“I DO not know what Nature originally made of it,” wrote JB Priestley, when he visited The Potteries in 1934, “because nearly all signs of her handiwork have been obliterated … To begin with, it is extremely ugly … The small towns straggle and sprawl in their shabby undress, following the ugly fashion of industrial small towns.”

One of the abiding myths about Stoke-on-Trent is its absence of beauty.

The slurs began in the inter-war years when the likes of Priestley and George Orwell caricatured the city as ‘Smoke-on-Stench’.

It was depicted as a quintessentially urban place, where nature had been buried beneath the smog, smuts and filth.

But, at the very same time, the city was also renowned for its remarkable collection of open spaces and parks. Not just The Roaches and Lake Rudyard Lake, but our formal, Victorian gardens.

The journalist Paul Johnson, growing up in Stoke-on-Trent during the 1930s, recalled his father taking him around Tunstall Park and explaining that, “the public parks were designed to give humble townspeople the feeling they had free access to property not unlike the parks of the highest aristocracy, such as the Duke of Sutherland at Trentham.”

And the young Johnson adored the clock -tower, bowling greens, serpentine paths and sense of ‘monumental grandeur’.

Well, this week, that tradition of beauty, equality and Potteries’ pride comes to the smartest set in London as Stoke-on-Trent takes on the Chelsea Flower Show.

While other cities and local authorities have abandoned the tradition of exhibiting at the world’s leading horticultural show, Stoke-on-Trent is using this international shop-front to lure inward investment into North Staffordshire.

With support from private sector sponsors, Stoke-on-Trentthe City Council is showing that local authorities can still act in a creative and adventurous manner.

For the garden is a tribute to all those skilled public servants in the council’s landscape team, who have made Park Hall, Burslem Park and, hopefully, Hanley Park such successes. In very tough times, our open spaces are more valuable than ever.

And, what is more, they are helping to regenerate Stoke-on-Trent in the most unexpected manner – by proving that this city is a place of colour, design, and beauty.

Mixing precision engineered artefacts with plants and flowers, the ‘Transformation Garden’ (as it is known) tells the story of Stoke-on-Trent’s heroic past and plans for an ambitious future.

At the heart of the garden is a skeletal, steel bottle-kiln covered in hundreds of hand-crafted, super-light bone china ‘flower bricks’.

These have been painstakingly put together by our best ceramicists working with local school pupilschildren from Abbey Hill and Ormiston, college students and community groups.

Behind the kiln is a living tapestry of plants symbolising the Peak District as the glorious, natural back-drop to our ‘STRAGGLING six towns.’

In the middle of the exhibit, Johnson Tiles hashave applied digitally printed photographic images of flowers onto glazed tiles, while Moorcroft Pottery has created a tiled table top depicting plants exhibited in the garden.

There is a crackle-gaze sandstone path and then a pergola in the same shape as Hanley’s new bus-station.

Finally, there are the roses – providing one fifth of the garden’s flowers in recognition of our relationship with Lidice and the planting of the rose garden in that ravaged city.

Then comes the hard work. Because, as beautiful as this garden is, it has to earn its keep.

Thanks to the generosity of Knights Solicitors, David Austin roses, Bartholomew Landscaping, and many others, most of the costs have been covered but this is a moment to exploit our investment.

So, tomorrow evening, the city’s industry ambassadors will be using the garden to tell a new story of Stoke-on-Trent – a high-skilled, pro-business, technologically advanced place in which to invest.

A city hugely proud of its history, but now explaining how it can build on that heritage and identity to deliver a prosperous, modern future.

And we have the Japanese Embassy, Imperial College London(CRRCT), and high-rolling property, industry and finance clients to convince.

On the one hand, it is an unfortunate sign of the times that Stoke-on-Trent City Council has to head down to London in order to attract inward investment.

But if, at Chelsea, we can use our great landscape and design skills to promote The Potteries then we should.

Of course, it would be wonderful to win a medal. But the real prize will be to waft away any tired old image of ‘Smoke-on-Stench’ on the back of a bed of roses, by the banks of the Thames.

Who was ‘Pierre Crepie,’ or rather ‘Peter Cripin’? 

