Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council
(11 months, 1 week ago)
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Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)
I am very grateful for the opportunity the House has given me to bring forward this debate. All I can say is, here we go again: Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council back on the Floor of the House.
Before I turn to my broader critique, I do want to talk about the positives, because there is positive news about Sandwell. Despite the line parroted by the failing Labour administration in Sandwell about this £105 million it has magicked up that it does not have, in fact the Government has helped Sandwell with nearly £411 million of investment since 2019, enabling the communities that form the six towns in Sandwell to realise their potential and opportunities. We have seen that in £65 million-worth of town deals, with £22.5 million for Tipton town centre in my constituency, £20 million announced for Wednesbury Friar Park and some £4 million on a heritage action zone in Wednesbury town centre.
However, the focus of the debate is the governance of Sandwell and, in particular, the governance around such schemes. At times, I share the frustration of my constituents, who are not seeing the council spend the capital investment that is coming through. That begs the question of why. Surely it is in the council’s interest to get this off the ground and to spend the investment now, and to see the economic and social benefits for our towns come to fruition. I share the frustration of my constituents over the governance of these programmes, because that simply is not happening. That is a damning indictment of a failing administration.
I want to touch briefly on the community. I have been very critical of the council in my time in this place, and rightly so. It is often referred to out there as “bent Labour Sandwell”, “soviet Sandwell” or “the socialist republic of Sandwell”, but despite the failings of the crackpot Labour administration, the communities that I represent have real heart and this has built a real sense of community campaigning. We have seen that come to fruition often when fighting back against the bizarre governance of Sandwell, for instance through our successful campaign to save Walker Grange care home in Tipton in my constituency. Labour-led Sandwell council argued that it was going to turf out the residents, whose ages ranged from 70 up to 100, because it could not afford the costs. When our action forced transparency on that, we found that Sandwell had underspent its budget by £2 million. Again, when we put Sandwell under scrutiny, we find that we cannot trust the answers we get back from it.
The spirit of community campaigning was also shown through the community-led campaign that saved Tipton police station. That is obviously not under the direct control of Sandwell council but it was interesting to see the Sandwell Labour leadership rubbish the campaign that the community had led alongside myself and others, and it was even more interesting that our police and crime commissioner attempted to rubbish that campaign. He is the same PCC who is using public funds to try to launch a judicial review against the Government’s decision to merge the Mayor and the PCC. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will relay to colleagues that it would be good if, when the PCC loses that case, he is made to refund out of his personal funds the money he has wasted on this ridiculous court action.
Let us turn to the heart of this debate, which is Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council and the stuff it has done. I could talk about a litany of things. I could talk about the special educational needs transport contract that went from having 19 providers down to two—a £22.5 million contract doled out to a friend of the disgraced former Labour leader. When parents challenged the council on that, they were told, “Shut up or you will lose your transport.” They were told that if they criticised the council on social media, their children, some of the most vulnerable in the borough, would not be able to access the education that they need. We then had the disgraceful situation some 12 months ago of a clause being put in social tenants’ contracts, saying that if they criticised the council on social media they could face disciplinary action up to eviction. It would be a parody if it were not true. It is the socialist nightmare.
We have seen, once again, that child social services requires improvement. That is an improvement from inadequate. I have to ask the comrades at Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council why they think that kids in my constituency do not deserve the same life chances as everyone else. To me, their failure in this space is indicative of the disdain they clearly have for the communities they represent.
I could talk about the failures on housing. I have been working recently, as many colleagues have, on rogue developers. We had an incident recently with two estates in my constituency, where the council, in dealing with a relatively new, untested developer, decided not to follow its usual course of using advance payment codes—in other words, getting bonds ahead of time, so that were the developer to go bankrupt, the council could access capital funds to do such things as pave the roads and sort out the lighting. The council decided, for some unexplained reason, not to do that. When I challenged officers at the cabinet petitions committee, they could not say why they had not done that. The political leadership of the council simply said, “Other boroughs don’t do it, so why would we?” There is a complete and utter lack of accountability from these people, and they have complete disdain for the communities they represent.
I must touch on the waste contract and the campaign I have launched to keep our weekly bin collections. Sandwell council has entered into a £650 million, 25-year contract—yes, that is right—for bin collections. The council’s proposal is to take collections fortnightly, predicated on the basis that it would somehow save money, but it is tied into this contract. When it has signed on the dotted line for 25 years, I struggle to see how that move would save any money. As part of that, we saw a strike last year run by Sandwell Labour’s paymasters in the GMB that saw flying pickets and aggressive tactics. That was only stopped because the community effectively rose up, counter-picketed and counter-protested, and showed Sandwell Labour’s paymasters that they were not going to tolerate this anymore, because why should they? All they see is rising taxes, failing services and falling standards.
