competitiveness scheme is not due to come online for another two years; indeed, consultation on that scheme has yet to be opened. Refineries and ceramics companies are looking down the barrel of ever-increasing industrial energy bills.”
“I draw the attention of the House to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am a governor of the City of Stoke-on-Trent sixth-form college and the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on sixth form education. I thank the Minister for her answer; the additional capital available for post-16 providers is very welcome. The City of Stoke-on-Trent sixth-form college is seeing a huge increase in interest around science, healthcare science and computer science —subjects that are mission-critical to the delivery of the Government’s ambitious programme. When will the capital be available so that my sixth form and others around the country can build high-quality learning environments for young learners?”
“T7. As well as being the governor of a sixth-form college, I am proud to be a governor of the Abbey Hill special school in Stoke-on-Trent—I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests accordingly—which is why I was so appalled by the comments of the Reform UK chairman that children with special needs are “naughty children”, often as the result of “bad parenting”. Can I invite the Secretary of State to condemn those comments, and to reaffirm our support for those children and parents?”
“When violent disorder erupted on the streets of my constituency last summer, the police put themselves between two groups of people who had been wound up and were looking to see how much damage they could do to each other. Chief Constable Chris Noble, alongside Chief Inspectors David Barrow and Laura Davies, ensured that communities came together after the event to realise that neighbours can live in peace. My constituents expect everybody who has committed sexual offences or other crimes to be prosecuted, but what work is the Minister doing across Government to ensure that, once such events have taken place, communities can come together again and live in peace? Nobody wants to walk around on eggshells, fearful of their neighbours.”
“My constituents want to know that their drinking water is safe and that waterways such as the River Trent are clean and looked after. I welcome all the Secretary of State’s commitments on the new regulatory body, but he will know that the power of a regulator is not just in its powers, but in its ability to enforce them. Will the regulator have the resources to enforce the new rules that he proposes? It needs to be more than the sum of the parts of its predecessors, which failed, as so many of my constituents have seen.”
“It is a genuine pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore). He and I have worked together for the best part of a decade, and his commitment to seeing a real improvement in the lives of the children he represents is commendable. We should all take a leaf out of his book. Like many people in this place, I spend a lot of my time visiting primary schools. I meet the teachers, I am shown around the classrooms, and, being six foot four, I have to try not to take out a row of paintings or some bunting that is hanging across the room.”
“Children are arriving who are not appropriately potty-trained, which means that teaching staff are engaging in a basic level of parenting.”
“As a result, there are generations of young people whose futures have been essentially stunted because the opportunities available to them are hampered by the absence of the early education and investment that they should have received, which means that their later life attainment is also hampered. Every time I speak to primary school teachers or headteachers, and even some in secondary schools, the first thing they say to me is “It’s tough.” They say that because, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, there are young people arriving at those schools who are unable to hold a pen or a fork, or are unable to articulate what they are thinking and feeling because their oracy simply is not good enough. That makes communication in early years education almost impossible to achieve.”
“Stoke-on-Trent ranks—or did rank—142nd out of 151 for key stage 2 attainment. Although I accept some of the points made by the shadow Minister about the national increase in achievement across certain parts of the education sector, the last Government failed to reduce the attainment gap across the country, and there are still parts of the country, like Stoke-on-Trent, where that gap has not closed. Cities that are economically and socially challenged—I will not say “deprived”, because I do not like that word—have not seen the improvements that have been seen in other parts of the country.”
“How could I not agree? Those facilities in communities are what turn them from housing estates into homes, and turn the communities into something special. At this point, I should declare my interests. I am a governor of a special educational needs school in Stoke-on-Trent, and I chair the all-party parliamentary group on children’s literacy, which, with the Minister’s support, is running the national year of reading. I will get on to that later. When I visit primary schools and talk to the young people in reception and year 1 classes, and see those bright young faces, full of vim and vigour and expectations about what kind of life may lie ahead of them, I think about the statistics, which, as was ably explained by my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner), are quite stark.”
“When we have local government reorganisation, we will be one big happy family in north Staffordshire. Whether it is Stoke-on-Trent or Newcastle-under-Lyme, we will get there.”
