Staffordshire ceramic industry 'faces collapse' as famous Moorcroft Pottery closes after 100 years

Moorcroft Pottery in Mr Snell’s constituency announced its closure on Wednesday after more than 100 years following warnings of potential redundancies in March.

During an urgent question in the Commons, energy minister Sarah Jones referred to a range of government schemes targeted at energy-intensive industries which Mr Snell said “do not apply to the ceramic sector and do not apply to great swathes of the energy industrial sector as a whole”.

Mr Snell told MPs: “We are constantly promised by the last government, as well as this one, jam tomorrow. Well, jam is no good if you’re dead and the ceramic sector in Stoke-on-Trent is on life support.

“We are at a point now where good manufacturing jobs done by proud people are falling away every month. This is not new. This started in 2019 with the closure of Dudson, Wade in 2022, Johnson Tile in 2023, Royal Stafford and now Moorcroft in 2024.

“The energy-intensive industries in this country are pivotal to manufacturing. If we see them fall away, then manufacturing in this country will fall away.”

Mr Snell asked the minister for a “wholesale change in the way that we do subsidies of energy prices for energy-intensive industry”, adding that GB Energy was “too far away to help”.

He said: “We don’t need the same level of investment that steel does. We need a tiny fraction of it. Can we have it and can we have it soon? Because if we come back here in six weeks, there will be no sector left to defend.”

Ms Jones replied: “We’ve lost 1,250 jobs in the ceramic sector between 2015 and 2023. It’s been a very sad decline, and we want to turn that around.

“The whole point of having an industrial strategy is to have a government that is proactive in supporting our industries. We will not put extra costs on the ceramics industry, and we are looking to see how we can help and support and he has my word on that.”

She added that the Government was “working on every single one” of a set of proposals put forward by Ceramics UK and was “looking to do more”.

Tory shadow energy minister Andrew Bowie said job losses in the industry were a result of “the toxic combination of high energy costs and this Chancellor’s devastating jobs tax”.

He said: “This Government is wilfully destroying British industry in oil and gas, in ceramics, in chemicals and in metals, when they know it won’t make a difference to global emissions.

“We will not use any less oil and gas. We will not use any less steel, cement, bricks or chemicals. We will just import it from abroad at greater cost to our economy and the climate, with British job losses added to the bargain.

“Because they are led by an ideological zealot in the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband), and a Prime Minister too weak to rein him in, we will continue down this path and British workers in Aberdeen, in Grangemouth, in Luton and today in Stoke, will be paying the price.”

Ms Jones said the Conservatives were “hiding behind this newfound scepticism of net zero to hide their complete failure to support and grow our foundational and manufacturing industries on their watch”.

She said: “The last cost-of-living crisis was caused because of our reliance on the global gas prices, as (Mr Bowie) knows and as he occasionally says in some meetings when he flips and flops between his position on net zero.

“We will support manufacturing. We are developing our industrial strategy that will be published in a few weeks, and we are already with the energy-intensive industries, providing more support than the previous government did through the energy supercharger – so we will act where the previous government failed.”

Green Party MP Ellie Chowns called on the Government to “decouple the price of electricity from gas”, which would mean fluctuations in gas prices had less impact on electricity bills.

The North Herefordshire MP told the Commons: “Gas prices have gone through the roof in recent years. We all know why – because of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s outrageous invasion of Ukraine – and that is why companies and businesses are struggling.”

Ms Sarah Jones said that Ms Chowns was “right to point to a lot of misinformation in this space”, which she claimed was “often used by the party opposite (the Conservatives) to hide their own failings in government”.