We know he was a native of Paris, chef to the Duke of Sutherland, and staying at Trentham Hall when the 1851 census was held.  And we know he was called ‘Pierre’ when working at the Sutherland’s Stafford House in London, and the altogether less French-sounding ‘Peter’ when in Stoke.  What is more, he had a London-born wife living with him in Trentham, as well as a son and daughter born on the estate. 

Pierre or Peter is just one of the unknown lives rescued from anonymity in the newly published Volume XI of the Victoria County History of Staffordshire.  In a remarkable piece of research, the downstairs world of the long destroyed Trentham Hall has been brought back to life as it was at the height of the Sutherlands’ power and glory.  And it offers us a very different view of Stoke-on-Trent’s history. 

The Victoria County History is itself a historic institution.  Founded in 1899 and originally dedicated to Queen Victoria to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee, the VCH is a multi-volume history of England’s places and people from pre-Roman days to the present.  The first Staffordshire edition came out in 1908, with the main Stoke-on-Trent edition (Volume VIII) published in 1963.  In their scholarship, breadth and authority, these big red books are invaluable sources and it is to the credit of Staffordshire County Council and Keele University that they are continuing to fund these volumes. 

And, quite rightly, the books are changing with the times.  In the old editions, a great deal of space was spent on Bishops and Members of Parliament, landowners and industrialists.  Today, there is much more of an emphasis upon social history, with accounts of welfare, schools, pastimes and those in service. 

As such, the County Histories are reflecting our broader interest in the lives of cooks as much as countesses.  Today, no country house exhibition is complete without some insight into the working day of the laundry girl or groom. From Upstairs-Downstairs to Downton Abbey to Remains of the Day, it is often the servants who provide the most interesting characters.

As Fred Hughes recently reminded us, in his beautiful essay on the ruins of Trentham Mausoleum, the might of the Sutherlands was a crucial component of the history of the Potteries.  And the first three Dukes of Sutherland were all compelling individuals in their own right – with the third Duke a particularly interesting reprobate, who liked to entertain the Shah of Persia and future King Edward VII at Trentham (before then squandering the Sutherland millions with an American wife and disputed will). 

But now we are beginning to know something of the lives and experiences of those who served upon Dukes and Duchesses.  Rather than being lost to posterity, the authors of this new volume have recovered the names and identities of those working in the farm, poultry yard and dairy – and then, fascinatingly, the inter-relationship between the fixed, permanent staff at Trentham and those who arrived with the Sutherlands when the peal of bells rang in Newcastle parish church to announce their July arrival for summer. 

Of the 21 servants living in Trentham Hall on census night in 1851, one housemaid was born in Trentham and seven other staff came from Staffordshire; the remainder were from Devon, Hampshire and across England – but the piper was Scottish.  Meanwhile, in London, the Sutherlands kept 36 servants of whom 6 were from Staffordshire.  Interestingly, we know many of these servants would then settle in the area, adding a cosmopolitan touch to the Six Towns. 

Then there were the gardeners, whose numbers swelled in the mid-19^th century to cope with the 2^nd duchesses demands for grandiose floral displays.  In the 1840s and ‘50s the average number of under-gardeners was around 50, of whom some 15 were journeymen, 4 apprentices, and the rest general labourers and garden boys. 

What the new history confirms is just what a vast operation Trentham Hall was: one of the great aristocratic houses of England sat on the edge of one of the most working-class cities.  And now, at last, we are beginning to see there was just as much struggle and exploitation in Trentham as in the pot-banks of Burslem. 

Beginning with the mysterious Pierre, the history of those who built and ran one of the lost jewels of England’s stately home past has been elegantly resuscitated.  Instead of only the ruins of Trentham to look upon, in the Volume XI of the VCH we now have a gripping account of our very own Downton Abbey.

IT IS never pleasant to get kicked in the ballot box. And certainly not by two votes. But that is was happened on Friday afternoon to my colleague Gareth Snell, pictured, the smart young Labour Party leader of Newcastle Borough Council.

 After a recount, his 772 votes in Staffordshire County Council’s Keele, Knutton and Silverdale ward were still pipped by the 774 ballot papers cast for Derrick Huckfield.

