Dave Robertson
MP for Lichfield · Labour · United Kingdom
“As I am sure the Minister knows, I have been a trade unionist since I started my teaching career some years ago. I have been involved in a number of industrial actions over that time, as a teacher and member of a trade union and as a trade union staffer.”
“I very much appreciate that intervention, and I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on getting published in a very important journal. I am not in any way saying that the Secretary of State should not have any regard— [ Interruption. ] Now that he has made a joke, I want to say that I think he looks like a trombonist, rather than a trumpeter.”
“It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I will speak briefly on new clauses 79 and 80. I really like the intent of these new clauses, and the idea of Government working better and more together, public health being more of an agenda, and trying to get people working together in that framework.”
“I really appreciate and value that—I think this is a good debate for us to have—but if the Minister for investment has managed to secure an investor to save a large business that is essential to the economy of an area, do I want them to be held up by having to demonstrate that the investment will ensure public health? I am not sure I do.”
“To quote the Precision Health Technologies Accelerator at the University of Birmingham, very close to my Lichfield constituency, its leadership has been supportive of the removal of tariffs from pharmaceuticals, saying that the introduction of the tariffs could lead to “supply chains collapsing and patients suffering.” That is an enormous…”
“I thank the Secretary of State for giving way, and I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) for not quite being able to get here for the kick-off. The Secretary of State talks about the importance of the ceramics industry, both in economic and heritage terms.”
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“It is a wonderful venue and a fantastic place for people to carry out that remembrance if they so choose. There are now more than 400 memorials at the arboretum, and I strongly advise any right hon. or hon. Member who has not had the opportunity to visit yet to do so, so that they can take the opportunity to remember the people who are pertinent to them, or even the strangers who they have never met and will never meet, but who gave their time and themselves, and in some cases paid the ultimate sacrifice, to protect our way of life.”
“I closely associate myself with all the remarks that have been made in the debate about the work of the Royal British Legion, and all it does to support remembrance, particularly in November. When November rolls around, I make sure to clear time to remember Charles Leslie Whitehead and William Arnold Robertson, my taid and my grandpa, who saw service in the second world war and in the Pacific in Korea respectively. We owe our veterans much more than two minutes a year, and remembrance should go further than Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday. It should be something that anybody, anywhere in the country can take part in at any time by taking the time to remember somebody—on their birthday, an anniversary or just a Tuesday. That is why I am proud to host the National Memorial Arboretum in my Lichfield constituency.”
“Saxon Hill academy in my constituency does amazing work to support young people between the ages of two and 19 with physical disabilities and complex needs, but for many of the students, it is much more than a school. It is literally a home away from home, due to its sleepover club, which allows pupils to stay at the school overnight one night a week. The funding for that provision was extended for two years in December last year. Can the Minister assure me that as part of the Government’s SEND review, we will look at sustainable funding for such additional provision?”
“If we are talking about footballers, can we remember people such as Alex Scott, who is a trailblazer for the women’s game, as well as those from the men’s game?”
“My constituency is made up of 21 local government wards. One of them, Bagots and Needwood, was subjected to 3,000 hours of sewage spills in just one year. Can the Secretary of State assure me that, after 14 years of failure from the Conservative party, the commission will leave nowhere to hide for criminal water bosses?”
“I commend the work of five volunteers in my community who run Lichfield Community Media CIC. By operating a news website, they have prevented our area from becoming a news desert. Unfortunately, their posts are being blocked because algorithms on social media sites highlight them as spam. Does the Leader of the House agree that the issue of how independent publishers can access their audiences through social media would be a good topic for a debate?”
“However, I applaud the Health Secretary for going as far as he has so quickly: cutting red tape to allow 1,000 new GPs to be taken on and commissioning the Darzi review of the NHS so that this party, the one that created the NHS, can ensure that we build a health service that is fit for the 21st century.”
“Even worse still is that the proposed replacement facility, originally scheduled for completion in October 2023—last year—is nowhere near ready. We are expecting planning permission sometime in early 2025 and who knows when it will actually be completed. This is such an important issue for my constituents in Burntwood, as we all know the potential knock-on effects that delays in accessing primary care can cause. The staff at the remaining surgeries are doing all they can to support the community, but at some point increased patient rolls like this cannot be mitigated. It is one example of the challenges people face in seeing a GP. It is not the only one in my constituency and very far from being the only one across the whole country. It cannot be fixed overnight; 14 years of it going wrong will take longer than 14 weeks to fix.”