“But as a result of cuts to support services, and of social workers having huge caseloads, they are simply unable to do that, so it all falls on people whose primary motivation in life is the education of our young people.”
“No, I will not give way a second time. My hon. Friend is correct, in that the teachers I speak to say that it is hard. They talk about the societal impacts that are affecting children, through no fault of those young people themselves—there is nothing they can do about it—and impeding their ability. It is the teachers, and also the teaching assistants and support staff, who are having to do the social work. They are helping parents to sort out access to benefit claims, and in some cases they are helping to arrange childcare for parents who are doing shift work. They are stepping into a void that, in some parts of the world, is filled by extended families. In other parts of the world, such tasks are carried out by statutory services.”
“Hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent on alternative providers, normally outside of the area, and those providers get that money through marketing; they sell young people and their parents a dream of a particular type of education that they can access, regardless of the standard of that education.”
“I agree with the Government’s plan on this; if we can keep children who have additional needs—whether that be SEND or social, emotional, and mental health requirements—in the mainstream setting with the right help and the right support, we should do so. That frees up places for the children who need that specialist, bespoke support in special schools, to a level that means everyone is in the right place. We need to stop those mainly alternative providers, which are running huge profits, marketing their schools to children and families who are desperately in need of help and support, and saying to them, “Tell your local authority, under section I, that you want to go to this particular school”, because that means the money flows out.”
“I have made my views on that known to the Minister, and I hope that her Department will look at what more can be done to support children growing up in kinship care arrangements, like I did, because they face specific challenges. This is not necessarily a poverty-related issue, but it is about accessing support services that allow them to live a fruitful childhood. Finally, on SEND, I am proud to be a governor of the Abbey Hill special school, which is in the constituency of my neighbour my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South. One of the biggest challenges we face relates to EHCPs and how to give young people a particularly good chance in life. Under section I, parents can identify the particular school they want their child to go to.”
“We need to have a think about the way in which we establish networks for young people so that, as well as the formal education setting, they can access necessary social activities, whether through formal organisations like the scouts or through sporting clubs. There has to be an opportunity for young people to socialise in the way that they are happiest to do. Fundamentally—I know the Minister gets this because I have spoken to her about it—we have to think about the nuances for individual groups of young people, who need specific support. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) rightly pointed out that the removal of the adoption and special guardianship support fund is a particular challenge for a small but high-need group of young people.”
“For them, school was a moment of trauma—a time that they did not particularly enjoy—so being asked to go back to school, in some cases to see the same members of staff who taught them 20 years earlier, gives them the sense that they are being judged. We need to think much more holistically and about what levers we can pull, through Government and local government, to see our aspiration of improved outcomes for young people. Education is one of those levers, but we also have to make sure that parents can access good-quality support for their own health and mental health, and good-quality jobs so that they can afford to have a good work-life balance and to spend time with their children.”
“I appreciate that this debate is being led by the Department for Education because that is where the policy area sits, but if we want to give a child a good start in life, they need a safe, warm home that is not draughty; they need somewhere where they have the space to grow, develop and learn; and they need secure play areas where they feel comfortable to socialise and interact with their peers. They also need access to good-quality dentists, as the huge levels of tooth decay in Stoke mean that children are missing school; access to those vital health services is crucial. Let me turn to the parenting aspect. Too many of my constituents tell me that they had a really bad experience at school, so they do not want to go back into school to get help, advice and support.”
“Fundamentally, the challenges I face in Stoke-on-Trent, and that other Members have eloquently articulated in their own communities, stem from the fact that the attainment rate for the best start to life in places like Stoke-on-Trent is not as great as for children in other areas because of the poverty levels. Whether we call it furniture poverty, food poverty or child poverty—whatever we call it—it is poverty: young people growing up in households that simply do not have enough coming in to meet all their outgoings. The best start in life is not only an educational issue.”