 It was another triumph for the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip), which took 24 per cent of the vote in Staffordshire – a touch above their 23 per cent national showing.

 The Labour Party was happy with its 24 seats in Staffordshire.

 But by any measure, last Thursday’s haul of 139 new Ukip councillors was a spectacular result for Nigel Farage’s party.

 There is no doubt this new political landscape will herald changes here in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire.

 It will mean politicians listening to public concerns, but it will also demand some bravery in sticking up for long-held values.

 First and foremost, what last week’s vote – on the back of the Eastleigh and South Shields by-elections – revealed was that the attraction of Ukip has now extended beyond disgruntled ex-Tory voters in southern England. And the Ukip posters up in Stoke show it is on the move here in the Potteries too.

Because for all Nigel Farage’s insider credentials as former public schoolboy turned City trader, his simple brand of populism speaks perfectly to the anger of our age. 

What is more, he looks and sounds different. None of the usual red tie and white shirt political camouflage for Farage – instead, a puff on a Rothmans cigarette, a pint of real ale, a pin-stripe suit, and some Spitfire cufflinks (which could go down very well in Stoke-on-Trent).

Then there is the politics. According to Dr Robert Ford  of the University of Manchester: “Ukip speaks for a very broad swath of the electorate on two issues in particular: immigration and Europe. The average British voter is very negative about the effects of high immigration levels over the past decade and broadly sceptical of Brussels.’

Allied to this is the broader sense of unease around today – an understandable concern that globalisation and the modern economy is not working for everyone equally.

Whether it is pressurised living standards, stretched public services, the struggle to find a job, manufacturing decline, or concerns over your children’s future, Nigel Farage seems to have a clear answer: leave Europe and close the doors on foreigners.

In Staffordshire in the past, these kind of fears would have found a home  in the British National Party. Thankfully, that is no longer the case. And while I certainly do not think (as the Minister once suggested) that Ukip supporters are ‘closet racists’, there is a certain similarity of thought between the parties. At its core is an anger towards modern Britain and a sense of loss over a past that probably never was.

So, how should mainstream political parties respond? First and foremost by pointing out the folly of some of Ukip’s policies: more privatisation in the NHS, a flat-tax which would mean plutocrats and potters pay the same rate, and £120 billion of unfunded spending commitments.

Then we should deal with the substantive question of the European Union. In Stoke-on-Trent, of course, this has particular resonance as the English home of Michelin Tyres. As host to a hugely successful European multi-national, the benefits of the single-market are evident in the jobs, apprenticeships, pay-slips and local investment . But Ukip would kiss this all goodbye.

After the EU is the immigration issue. Here, the political parties need to listen much more carefully because there is no doubt that for all the advantages brought by the free movement of labour, unmanaged immigration has hit traditional working-class communities hard. While big business  has benefited from high skills and competitive costs, there is evidence of wages being depressed and opportunities being lost for indigenous workers.

The issue cannot be ignored, but the solution  is more one of managing migration, enforcing the minimum wage, working with trade unions, prosecuting gang-masters and, above all, raising skills as it is of turning our back on Europe.

In short, there is a progressive answer to many of the questions Nigel Farage has asked – and it doesn’t lie with Ukip.

The challenge is now on to re-engage with the public and convince them the non-pin-striped politicians have some answers.

For we have now entered the realm of four-party politics – as Gareth Snell unfortunately found out on Friday afternoon

In my three years in Parliament, I have seen some strange sights at Westminster. 

But few of those beat watching Peter Crouch and Michael Owen taking in a tour of the House of Commons Central Lobby. 

Yet last week there they were – along with the rest of the Stoke City team – gazing down at the Minton floor tiles and then looking up at the gold-leafed ceiling.  However, I could not help thinking that their minds might have been elsewhere. 

For the Stoke City players had come to Parliament, along with Chairman Peter Coates and Manager Tony Pulis, for an official celebration of the club’s 150^th Anniversary hosted by Labour Party peer and Britannia Stadium fixture Lord Grocott. 

And they did so knowing that the club was in the fight of its life.  Whilst there is much celebrating in Burslem at the wonderful revival in Port Vale’s fortunes, there remains nervousness at the Britannia about the future. 