“The building was home to a GP surgery serving almost 5,000 residents in the town. The contract for the surgery expired in March last year, but no replacement facility was ready for that date. The surgery could not move, which meant it had to close. The building itself is still in use by the integrated care board and the practice was happy to seek an extension, but that was not allowed by NHS England. As a result, more than one in eight people in the town have had to be redistributed to other surgeries because a process in London did not allow organisations in Staffordshire to deliver the best solution for my constituents. It is centralist and wrong. It was wrong then and it is wrong now, and it needs to change.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) on his excellent maiden speech. I am sure he will be a fierce advocate for the people of Newton Abbot and the surrounding area over the coming years. I look forward to working with him. I am very glad to be able to speak in this debate, because primary care is an important issue that affects all our constituents. During the election campaign, it was absolutely the No. 1 issue that came up on the doorstep across Lichfield, Burntwood and the villages in my constituency. We are effectively here to discuss the centralism and poor decision making that typified the last decade and a half of incompetence by the Conservative party on primary care. There can be fewer more obvious examples of that than the fate of Burntwood health and wellbeing centre in my constituency.”
“I thank my neighbour, the right hon. Member for Great Wyrley, Penkridge and Stone—apologies, I might have got that the wrong way around—for giving way. He has been selectively quoting from the Labour party manifesto. He says the manifesto says we will introduce a retirement age for peers, but fails to mention that the sentence starts with the words: “At the end of the Parliament.” I know the Conservative party had a problem sticking to Parliaments lasting five years and that we have had a lot of elections recently, but as far as I am aware, this Government do not intend to have quite so many elections. We intend to be here and pass a large amount of legislation. Will the right hon. Member response to that point?”
“I am taken by the right hon. Gentleman’s talk about getting it right, which was a phrase also used by the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice). They both suggest taking the time to get it right, but surely that is what the Government are committed to doing. The Government are committed to the removal of hereditary peers, as was made very clear in the Labour party manifesto that was so widely supported across the country. Wider reform of the House of Lords should surely be subject to consultation, not just with people in this place but around the country. Surely, if we are to get this right, we need to take time over the consultation.”
“It is wonderful to contribute to this debate. I had to intervene when my hon. Friend spoke about university campuses, and about university buildings in city centres. My Lichfield constituency does not have a large university campus, but we do have a small satellite campus of the University of Staffordshire that supports our local economy and ensures that much of Staffordshire’s learning is reinvested through its business village. Does my hon. Friend agree about the importance of making sure that the wealth of these institutions is shared across the entire county, so that everybody can benefit from their investments?”
“Founded in 1970, the team has represented England at numerous international tournaments, and even brought home a silver medal from the 2010 world open championships. It is to this constituency that I will return during the recess. I look forward to speaking to my constituents about transport, access to healthcare, education, health and care plans, and many other issues that are on their lips. I look forward to bringing those stories back to this place, so that I can continue to advocate on my constituents’ behalf.”
“I hope that I can get as much airtime as they do. Slightly further up the A38 is the National Memorial Arboretum near Alrewas—a wonderful venue, as the site of national remembrance. I advise every single person to make a visit there to remember, not just in November but on any day. I am sure that in the coming months the Secretary of State for Transport will grow tired of my lobbying about the need for a railway station to serve that amazing location. On a dissimilar note, the first Travelodge in the UK was opened slightly up the road some 39 years ago, near the village of Barton-under-Needwood, although that village should be much better remembered as the home of the Holland tug of war team.”
“The Coventry canal and the Trent and Mersey canal are still navigable today, and the work of the Lichfield and Hatherton Canal Restoration Trust should be commended, as it aims to restore that link as a green and blue way over the coming years. Having touched again on transport, I will complete the circle and return to the crossroads that made Letocetum. Watling Street, or the A5, as it is now known, and Rykneld Street, the A38, are major transport arteries that link my constituency together, and link it easily to the rest of the country. The A38 in particular has helped to establish a logistics centre in the village of Fradley on the site of the former RAF Lichfield. Fans of the BBC’s “Bargain Hunt” will know Fradley well, given the regular appearances of Richard Winterton and his auctioneers on that show.”
“As for the suggestion that his Geordie accent was in part responsible for his hiring in a school built to teach the children of new arrivals from the north-east, that remains suspected, if unconfirmed. Mining was not the only industry that found its way to my part of Staffordshire. Many of us will recognise the name Armitage Shanks, but few will know its links to the village of Armitage, just a short trip up Rugeley Road from Handsacre. As the new Government focus their legislative agenda on growth, I remind colleagues that while many of us may have already spent a penny with Armitage Shanks, they are all welcome to visit and spend many more in the coming years. All this industry meant that the canals came to my constituency.”
“Today, the people of Burntwood still maintain a close-knit community, typical of former mining areas. That is shown by the great examples of the Spark café and Burntwood Be a Friend, which have done so much to step in to replace services cut during 14 long years of Conservative Government. If we are discussing Burntwood, we cannot forget the giant-killing exploits of Chasetown FC in the FA cup of 2007-08. At some point, I will forgive the Members for Cardiff. Burntwood is not the only part of my constituency that has a mining history. The village of Handsacre also more than played its part in powering the industry of the 19th and 20th centuries. It is also the village where my old man taught his first lessons as a probationary teacher in the 1970s.”