The retort we hear from the Labour administration in Sandwell is that the situation is due to 14 years of the Tories and Tory cuts. That is the line Labour constantly likes to use. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister hears that often from Labour colleagues in local government. I simply say this in response: the Labour party has led Sandwell council for 50 years—half a century—under Governments of all persuasions and all colours, yet people’s lives have got worse.
If you want to know why your kid cannot access a decent school, do not look here; ask Sandwell Labour. If you want to know why your streets are not safe at night, ask Sandwell Labour why it is closing your police stations. If you want to know why you cannot get your rubbish collected, ask Sandwell Labour. If you want to know why the services you pay for are not adequate, ask Sandwell Labour. It has had the cash, the investment and the resources. The point is that it cannot be trusted to run services in our communities properly.
This issue came to a head in March 2022 with the intervention by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. He made the right decision to call in the commissioners. There has been progress since, and I have been pleased recently by the engagement of my hon. Friend the Minister—he has taken a real interest in Sandwell. He is to be commended on how he has picked up this interesting brief quickly and fully, especially when there are councils like Sandwell.
It is such an indictment of 50 years of failure that we are still the eighth most deprived borough in the country. It is as if the Labour party in Sandwell takes pride in that. It takes pride in the fact that standards are dropping, and it offers no reason for that or alternatives on how to fix it. It seems to revel in it. It blows my mind how anyone in a position of authority—particularly elected authority—could do that when they have stewardship over the great communities of the Black Country. As I said in my maiden speech, these people are grafters and fighters. They deserve so much better than this shambles, yet time and again we see these people who claim to be representatives of working people—that is the biggest joke that any of us has ever heard—somehow revelling in the fact that standards are falling and things are not as they seem.
Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)
My hon. Friend has a fantastic set of communities in his constituency, as I do in Wolverhampton North East. We share similar problems in the Black Country. Wolverhampton has, similarly, had 50 years of Labour administrations that like to blame Conservative Governments for their failure, but when an authority is the worst in something and every other authority is under the same Conservative Government, ultimately it is time to take responsibility.
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that although tens of millions of pounds of investment are coming into our constituencies from this caring, levelling-up Conservative Government, we are not seeing the results, and our constituents are not feeling the benefits? I secured £3 million of high street regeneration funding for Wednesfield—he knows it well and has visited it with me—but nearly three years later my Labour council has not put forward a plan on paper. I am sure that he has similar instances.
Shaun Bailey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She is a doughty champion for the people of Wednesfield, Bushbury and the rest of her constituency. I think she shares the concern that it feels like there is some running down of the clock. It feels like the officers can see the clock ticking and do not want recognition to be given to anywhere else.
I will say that, particularly since new faces have appeared among the officers at Sandwell council, it seems to be more on top of this, but there is still the concern that the political leadership of these authorities see some sort of win from these things not materialising. It is absolutely crazy. As I said, half a billion pounds has been put into my borough, and yet the narrative seems to be about Tory cuts. I am sure it is the same in the great city of Wolverhampton. The narrative will be, “It’s 14 years of the Tories,” but it is not; it is 50 years of Labour turning its back on these communities.
I have a solution for my hon. Friend the Minister, which was coined in the campaign that has been launched with such enthusiasm: scrap Sandwell. Sandwell is an artificial construction of the Ted Heath reforms of the 1970s, which brought together six very different towns in the Black Country. I appreciate that he will not be able to stand at the Dispatch Box today and say yes to that, much as I would be over the moon for him to do so. There is always middle ground in how we empower our communities, but the truth is that Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, and its political leadership in particular, has brought embarrassment to the communities I represent.
The retort that I have had, particularly from Labour politicians, has been, “Well, you’re talking the area down.” No. In the campaign that we launched in October, we had thousands of responses, and 80% of them said they do not recognise themselves as coming from Sandwell. If you come from Wednesbury, you come from Wednesbury. If you are from Tipton, you are from Tipton. If you are from Ocker Hill, you are from Ocker Hill. If you are from Great Bridge, you are from Great Bridge. If you are from Smethwick, you are from Smethwick. You are not from Sandwell. What is Sandwell? Sandwell is the name of the Franciscan priory from 1,000 years ago. It is not a place—well, it is a place, but it is a constructed place.
