UK Modern Industrial Strategy

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support and the contribution his local area can make. In some areas, we have a lot of good things going on, but it needs to happen faster and we have to make sure that we execute the plans we have in place. That sounds like exactly the sort of challenge in this area that we should commit to.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Ceramics UK has described today’s modern industrial strategy as disappointing and, candidly, I share the sector’s disappointment. The one reference to ceramics in the strategy is historical and geographic, with nothing about industry. For months, I and my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams) and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) have been pointing out the immediate needs of a sector that employs thousands of people in our city, yet today there is nothing on gas pricing, nothing on electricity pricing and no access to the supercharger scheme. Instead, we are given an IOU for 2027. What message can I take home to those in Stoke-on-Trent this week about what in this industrial strategy will give them the help and the support that they need today, rather than having to wait for an IOU post-dated to the year after next?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I say to my hon. Friend that I think Ceramics UK is misplaced in that criticism. Ceramics is recognised as a foundational sector: it is part of the materials foundational sector in the strategy. Its principal request is about energy prices. There are some ceramics businesses—I accept not that many—that get the supercharger and that will get the more generous rate. But fundamentally, the costs of a lot of those businesses do not match the intensity test, which the supercharger is based on—a sectoral and then an individual business test. That is exactly why the British industrial competitiveness scheme has been designed in such a way that they will benefit from it, and that will be a game-changer for them. There are not the same policy tools around gas prices, but of course we can see that gas prices are projected to fall from the very significant level that they have been at for future financial years.