Birmingham City Council

Debate between Lord Fowler and Baroness Taylor of Stevenage

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My noble friend is quite right; Birmingham is a proud city with proud people, and I know that they are embarrassed at what they are seeing. It is time that this is resolved. The vast majority of the workforce of the waste service have agreed a way forward by one route or another, whether that is taking voluntary redundancy, accepting new ways of working or many of the other routes that my noble friend mentioned. This now comes down to a small number of people who have not accepted them. That is where the dispute lies. A city such as Birmingham cannot grind to a halt in such a circumstance. We urge everybody to get back around the table and resolve the issues for this small number of remaining members of the workforce, and then we can restore Birmingham to the rightful place it holds as our second city and the pride of the Midlands.

[Lord Fowler (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as having been a Member of Parliament for a Birmingham constituency—Sutton Coldfield—for 27 years, so I know a little about the area.

I am not sure that I agree with the Minister or my noble friend Lord Snape—he used to be my pair, so I call him my noble friend just to keep in with old things. I am not sure they can simply ride away from this and say that the origins of this and the problem are all down to the last Conservative Government. That argument does not stand up. The real problem we need to tackle is not in going back. We have an instant problem now in Birmingham. As we all know, we have the problem of the streets and the rest. We need most urgently to find a solution to that, not to go into all the details over years and years.

Two points come out of this debate. First, surely the Government have a prime responsibility to preserve public health. That has not happened over the last month. They have failed dismally in that duty, not to this House or the House of Commons but to the citizens of Birmingham. They have let them down, and we are still to find out the final result of that negligence. The Government are now saying, as they should, whether they agree with the action of the pickets in stopping trucks removing the mounds of rubbish that have scarred the city and attracted rats and other vermin —we have not imagined this; it is an actuality—and that kind of action and that kind of defeat cannot be justified to the public. The people stopping the lorries are causing immense damage to individuals.

The people who matter most in this are the citizens of Birmingham, and they have been let down. That is the fact of the matter. The Minister should be turning her mind to how the Government will urgently help to get this straight. It is not a matter of having committees and long discussions. We now need urgency and urgent action. I hope the Minister can tell us of some of that.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I certainly agree that the people of Birmingham are at the heart of this issue. They are first in our thoughts. I agree that urgent action is necessary. That is why I spoke with the leader of Birmingham City Council today to see whether there was anything further we could do to support them. He believes that the way to resolve this is to get around the table as quickly as possible, and that is just what he aims to do.

On the noble Lord’s comments on how the situation arose in the first place, there had been serious financial and governance failings. Birmingham City Council issued a Section 114 notice, which effectively says that the council does not have control of its finances, in September 2023. It did so due to accepting a £760 million liability that arose from those equal pay claims, along with in-year budget deficits that arose from the Oracle IT system. It has been working through a very intense programme of activity to put those issues right. It has not been easy for the leadership of Birmingham City Council; nobody goes into local government to cut services or make things less easy for their residents. It has been doing that with the commissioners, who are working very well with the council and have produced a frank and honest report. There is a copy in the Library if any noble Lord wants to look at it. I agree that preserving public health is vital. That is why the director of public health in Birmingham and the UK Health Security Agency regularly review what is going on there, to make sure that everything is done that can be to ensure that the public health situation does not deteriorate any further.