People are proud of their towns. I am proud that I live in Wednesbury, and I am proud of that town, mentioned in the Domesday Book 1,000 years ago. That is what people want to see. Of course, the real-life impact is that my towns in Tipton and Wednesbury have missed out because Sandwell council’s priorities have been in West Bromwich and Smethwick, all because the arbitrary thresholds have not been met because of the size of those towns.
Clearly, there are options to be explored, and I appreciate that we can utilise many mechanisms to ensure that the identity of these communities is respected, accentuated and brought to the fore. That is so important to my constituents. They are proud of where they come from and the heritage of their towns. They are fed up with this creation that has turned into a monster, leaving them without services.
We have had the ridiculous situation today where all the pay and display parking machines have been taken out of the car parks in Spring Head in Wednesbury. The council expects people to go online, not realising that most of the demographic who utilise that service are of an age where they are probably not digitally connected. I talk about governance; that is the kind of lunacy and idiotic ideas that come from that rabble. Yet they sit there and lord it as if they have been hard done by.
We need proactive government in our towns, whether through an empowered town council—there are examples of that in the west midlands—or through some other format. We need something that will safeguard our identity, and a local government structure that preserves and looks after the identity of my proud towns of Tipton and Wednesbury. It is as simple as that.
I am looking forward to the Minister’s visit to the Black Country, and I am sure he will visit my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson) on the way. Our proud Black Country towns have so much to offer. The governance at Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council has done nothing but bring embarrassment to those towns. It is not talking down those communities to highlight that. It is not talking down the communities to highlight that a Labour party that has governed that area for 50 years has been to the detriment of people, who have seen their services cut and their opportunities eradicated. But their aspirations have not been cut, because the people I represent are aspirational. They want to achieve, but they are blocked time and again by the Labour administration.
I wish to finalise my remarks with a quotation from history, which I hope the Minister will appreciate. As I prepared my comments, I was looking for something to sum up my thoughts on the governance situation at Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council. I am sure that those who have studied it will know where it comes from:
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
My hon. Friend probably knows where that comes from: the declaration of independence 1776.
The security and the safeguarding of the future of these proud towns is at the heart of what I am here to do. They have had half a century of disservice by the shambolic Labour rabble, who have done nothing but try to eradicate their life chances and leave them worse off. That should never be the case. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Minister. I am so grateful for the time and effort he has put into Sandwell. He is committed to making sure we get this right. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East for her considered intervention. I thank the House and you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for hearing my comments. I made my constituents a promise when I was elected to this place that, after 50 years of feeling ignored, they would never be ignored again. I hope that in this speech, I have made sure that their voices are heard loud and clear.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Simon Hoare)
First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) for securing this debate. I have been in this job for nine weeks. If I had a fiver for every time he has stopped me in the Lobby or in the corridor to raise an issue or have a conversation about his borough council, it would certainly have bought him and me quite a good dinner. He never misses an opportunity, and he is right to do so. We use the phrase “doughty champion” quite a lot to describe colleagues. He truly is one, and his constituents should be proud and pleased with the passion, concern and care with which he advocates so vociferously on their behalf, not just to me but to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and to Ministers across Government. He is to be warmly commended for all he does on behalf of his residents.
My hon. Friend was right to talk in the first instance about money. I will just set the scene, if I may. Sandwell’s reserves stand, as of 31 March, somewhere in the region of £110.5 million. That is very good. That speaks to sensible management and ensuring that funds are available for a rainy day. The 2024-25 provisional local government finance settlement makes available £388.9 million for his council, an increase in core spending power of £25.4 million, or a 7% increase in cash terms when compared to 2023-24. I therefore share his belief that to say that all the council’s problems are rooted in the heartlessness and lack of thought or attention from this Government is scotched just by those figures.
However, my hon. Friend was right to go on to talk about the other important investments that have been made in his borough by the Government: £69.5 million from the towns fund; £20.3 million from the levelling-up partnership; £20 million from the levelling-up fund round 2; £20 million from the levelling-up fund round 3; and £20 million for a capital regeneration project. Those are important figures and important projects of themselves, but when added together, nobody could suggest that this is a party and a Government who do not care for the people of Sandwell and are not seeking to do all they can, working alongside elected members be they local councillors or Members of Parliament, to help drive that figure of eighth-most deprived borough in England into a far better place. I do not think that argument stands up to challenge.