For the prospect of relegation was never meant to be part of this year’s anniversary script. Four trouble-free seasons have been hard won in which Tony Pulis has consolidated the club’s status in the Premier League, taken the club to an F.A Cup Final at Wembley, and represented England upon the far-flung fields of Istanbul and Tel-Aviv in the Europa League.

Old Stoke City hands tell me that this is arguably the club’s most successful era since the glory days of Tony Waddington in the early 70’s or Stanley Matthews in the 1940’s.

Yet after a difficult run stretching back to February, the Potters now find themselves in a dog-fight to stay up.  This week-end’s much needed away win against QPR has certainly eased the pressure, but we are not out of the woods yet. 

In this nail-biting Premier League finale, there is more than just football at stake. Research has repeatedly shown that success on the field is good for productivity on the shop-floor. When the Social Issues Research Centre investigated the issue before the 2006 World Cup, they found that 47% of women and 40% of men said that sporting success lifts their mood and makes them more productive in their jobs.

There is a real cash benefit too – a University of Cardiff report found that Swansea City’s elevation to the Premier League was worth £58m to the local economy, generating 340 jobs in Swansea alone. In difficult times, these are economic incentives we can ill afford to lose.

Yet for places like Stoke-on-Trent the impact of top flight football cannot be measured purely in pounds and pence: there is also the question of local identity and civic pride. 

In Westminster last week, Peter Coates spoke with real passion of the place of Stoke City in the life of The Potteries.  It was not just the charitable work, the youth football clubs in communities like Bentilee, or the money put back into the local economy – it is also the sense of community and belonging which football inspires.  As such, it speaks to the very foundations of the club. 

Because whilst the modern game of football (like rugby and cricket) might have emerged out of the public schools system as a way of training up young men for service in the army and duty in the empire, it was soon take over by industrial, working-class communities.  

The first rules were drawn up at Cambridge University in 1848 and the earliest winners of the F.A Cup included such names as the Old Etonians, the Royal Engineers and Oxford University. But the game did not last long as the preserve of the privileged: when the first football league was founded in 1888 all 12 teams, including Stoke, came from the industrial heartlands of the Midlands, or the mill towns of Lancashire.

Indeed, the story of Stoke City’s first antecedent is typical. Two former Charterhouse school pupils, Henry John Almond and William Macdonald Matthews, came to the Stoke Locomotive works in 1863 and discovered the local railway workers had an informal team called ‘Stoke Ramblers’. Out of this Almond and Matthews went on to found the club.

Since then Stoke City together with Port Vale have become essential components of the city’s identity.  And we need both of them to succeed for the city’s prosperity and pride. 

Last week Tony Pulis issued a ‘call of arms to everyone in Stoke’ to pull together for the rest of the season. To ensure that 150 years of the city’s tradition and identity are given a fitting celebration, it is a call we all need to answer.

When we met last Wednesday, for the extraordinary session of Parliament to give thanks for the life of Baroness Thatcher, the chaplain of the House of Commons led the assembled MPs in Psalm 23.

‘The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want / He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters / He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake / Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’

It was a sharp reminder that the natural life of an 87-year old lady had ended and it was only right that our thoughts should be focussed on her passing. 

But, of course, Margaret Thatcher was so much more than that.  And whilst it will take many more decades for historians to appreciate her full impact upon Britain, it is already clear she was a political Titan. 

What is more, she is continuing to fight the Conservative cause as purposefully in death as life. 

Rarely has a Prime Minister been able to wreak such fundamental change upon our political and economic landscape. Perhaps only Clement Attlee can boast of a similar legacy and even he never had his own ‘ism’. Indeed, years after her political demise, it still sometimes seemed as if Thatcherism remains the axis around which British politics revolves. Her ideas, whether accepted or rejected, demand acknowledgement.

How then to commemorate such a life?  Before her death, controversy surrounded the possibility of Mrs. T being granted a full state funeral. Such an honour is usually reserved for senior members of the royal family and politicians accorded this treatment are few and far between. In the 19^th century it was bestowed on the Duke of Wellington, Lord Palmerston and W.E. Gladstone, whilst in the 20^th century only on Churchill.

