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Hello, I'm Sean Curran, and this is yesterday in Parliament from BBC Radio 4.

The pottery industry in Stoke-on-Trent suffered another blow this week

when a firm that had been trading for more than 100 years announced it was closing.

And on Thursday, the 1st of May, ministers were told the sector was now

on life support. With voters going to the polls in many parts of England, there were plenty of

empty places in the House of Commons at the end of the parliamentary week and the start of a long

weekend. But the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent central, Gareth Snell,

was in his usual seat, and he'd asked an urgent question about help for manufacturing industries

that used a lot of energy. A few weeks ago, Moorcroft pottery issued a warning that falling

sales and rising costs had put the business at risk. In particular, it cited an increase

in energy prices. Gareth Snell said other factories in Stoke-on-Trent were working on short time

to cut costs so they could pay their energy bills. 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.

The energy minister Sarah Jones told the Commons that clean power was the key to bringing

prices down and said the government recognised the challenges facing the pottery industry.

We've lost 1,250 jobs in the ceramic sector between 2015 and 23. It's been a very sad decline.

And we want to turn that around.

The whole point of having an industrial strategy

...