“As a result, the staff are looking at setting up a science, technology, engineering and maths group, because they can see that that is where some of the young people want to go. Mrs Carrigan told me that the children were also more settled; because they have come into school slightly earlier, have had their breakfast and taken off their coats, when the day starts they are ready to start learning from the moment the bell goes, which means those vital minutes in the morning are used for teaching, not for trying to calm down a class of 30 children who are a little bit all over the place. We cannot underestimate how much those minutes accrue over the course of a year and how much time can be brought back for education purposes.”
“I know the Minister will be aware of the importance of maintained nursery schools—those teacher-led facilities that really get to the crux of the problem in some of the communities that are the hardest to deal with. Alongside the family hub, I welcome all the work that the Government are doing in this area. There is a breakfast club at the Co-op Academy Grove school in Northwood. Mrs Carrigan and I were there one morning as it was starting, and I noticed not just that children were coming in to have a hot breakfast, which was reassuring and welcome, but that they were interacting and talking to each other. In fact, the staff told me that the most popular thing that the young boys do after they have their breakfast is to go and play with the playdough. They do not want to play electronic games; they want to build and model stuff.”
“We went through what we were worried about, and we were reassured that the anxiety we were experiencing as new, young parents was perfectly normal and in line with everybody else’s expectations and understanding. Somebody there was a lifeline for us, and we were signposted to a room down the corridor and told when we could pop by again and have another conversation with somebody who had a level of expertise and who could offer support. The model that we are now rerunning in Stoke-on-Trent has benefits. Looking at some of the data coming out of Bentilee in particular, we can see that there are improvements in the attainment levels of children starting school who have been through the programme, who have interacted with some of the schemes and who have accessed the maintained school nursery at the same site.”
“Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee), who is no longer in his place—I have denied him the opportunity for another intervention. We walked into the Sure Start centre, spoke to a lovely woman and explained our problems, which were about latching and trying to understand routines. Unless people have someone who can sit them down and talk them through it, they do not really know what they are doing. As a new parent who did not really know what I was doing, my instinct was to think, “I’m probably doing it badly and wrong.” We went to the Sure Start centre, and it was lovely and welcoming. We sat down and had a conversation with somebody.”
“There is one at Bentilee, which does exceedingly good work, supported by Simon French and the Alpha Academies Trust, and Thrive at Five; multi-agency activity there is genuinely looking at the direct causes of the attainment issues and at what can be done practically to support families. We also have the hub at Thomas Boughey children’s centre. The family hubs model is not particularly revolutionary, because it replicates what happened with Sure Start. My daughter is now 14, and her mother and I had to access the Sure Start system when she was born. There were things that, as new parents in our mid-20s, we simply did not know. My family and hers both lived far away, and our network of support was really quite small, so we naturally turned to our Sure Start centre, which was based up the road in the constituency of my hon.”
“My hon. Friend has made the point excellently. Although she and I will talk passionately about the experiences that we see in our own city, I am sure that in every city like ours across the country—including, I would wager, Bradford, Madam Deputy Speaker—there are good teachers who go above and beyond to support local communities, and schools that act more as hubs for social support, community involvement and neighbourhood engagement than simply as places for young people to be educated. We are very fortunate in Stoke-on-Trent, because we already have some family hubs. I have two in my constituency.”
“It would be welcome if, as part of the National Year of Reading, the Department not only helped young people and children get more into reading and enjoying books—enjoying reading for pleasure, as opposed to having to read for work as most of us do—but ensured that parents were supported to improve their literacy in a way that allows them to interact with their children for longer as their own education progresses, I know that would be a huge benefit not just in my constituency but across the whole country.”
“I am very proud to chair the APPG on literacy, and I am really glad that the Department for Education has announced the year of reading. The bond of reading to your child is so important. Early years literacy, which also helps with oracy, means young people can start school with a set of skills that will help them thrive throughout their education. The other part of this that we need to think about is how we help parents who do not have a level of literacy necessary to start reading to their children. Again, all too often in my constituency I talk to parents who want to talk about literacy, but their confidence in their own literacy skills is such that they do not feel able to do that.”