Unlike the melodramatic Churchill, who declared that he wanted “guns, trumpets, soldiers, the lot”, Mrs. Thatcher is said not to have wanted a state funeral, insisting that to lie in state would be inappropriate. Nonetheless, this Wednesday’s ‘ceremonial funeral’ is a state funeral to all intents and purposes: horses will carry the gun carriage, the Queen will be in attendance (the first time she has attended the funeral of a British politician since Churchill’s in 1965), three black clad bands will line the route, and the Honourable Artillery Company will fire a gun salute for every minute of the procession.

This is not to everyone’s taste.  Nor indeed mine.  The problem is that any rational debate about the appropriateness of such a commemoration has been drowned out by the grotesque ‘death parties’ on the far-Left and a deranged Daily Mail on the right. 

My view is that basic human decency and compassion should afford respect at such times, regardless of political disagreements. However, there is no point pretending that Mrs. Thatcher was a unifying Prime Minister in the same way that a war leader like Churchill was.

Yet at times this is exactly the version many have tried to portray, casting the Iron Lady as a consensual figure from an uncontested past. Many of the more disputed events of her career have simply been airbrushed out. But when society – for there is such a thing – debates the legacy of its most important figures, that discussion is by its nature political. And any conversation about our past is at the same time a conversation about our future.

So we can hear about Mrs Thatcher’s role in restoring Britain’s international reputation, the Falklands, the end of the Cold War, her achievements as the first female Prime Minister, her leadership and the ‘liberation’ of parts of the economy.

But we must also hear about what her policies did to communities in North Staffordshire: her encouragement of rampant individualism, hollowing out of our manufacturing base, the trauma of de-industrialisation, the calculated brutality of the Miners’ Strike, the Poll Tax, and of the occasional callousness she demonstrated to those who opposed her. And the legacy of those policies today. 

To those on the receiving end of such treatment, in cities such as Stoke-on-Trent, to elevate her into some kind of ‘mother of the nation’ figure stripped of her political ideology, would be the final insult.

So last Wednesday I was happy to recite Psalm 23 in memory of Margaret Thatcher.  But, as an historian and Labour politician, I certainly cannot accept this conservative canonisation of the late Mrs T. as the woman who ‘saved’ Britain.

What to do about High Speed 2? As matters stand, the new rail link from London does not seem to offer many benefits for North Staffordshire. We have no Stoke on Trent stop and, according to the latest business case, there is even a chance of our existing rail service being downgraded. And then comes the environmental blight and botched compensation scheme.

For all that, I still think we should back HS2. But we have to start campaigning to make it work for us.

Because after the Government’s High Court victory on Friday, it looks like the scheme is going ahead. What is more, the Government will most likely be consulting on the rail route they have sketched out. So, this summer we will have to make our voice heard to ensure this infrastructure delivers jobs and businesses in The Potteries.

Now, the purists want us to demand a reconfigured line which, rather than skirting to the west of Stoke on Trent (following the path of the  M6), comes into Stoke itself. They argue that only city centre stations deliver tangible benefits from high speed services.

On the other leg of HS2, this is exactly the debate gripping Sheffield. The proposed scheme has the line stoping at Meadowhall – the out of town shopping centre on the edge of the city – rather than in the city centre itself. There are now fears that HS2 will lead to a further hollowing out of the downtown and campaigners want a central Sheffield stop instead. But the associated costs of tunnelling means it is highly unlikely.  What is more, the easy tram links to Meadowhall still make the planned  stop a helpful boost for the Sheffield  economy.

In Stoke, it is equally unlikely we will have much luck in having the train line altered -which means our nearest stop will be in Crewe. This connection is planned to service the trains heading out to Liverpool, ensuring that Merseyside doesn’t lose everything to Manchester when it comes to HS2.

The station will mean good jobs and supply chain opportunities in Crewe – and this major infrastructure development could hopefully trickle down some employment opportunities to Stoke. It certainly offers a chance to revitalise some brownfield sites in Crewe and we should not begrudge them their ambitions.

But we won’t gain much by arguing for a fast shuttle service from Stoke to Crewe. No one wants to have to change trains, onto a high speed service which will only shave off 15 minutes from existing travel times to London or Manchester.  

