Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old — House of Commons, 2022-05-16
Topic: Transportation
Jack Edgar Brereton (Conservative, Centre-right): I was delighted to welcome the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to Stoke-on-Trent last week to meet local workers, businesses, educators and community groups. Stoke-on-Trent is on the up, and we are determined to deliver an even better place to grow up and grow old. We must now level up cities such as Stoke-on-Trent and seize on the opportunities of Brexit, free from the shackles of Brussels bureaucracy, through the Brexit freedoms Bill. Stoke-on-Trent is a city that has been neglected and held back for decades, but we have so much potential just waiting to be unleashed. Finally, we now have a Government and local politicians who are focused on securing the investment and delivering the improvements our city needs. We must particularly improve our local public transport, which is a barrier to jobs and skills opportunities. In parts of Meir, in my constituency, 40% of households do not have a car. For the rest of the city, the average figure is 30%. The need for rail and bus improvements is desperate, so the big win pledges that we have secured for investment from the transforming cities fund, the bus service improvement plan, the restoring your railway fund and others have been gratefully received, because they remove some of the barriers to better jobs and skills opportunities I was delighted to champion the improvement works proposed for Longton station through the transforming cities fund, and it is time for those funded works to be delivered. Network Rail must start playing its full and properly co-ordinated part in the delivery, which it has not been doing up until recently. I hope that Great British Railways and the transport Bill will help to resolve how we can better deliver the transport improvements needed in cities such as Stoke-on-Trent. In particular, I hope that they will help to address organisations that can hinder progress, as Network Rail has done on the works that we have been doing across Stoke-on-Trent I also call on the Government to announce that our plans to reopen Meir station will proceed—I have been chairing the delivery board for that—and I ask them to continue to support us as we develop our plans for the reopening of the Stoke-Leek line. In building a better city, we are not only making it easier to get around, but reviving historic sites that give our city and our towns their unique character and appeal. I particularly welcome the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which will help us to breathe new life into our towns and high streets The heritage action zones that we have won for Longton and for Stoke town, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon), and the levelling-up fund pledges for major regeneration sites, including the derelict Tams Crown Works in Longton, are all key to levelling up our communities and breathing new life into our town centres. Our city is becoming the place to invest for digital and creative sectors such as the gaming industry, right at the heart of the UK and spurred on by the massive investment in fibre gigabit connectivity. I was pleased last Friday to visit a site where Openreach is installing such connectivity in Fenton That is alongside improving education to ensure that everyone locally has the ability to access better skills and better-paid employment. The major announcement that Stoke-on-Trent will benefit from the family hubs programme and as a prioritised education investment area will ensure that every young person gets the best possible start in life, particularly in the early years We need to focus on the gaps in engineering and creative skills for the high paid, high-value jobs that we want to attract locally, to fill the gaps that employers regularly speak to me about. I particularly welcome the Government’s lifetime skills guarantee, which offers free training for adults to upskill. That will be significant in places such as Stoke-on-Trent, given the number of adults there without higher level qualifications. The Schools Bill and the higher education Bill can get us on the right track to ensure that young people and everyone in our city achieve their full potential I hope to see some more support for the ceramics industry. There are real concerns about the current cost of energy for high energy use manufacturers, particularly the local world-leading ceramics industry. I know that the Prime Minister is listening, and he did so carefully on his visit last week to Churchill China, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis). I hope that we will not allow other countries to steal a march on the fantastic British ceramics industry. Increased energy costs remain a significant concern for much of the sector, and we must see more support, especially for the SMEs that did not qualify for much of what has been announced thus far.