May I first congratulate David Williams on becoming the newly elected Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. He will be rightly proud to have the privilege to serve the people of our community in the mother of all Parliaments, and I am sure his family and friends will deservedly celebrate his achievement.
I wish David every success as a Member of Parliament and am willing to help him in joint causes that transcend party politics in order to use our collective voice for the good of the people in the Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke community.
I would first like to start by thanking my amazing staff who have worked so hard over the past four and a half years to help me support people across the constituency. As a team, we have responded to over 25,000 different bits of casework and always tried to be accessible, compassionate, and responsive whenever people have asked for our help.
I also want to thank Councillors and local Party members from Stoke-on-Trent Conservatives and Newcastle-under-Lyme Conservatives for their friendship and support in delivering leaflets and knocking doors since I was selected back in July 2019. Having served as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, I know just how important our hard-working activists and volunteers are, who campaign whether it rains or shines to help get our great local candidates elected. I have been proud to serve alongside them and look forward to helping them in future election campaigns to make sure we have a strong local Conservative representation that delivers for the people of Stoke-on-Trent and Kidsgrove Parish.
I want to thank all of you who so kindly lent your vote in 2019, and again in this election. It remains one of the proudest moments of my life to have had so many people willing to put their faith in me and allow me the immense privilege to serve and champion our community in the House of Commons.
I also want to thank the entire Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke community. Whether you voted for me or not, I have been touched with how warm and welcoming you’ve always been to myself and my family. The kindness of friends, neighbours and strangers has never ceased to amaze me, and rightfully displays why the Potteries is seen as one of the friendliest places in the country.
My final thanks go to my amazing family. My fiancée Nkita, daughter Amelia, son William, and of course our dogs Bella and Bailey. The sacrifices they have made for me so I could serve our community can never be fully repaid. But now I am sure you will respect it is time I start to pay as much of that back as I can. I love every single one of them from the bottom of my heart and will forever be grateful for all they have given up and done for me.
We have been through some of the most challenging times any country and community has faced since the Second World War. From the global pandemic to war in Europe, it has been very tough. But despite that adversity, we have achieved so much together.
Reopening Kidsgrove Sports Centre; creating 500 new jobs from the Home Office coming to Stoke-on-Trent and up to 1,700 new jobs to be created at Chatterley Valley West; setting up the Silicon Stoke board to work with our university and college’s to set up the jobs for the future which in part helped bring the UK’s largest advertising agency to Stoke-on-Trent; securing millions of pounds to invest in improving our high streets in Tunstall and Burslem, breathing new life into the Burslem’s indoor market and Tunstall’s old library and baths; funding for a new advanced green skills centre at Stoke College’s Burslem campus; securing record funding to improve our local bus service with cheaper fares and new and extended routes; millions more to fix our broken roads & pavements; new and improved CCTV for Kidsgrove and Tunstall; recruiting 333 new police officers locally; a Community Diagnostic Centre opening in 2025 which will create 85,000 additional lifesaving scans and X-rays every year; and a new outpatient building at the Haywood Community Hospital.
I am also proud to have introduced several Bills to Parliament which the Government of the day helped me secure becoming law. From protecting war memorials to our glorious dead with a specific punishment for those who desecrate them; to increasing fines on rogue and absent landlords who for too long have plagued our history and heritage in places like Stoke-on-Trent; and expanding the roll out of pension auto-enrolment which will transform millions of people’s quality of life in retirement. These demonstrate the power of our democracy and how it can bring about change for the better.
I am deeply frustrated that I was not able to ensure that ‘Sharlotte’s Law’ got onto the statute books in order to honour the memory of Sharlotte-Sky Naglis who was so tragically taken from us in 2021. Having worked with Sharlotte’s brave and inspirational mother Claire, we want to see the law changed around blood testing, so the police can conduct their investigations more quickly, and victims like Claire don’t have the pain and suffering drawn out any longer than necessary.
I hope to work with my successor David to keep up the fight and leave the legacy for Sharlotte-Sky that she deserves.
I thank every single one of you across Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke once again. As I start a new chapter in my life, I do so with the words of Arnold Bennett lodged in my mind:
“The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted of misapplied a single moment in your life.”
Best wishes,
Jonathan