So, if we can’t get a stop in Stoke and don’t want to change at Crewe then the answer has to be our own stop in North Staffs. What we need is a parkway station near to the Keele services close by the M6, where the train line cuts closest to the motorway.

This would be the natural stop between Manchester and Birmingham and ensure some benefits would come to Staffordshire from HS2, rather than just compulsory purchase orders and property blight. A parkway service would assist the broader North Staffs economy and, in the round, would be to the benefit of the Stoke on Trent urban region.Having a high speed service some ten minutes out of town would certainly assist in attracting new businesses into Stoke.

At the same time, we cannot afford any reduction in current services along the West Coast Main Line. This is a particular concern as the latest plans for HS2 shows a dramatic cut in both the frequency of trains between London, Stoke and Manchester as well as in their speed. As HS2 threatens to put more freight traffic onto the WCML, its traditional passenger services look under threat. This is clearly unacceptable: to be passed over for a high speed stop and then to have a reduction in existing services is certainly not the kind of regeneration we were promised by the HS2 revolution.

And it is not just Stoke on Trent. Cities such as Derby, Leicester, Wakefield and Stockport look in danger of being similarly left behind by the advent of HS2.

As the consultation begins, now is the time to make a renewed case for a North Staffs stop. Both Stoke and Newcastle councils have been lobbying the Department for Transport, but business and other city champions need to make their voices heard. If HS2 is going to work for North Staffs, we have to start planning before we watch the train pass by all our stations.

For one terrible moment, I thought Business Secretary Vince Cable was going to end up with a mug of tea down his front.  And it would be Joan Walley’s fault. 

At a meeting in the Department for Business on country of origin marking for ceramics, Joan had reached across the table to have a look at the Cabinet Minister’s mug.  Triumphantly, the Stoke North MP then held up the milky tea – to Vince’s evident discomfort – to show that even in the Ministry which is meant to help manufacturing, civil servants were supporting foreign imports. 

Last week, Stoke and Newcastle MPs came together to highlight the issue of ‘bogus-backstamping’: the practice of getting ceramics fired abroad and then stamping ‘Made in England’ or ‘England’ on the back of them.  Because if we want The Potteries to reclaim its title as a ceramics centre of excellence, we need to do everything we can to protect the ‘Made in Staffordshire’ hallmark. 

And now is the time to promote it.  After decades of decline, the pottery industry is beginning once more to put on jobs.  The hotelware and tableware makers in the north of the city are expanding, while every month I get enquiries from designers and artists wanting to source ceramics from our fine bone china makers in the south. 

And what London retailers and everyday consumers want is the authenticity and quality that comes with a ‘Made in Stoke-on-Trent’ backstamp.  With those words, they are instantly buying into the generations of skills, application, and creativity which made The Potteries a premier brand and sent the names of Wedgwood, Spode, Minton and Royal Doulton across the world. 

But the brand quality is now under threat from weak consumer protection legislation and poorly enforced trading standards.

Because just like horsemeat labelled as beef, ceramics are also being marked misleadingly. Mugs from Indonesia or Thailand can be transported into the UK and have the word ‘England’ stamped onto the bottom. Similarly, if a plate is made in Vietnam or Turkey, then finished off in England, it often has ‘Made in England’ stamped upon it.

This wrongful attribution of country of origin marking is harming jobs and investment in Stoke-on-Trent.  

Of course, there is nothing wrong with goods being made abroad and finished in the UK. Supply chains that extend across nations are a fact of a global marketplace and hundreds of jobs in the ceramics industry depend upon it. With energy, labour and environmental costs being as high as they are in the UK, it is difficult to produce mass volume bone china at competitive prices.  If it is designed in the UK, made abroad and finished here, so be it.  Most companies that do this are good firms providing decent jobs for their employees.  And if the back-stamp simply says ‘Decorated in Stoke-on-Trent,’ it is not ideal but the consumer knows where he or she stands. 

But when it comes to ‘Made in Stoke-on-Trent’ the rules are clear: the first-firing of the blank has to take place in North Staffordshire.  European Union rules on ceramics state that any further changes – glazing, decorating, finishing – do not qualify for country of origin status. 