What I would say to my hon. Friend, and I know he will agree with me in this assessment, is that he was right to talk about the potential downsides—he manifested some of them in his remarks—when any one political party dominates the political scene and the landscape for a considerable period of time. I hope that what his election has demonstrated, and that of other hon. Friends representing constituencies in the area, is that we believe that levelling up is all about aspiration and ambition for all, that no part of our country is left behind, and that there is no one who does not deserve our attention, our help and our support. I am very pleased and proud to serve in a Department in this Government that has spent so much money, time and effort considering the needs of Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council. We have a proud record on which we stand, and I am sure that many people in my hon. Friend’s constituency recognise that all too well.
Before we look to the present and the future, we have to look slightly to the past. Commissioners had to go into the council because, as it recognised itself, there were serious governance issues, and problems with culture and leadership. They included allegations of serious misconduct by both councillors and officers. The council had had six different leaders in six years—that makes it feel a bit like this place, Mr Deputy Speaker—and three chief executives over the previous three years. That instability led to a breakdown in trust, respect and confidence between those holding governance roles at the council. On services, the time the authority spent responding to internal allegations and complaints impacted on its ability to focus on service improvement. Inadequate procurement and contract management arrangements led to poor decision-making, and impacted negatively on key services, including transport for children and those with special educational needs.
It was those triggers that prompted my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to send in the cavalry. He was right to do so and I know that my hon. Friend applauded my right hon. Friend for the action he took. That action has worked, and I want to pay tribute to the current leadership of Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council. Are they getting everything right? No, but there again—I must share a secret with my hon. Friend—neither do Ministers, all the time. We are all human. To err is human; to forgive, as we know, is divine. However, significant improvements have been made, which have allowed the commissioners to continue to refer, in their published reports to the Department, to clear trajectories of improvement. That means not just improvements in the output of service to those who are most in need, but a significant step change in the way in which the council has ordered and organised itself and its approach to governance.
Sometimes admitting when one is wrong and facing the problem is the biggest challenge, and once that is overcome, the route to recovery appears clear. It is not without stumbling blocks and stones and it will not be without pauses along the way, but the council leaders have made significant progress, and as I say, they should be both congratulated and encouraged. When the position of the commissioners ceases—and we will be looking to that in due course—the Local Government Association will continue to work with the council to ensure that that path of progress, that path of improvement, which I am hopeful and confident that local residents have started to see or will soon start to see, is continued. Falling back into the old ways of performance, or lack of performance, will not be tolerated.
It will come as no surprise—and I say this not as a threat, but as a statement of fact—that as with any authority that has found itself in a position whereby commissioners have had to be sent in, progress has been made and the work of those commissioners can be drawn to a conclusion within the envisaged timetable, we will keep a weather eye, a kindly eye if you will, the eye of a paternal godfather, on a council that is still trying to do its best. We will continue to be there to support, advise and encourage, because the depth of the change that the council needed to be made will by definition necessitate that.
My hon. Friend talked of the abolition of Sandwell council. He will not be surprised to know that I am about to repeat the dictum of the Government. We will, of course, always respond to any reorganisation of local government, but that must be from the grassroots up. Support must be demonstrated at political level and community level, from the business community and from other public service providers, and a clear case must be made. I have to say—I hope this gives some clarity to my hon. Friend, although I appreciate that it may not be the clarity he seeks, but I also hope it gives both certainty to the council and an indication to the residents, the council taxpayers and, more important, the users of its services of the improvements it has made—that I fear that a change in the architecture of the borough at this stage would prove a distraction from the vital improvement work that is ongoing.
Of course there are ways to improve scrutiny, and of course there are ways, through the localism agenda, to empower the towns, particularly those historic towns where there is a great sense of place and identity. However, I suggest to my hon. Friend that he should work with the council leadership to explore those opportunities to give a much greater sense of place to the towns with which those who live in them feel such a close affinity.
We are making a huge investment in Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, in monetary terms and in terms of time and energy. Why do we do this? We do it because we care, and because we understand the important role that local government plays in the fabric of our nation—the powerful role that it plays in creating a sense of place and delivering change, responding to the changing needs of the most vulnerable and those who seek to improve on the agenda of hope and aspiration for change. With my hon. Friend and other colleagues, with an engaged council that has a new and improved outlook, I have every confidence that all of us pulling together can deliver for the people of Sandwell.
Question put and agreed to.