“Returning to my historical tour of Lichfield and its surrounding area, we reach the early and mid-19th century, and the town of Burntwood, a conurbation of mining villages, which grew up some four miles from Lichfield and has a similarly proud history. Its most notable resident was the fundraiser and campaigner Stephen Sutton, who raised millions for the Teenage Cancer Trust despite his diagnosis. We lost him far too soon, at the age of just 19. He was made an MBE for his fundraising, so it is more than fitting that Burntwood town council remembers him through a student award named in his honour. Not to be outshone by the cathedral down the road, Burntwood also took its place in ecclesiastical history when, in 1883, St Anne’s church in Chasetown became the first in the country to have electric lighting.”
“Johnson’s heir, Samuel Barber, was a freed slave who would go on to run a school in Burntwood, decades before Tom Jenkins would begin teaching in Teviothead in Scotland, and who would also serve as a dozener in local government in Lichfield and almost certainly become the first black man to serve in local government in the UK. Before I move on from some famous people from around the area, I should mention a local success story in Sophie Capewell. Lichfield’s golden girl brought home not just a gold medal from Paris this year, but a world record as part of Team GBs fantastic efforts. In doing so, she ended my reign as the most successful former pupil of my old school, Nether Stowe in Lichfield, and although I had hoped to hold that title a little longer than 32 days, I am happy to be disappointed on that point.”
“In this time, the area did produce innumerable great lives, and, while they are far too numerous to mention all of them here, I should note Gregory King, the world’s first economic statistician; Elias Ashmole, whose collections founded the Ashmolean museum, the first of its type in the UK; David Garrick, the noted theatre innovator and manager; the physician Erasmus Darwin, a founding member of the Lunar Society who had a rather famous grandson; the poet, Anna Seward; Thomas Gisborne of Yoxall Lodge, an abolitionist and a close associate of William Wilberforce; the painter John Louis Petit, who is having a wonderful renaissance in the understanding of his work; Frederick Oakeley, who translated the words to “O Come All Ye Faithful” in Lichfield cathedral; and, of course, Samuel Johnson, a man of letters and the author of the first dictionary of the English language.”
“The largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found, the hoard is already having, and will continue to have, a significant impact on our understanding of the people of these isles, before there was an England, a Scotland, a Wales or a Northern Ireland. Let me move on from the 7th century. Over the coming years, the city would continue to flourish and establish itself as a religious and ecumenical centre, although much of the surrounding area maintained its rural and agrarian aspect for many centuries to come.”
“The crossing of those two roads remained an important place throughout the Roman and Saxon periods, and, in the 7th century, Chad of Mercia established a cathedral and diocese in Lichfield, which still exists today. In just over a week’s time, I will be proud to be in attendance at the installation of—I think—the 58th dean of Lichfield cathedral. The Right Reverend Jan MacFarlane will be the first woman to hold that post and will not only smash a glass ceiling, but be an excellent advocate for the cathedral and the Church in the local community and beyond. The 7th century is also noteworthy for the burying of the Staffordshire hoard, which was uncovered in Hammerwich in my constituency in 2009, near that same crossroads of Watling Street and Rykneld Street.”
“Thirty-two years in total Sir Michael served, and I think that would be a number to which we would all aspire. Should I be fortunate enough to still be in this place in 30 years’ time, Madam Deputy Speaker, I can only hope to have such a head of hair. It is, however, to longevity that I wish to turn now. Although I have received advice from some colleagues not to mention the Domesday Book, I can neatly sidestep that as the recorded history of my constituency dates back some 1,000 years before William the Conqueror to the Roman invasion and the establishment of Letocetum, a Roman fort and later settlement near the crossroads of Watling Street and Rykneld Street in my constituency.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I thank hon. Members who have made their first speeches today for setting the bar so high? I hope I can live up to the standard that they have set. I am sent to this place by the constituents of Lichfield, a constituency that includes not only the city itself, but the town of Burntwood and around 40 villages and hamlets in the great county of Staffordshire. I am proud to serve the area that has been my home since before I knew to call anywhere home, and where I hope it will be for many, many more years to come. My predecessor in this House was Sir Michael Fabricant. He was knighted in 2023 for political and public service after more than 30 years representing first the constituency of Mid Staffordshire and then Lichfield in this House.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for initiating such an important debate on this most pressing issue. Does he agree with me that voluntary organisations such as those in my constituency, Burntwood Litter Heroes and Lichfield Litter Legends, really deserve the support and respect of their Members for all the work they do to keep our communities tidy, alongside the work of Keep Britain Tidy?”
“I thank my hon. Friend for raising the issue. Around seven years ago, piled-up waste was disposed of in a similar site in Lichfield city—the old GKN site. My understanding is that the waste was fly-tipped. It caught fire, and arson was suspected. It was the fourth such incident in Staffordshire that year, and it took eight appliances and 65 firefighters to deal with the fire. Like the site my hon. Friend is discussing, it has been cleared but still awaits development. This is endemic across Staffordshire.”