Furthermore, the Trade Descriptions Act is adamant that any back-stamp placed upon the product cannot have the effect of misleading the consumer.  So, if a piece is made in Jakarta it should not have ‘England’ stamped on the bottom of it – as the purchaser might reasonably think it is has been produced in the UK. 

Our case to Ministers was that the Government needs to make this a priority, allocating special funding to local trading standards officers through the Trading Standards Institute to make sure that all labelled goods – not just ceramics – are labelled correctly.  

Unfortunately, for far too long Government Ministers have preferred to listen to big retail chains who demand the cheapest goods at any price, claiming that any measure which informs the consumer is protectionist.

The horse-meat scandal should have shown, once and for all, that it is not. It is about transparency for the consumer and supporting a decent industrial strategy for British based manufacturers.

But we can also act locally.  That is why in the coming weeks, MPs will be working with the City Council, Unity the potters’ trade union, and the ceramics’ confederation to urge trading standards’ officers to take this matter seriously and end the culture of ‘bogus-backstamping.’ 

And if we don’t get the right support from Ministers, there could be another milky tea moment for Vince Cable.

This afternoon, Crewe and Nantwich MP and Education Minister Edward Timpson enters the political limelight, presenting to Parliament the Children and Families Bill.  Few doubt his good intentions or qualifications for the role as Government’s children’s champion, but there are real concerns surrounding his Bill and the broader impact Coalition policies are having on Britain’s most vulnerable children. 

Of course, there are not many MPs whose surname adorns the fronts of over one thousand UK shops. Founded in Manchester in 1865 and owned, in part, by his family ever since, the multi-million pound shoe repair firm Timpson’s is regularly cited as a model of good employee relations. 

Yet the most interesting aspect of Mr Timpson’s background is the fact that he grew up sharing his home with over eighty foster children. And he has inherited from his parents a passionate concern for the life chances of challenged young people.  All of which is addressed in today’s Bill, which touches on adoption, childcare and family justice systems.

However, the most dramatic changes come with reforms to the special educational needs system.  The old policy of Special Educational Need ‘Statements’ – the contracts that schools, parents and local authorities draw up to meet a child’s particular needs – are to be replaced by Education, Health and Care Plans.

The crucial difference with these new agreements is that they can be accessed by children until the age of 25. Previously they could be stopped if the child dropped out of school at 16.

The bill also requires local authorities to publish a ‘local offer’ listing information on all the relevant services in the area, including schools and the support they provide.

Rightly, there is a much stronger emphasis on ensuring that the different agencies involved in looking after vulnerable children – be they schools, the NHS, charities or local authorities – will work together more closely and stop trying to pass the buck. When such integration is done with the aim of providing a better service, as opposed to being driven purely by financial considerations, co-ordination can only be a good thing. 

Whether these improvements can be delivered at a time when most public bodies face significant funding cuts and our schools and hospitals are undergoing massive reforms remains to be seen. In Stoke-on-Trent, it is still too early to tell just what the impact of the school Academy programme will be in terms of educational attainment. But there are already widespread concerns that the diversity of schools it encourages makes running dedicated Special Educational Needs services far more challenging.

But the most glaring omission from Timpson’s Bill is that it fails to tackle the key issue of a lack of local services for disabled children. Believe it or not, being disabled does not automatically mean that a child officially has special educational needs. Indeed, the Department of Education estimates that a quarter of children identified as disabled fall into this category and are not identified as having special educational needs.

And with the breakdown of local control under an Academy system, councils will no longer tailor integrated services to all disabled children. This seems to be an extraordinary oversight.  The Government must change the Bill to ensure that local provisions cater for every disabled child.

Yet given the Coalition’s worrying track record towards disabled citizens, perhaps such oversights are to be expected. From the closing down of Remploy factories (including Trentham Lakes) to the catastrophic results of the Work Programme to the ugly shambles of Atos’s work capability tests, the disabled are all too often bearing the brunt of the austerity assault. 

Recent proposals are no better. The mobility component of Disability Living Allowance, the benefit designed to help people with more mobile lives has had its eligibility criteria significantly tightened, meaning over 200,000 disabled people will find it more difficult to visit friends, attend hospital appointments or get to work.