“To move this forward slightly, I do know, and the hon. Lady will know, that the Government have been quite clear about the need to tackle the profiteering and price gouging happening in the sector. I am almost certain that the Minister will have a better answer for her than I can give her while I am speaking. That is obviously something we all agree on as a principle, and I am sure we can have a discussion another time about how we get there. However, in places such as Stoke, the higher needs budget is being blown because thousands of pounds are being taken by these glossy brochure schools that are making huge profits, and that does not give the young people in my city the best start in life. I think it gives them false hope. Finally, I would say to the Minister that the best start in life is about the first 1,001 days.”
“I would not say that the hon. Lady’s intervention was helpful to me, but she has made her point. The Government have been quite clear that we must look at how some alternative provision and specialist independent providers are making huge profits off the back of some of the most desperate and vulnerable children in our society, and at how local authorities need the tools to tackle that. In a new programme opening in my own city, one of the trusts that runs one of the special schools is looking to do mainstream work with some of the other trusts’ schools, but that is about getting trusts to work together. I do not remember her amendment, but I have absolute faith in the ministerial team— [ Interruption. ] I am sorry, but I cannot honestly say that I read everything that the Liberal Democrats produce.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way; she is being generous with her time. One area of concern that parents of children who have an EHCP have raised with me is where there are multiple and complex issues—for example, there is a health issue under one criterion, an education issue under another, or a behavioural or developmental issue under the third criterion—the EHCP will only fund the primary driver of need. Therefore, children sometimes may get the support they need for one particular element of their additional needs, but not the support elsewhere. Will the Minister assure parents in my constituency and across the country that when the Government look at the review and in whatever system that may come next, that holistic view of the child and how their complex and interdependent needs are looked after are at the centre of that?”
“My constituents have a very simple view of the criminal justice system: they want to know that the victims of crime will have their day in court and that the perpetrators will have a punishment commensurate with the crime they commit. That underpins their faith in the system, so they come forward to report crime. While the Conservatives seek to talk down the justice system, will the Minister set out what she and her Department are doing to ensure that victims of crime feel confident enough to come forward to report crimes, hopeful that they will get the outcome they want?”
“We are potentially moving to a point where proscription of the IRGC needs to be looked at considerably more strongly as a mechanism for dealing with the transnational repression that Iran is getting away with. The murder of Mahsa Amini in 2022 saw a wave of Iranian dissidents attempting to rise up against their own regime, demonstrating the bravery that so many people in this country would applaud. Those people, who then had to flee, now find themselves at the mercy of Iranian operatives here and in our allied countries. I welcome the Minister’s commitment to preventing transnational repression, but can he say more specifically about what is happening to support Iranian dissidents in the UK and those who are still seeking to demonstrate the horrors of Iran in our allied countries in the middle east?”
“May I invite her or one of her ministerial team to visit the Bentilee hub, so that they can see what great work we are doing and how it might inform national practice?”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend, partly for the launch today of the national year of reading. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on literacy, that is a wonderful and joyous thing to see. We all know that reading with children can be great not just for their literacy development, but for their oracy, as well as for boosting confidence and parental engagement with children. In Stoke-on-Trent, we have a wonderful family hub operating in the Bentilee ward in my constituency. Its success is due to the fact that it was co-created by organisations on the ground, such as Thrive At Five and Alpha Academies, that understand the importance of families and the nuances of those communities. Will the Secretary of State say a little more about what flexibility there will be in the future hubs?”
“The provision of 16 to 19 secure schools to ensure that young people have an opportunity to develop skills to prevent reoffending is absolutely something I welcome. Given that, however, I should declare my interest: I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on sixth-form education. Given that 16 to 19 education now includes a lot of off-site learning for young people—such as through T-level placements or BTEC provision—can the Minister say how young people in a secure setting will be able to access the same educational opportunities as their equivalents in mainstream education?”
“14. What discussions he has had with the Northern Ireland Executive on the adequacy of the level of funding for Northern Ireland in the spending review 2025.”
“Whether it is Stoke-on-Trent in the west midlands or the proud communities in Northern Ireland, the spending review anticipates helping to create good jobs and industrial improvement. Will the Secretary of State set out how the spending review will help to improve the industrial base in Northern Ireland?”