And then there is the dreaded ‘bedroom tax’ on housing benefit. Under these plans, social housing tenants’ benefits will reduce if their home has one or more spare bedrooms. But crucially this cut currently includes couples who could not share a room because of disability or care reasons.

Mr Timpson has a good grasp of the challenges disabled people face. And his well-intentioned bill would only require a straight-forward amendment to correct this problem. I fear the real problem is whether other ministers have the same concern for ensuring that disabled young people in modern Britain can enjoy fulfilling lives.

Spare a thought for Caverswall-based Begbies Traynor. The corporate rescue and recovery  firm was planning on an upturn in insolvencies during the recession. But, despite the high profile bankruptcies of HMV and Jessops, our economic downturn has not seen a spike in company liquidations. Begbies Traynor’s share price has suffered as a result.

Because the current state of the British economy has left many experts scratching their heads. Some call it a ‘Zombie economy.’ On the one hand, there are some clear and consistent drags on growth. Consumer spending has been curtailed as inflation outstrips wage growth, investment has been held back by a bank-lending system unfit for purpose, and exporters have had to contend with weak global demand, particularly in the embattled Eurozone.

Yet what has got economists baffled is how, in such conditions, employment statistics are holding up – even improving marginally. There are a number of possible explanations, including weakening productivity, stagnant wages and underemployment – where people are forced to take part-time jobs instead of full-time work.

Certainly, these play a part. But the worrying growth of another phenomenon is also having an impact. Because recent reports show that here in Stoke on Trent and across the country the number of so-called zero hour contracts is rising rapidly. According to the trade union UNISON, in the private-care sector up to 41% of homecare workers are on zero hour contracts, whilst a survey from the Industrial Relations Service suggests that 23% of employers now include them as part of their employment mix.

Zero hour contracts are an agreement under which an employer does not guarantee the employee a fixed number of hours a week. The employee only receives payment for the specific number of hours worked. This means that they accrue none of the rights enjoyed by contracted employees, such as unfair dismissal, sick leave, maternity leave or redundancy rights.

These contracts first became popular in the late 1980s and 1990s as a way of improving labour market flexibility and reducing business costs. However, there were many reports of workers being asked to remain physically present on the premises, available to work, if their services were required – in work, but unpaid unless a job came available.

The last Labour government outlawed this form of abuse as part of the National Minimum Wage Act in 1998. But the mental pressure of always being on call remains. Especially for workers raising families or caring for dependents. With no guarantee of regular income meeting bills or planning for the future becomes next to impossible, with disastrous implications for overall consumer confidence. And they can also lead to complications with in-work benefits such as tax credits.

Traditionally such contracts have been the preserve of low-paid sectors where flexibility is vital to the success of the business, like catering or security. McDonald’s employs the vast majority of its 87,500 UK staff on these terms.

Yet whilst they can be an attractive arrangement for both parties, this relies on the relationship being a balance of expectations. Just as the employer need not guarantee work, the employee needs to be able to turn down shifts without fear of pressure or future reprisals. In tough times this equality becomes far less commonplace.

Furthermore, there is widespread evidence that employers are using zero hour contracts as a way of avoiding proper employment regulations. Professional personnel services routinely offer businesses advice on how to prevent zero hour workers from acquiring employee status. And since temporary and agency workers acquired full employment rights in 2010, it is estimated that over half of all companies that used them have switched to zero-hour contracts.

However, perhaps most distressing of all is the rise of zero-hour contracts in the NHS. The NHS has often used these contracts for cleaners. But now trusts are using them to cover frontline staff, including physiotherapy, psychiatric therapy, and even cardiac services. One of the dangers of zero-hour contracts is when employers underestimate demand – it was precisely that situation that led to the G4S Olympic fiasco. With the Francis Report on Stafford Hospital still being digested, the consequences of doing this in the NHS do not bear thinking about. Is a McDonald’s model of employment really appropriate for delivering the best clinical care?

Unfortunately, zero-hour contracts now seem an inescapable feature of a competitive, flexible labour market. And they do have some limited applications. But their growth is no cause for celebration. If this expansion of exploitation continues we urgently need a review to see if there is scope for offering workers more protection.