Waste Collection: Birmingham and the West Midlands
Debate between Alison McGovern and John McDonnell(1 month, 1 week ago)
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The Minister for Local Government and Homelessness (Alison McGovern)
I thank the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for securing this important debate, and I thank all Members for their contributions. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the issue.
I share the concerns and frustrations that have surfaced in the debate. The industrial action has gone on far too long. The ongoing disruption is not in anybody’s interests: it is holding back the great city of Birmingham, a city that I am incredibly fond of, and the people of Birmingham, who deserve better. It is the people of Birmingham who matter: it is their voices that must be heard, and they should be at the centre of the resolution of the dispute.
I have heard the points made by all Members, and I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) says. Birmingham is a city that its people are deeply proud of, and they deserve to be. She was right to mention the funding settlement that we have just awarded to Birmingham city.
I want to address directly a point that has just been raised. The reason why Birmingham is seeing a core spending power increase of 45% under this Government is not that it is some kind of reward for what has happened there. That is ridiculous. The reason is that we are reconnecting council funding with deprivation—with poverty. We are reversing what we saw under the Tories, which was town halls dealing with the worst of austerity, and the places that had the least being hit the worst. That is going to change, because we need to sort out poverty in this country. We cannot do that without a town hall that has the resources that it needs to help people. That is why we are changing it. I do not take kindly to the idea that we should not help councils to tackle poverty in this country.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
Labour Members fully agree with the Minister on that point, certainly. I refer to my registered interest as a member of Unite.
As time is limited, will the Minister address the key question that several Members have put to her? The Government have a specific, special role in this matter. It is not like other disputes between the council and a workforce: because of the role of commissioners appointed by the Government, there is a responsibility that falls on the Government’s shoulders.
There will be a major picket on 30 January that trade unionists will be coming to from across the country, to support their comrades—their brothers and sisters—in the dispute in Birmingham. I will be going as well. There is a limited time in which that picket could be made redundant if the Government convened a meeting of all the parties concerned. It behoves the Government to do so, because it seems as though it is the commissioners who are blocking the settlement. I urge the Minister to convene that meeting and get people round the table, because I think a negotiated deal could be forthcoming as a result.
Alison McGovern
My right hon. Friend spells out the situation: clearly the Government are not the employer but, given that we have commissioners, we will want to hear regularly about what is happening in Birmingham. I will come to that point later.
The Government are not a party to the ongoing dispute. It is an issue for the parties involved to work towards a sustainable solution, notwithstanding the question I have just been asked and my response—given the arrangements with commissioners, I will want to hear from them directly. The Government have that responsibility because of the decision that was taken.
I call on all involved to end the disruption. Last spring, the Government took action to avert a public health crisis, as a number of Members have mentioned, and supported the council in clearing the streets. As a result, the council was able to remove thousands of tonnes of waste from the street and restart regular kerbside collections. As a result, thankfully, we have not seen a return to the crisis that the city faced last spring, and the waste has not piled up to dangerous levels. The council and my Department will continue to monitor the situation closely and ensure that waste does not build up again. It is important to note that although residual waste is now being collected regularly, recycling remains suspended, as Members have said. That situation must change.
Alison McGovern
No, not at all. I have set out my opinion that this needs to be brought to an end. Members have set out the consequences for the residents of Birmingham, for staff and for others, including the right hon. Member’s constituents. Of course the strike needs to be brought to an end; the point I was making is that the Government took steps to bring a public health crisis to a close.
Government commissioners have been in place at the council since 2023 to oversee its improvement journey. In their most recent report, the commissioners highlighted the positive progress that the council has made in key areas—we needed to see progress on other issues as well, not just the dispute—but they noted that the dispute has consumed council time, diverted attention and slowed overall progress. That is a real concern for me. The council still has work to do towards financial sustainability. Given the points made by the commissioners, we all want to see things brought to an end. As I say, I will want to hear regularly from the commissioners about the progress.
In recent weeks, the city has faced additional strike action by agency workers in waste. As I understand it, and as Members have mentioned, a small number of agency workers began a separate strike on 1 December due to alleged bullying and harassment. I am sure that everyone here will agree that bullying and harassment are totally unacceptable, so the council and the agency, who are the employers, must address the issue.
Since the new year, some disruption has been caused by recent snowfall across the midlands, and there have been issues at council depots, but I am told that the council has plans in place to resolve any backlogs created. Disruption at pickets has also been a big factor affecting waste collection, since contingency arrangements were put in place. I understand that Unite the union has acknowledged and apologised for that behaviour, which no one wants to see repeated.
In recent months, Unite has urged the council to come to the table to find a way forward to end the strike. I am obviously extremely sympathetic to that goal, as I have mentioned on a couple of occasions. The council has duties and responsibilities beyond the industrial action. I support the leader of the city council, John Cotton, in his position that any solution to end the strike must be both lawful and financially viable. We all want a resolution to be found.
John McDonnell
It is almost heartbreaking to witness this happening. It is pure sophistry to say that the Government do not have a role or that they have no locus. The Government appointed the commissioners, who report to them. I appeal to the Minister: simply get people in the same room, because a deal is available.
Alison McGovern
All the parties will have heard what my right hon. Friend has said, what I have said, and the priority that we put on getting a decent service for the residents of Birmingham and getting staff in a position where they can do their jobs. We all support that, and everyone will have heard what my right hon. Friend has said.
Welfare Cap
Debate between Alison McGovern and John McDonnell(1 year, 1 month ago)
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John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Ind)
I hope that the Government will consider completely scrapping this debate in future years, because it has become farcical. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) will remember that the welfare cap was introduced because of the Dutch auction that was going on in this Chamber about who could be more brutal on the poor. The welfare cap was part of that period of debate, in which anyone claiming benefits was allegedly a welfare benefit scrounger who was not willing to work for a living. That was the atmosphere that was engendered in this Chamber. At that stage, to be frank, it was deeply worrying. In many ways, humanity almost left the Chamber.
The farcical nature of the debate is that, having introduced the cap, Minister after Minister would have to come back each year and report that the cap had been breached, because more expenditure had been forced on the Government as a result of the increasing levels of poverty. I suppose that it at least gives Members the opportunity to have some discretion over issues of poverty.
May I suggest to those on the Labour Front Bench that they should remove the cap, because it has become a farcical exercise? If we are to have a debate on poverty, there should be an annual report by the Labour Government on the poverty strategy that they are now developing. I believe that the commission established by the Labour party is now working, and it would be so much better if we had a report and did not have the farcical pantomime that we have today.
Alison McGovern
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene briefly to say that the child poverty taskforce’s work is ongoing, and that it regularly engages with parliamentarians and others to update them. I know that many parliamentarians have been pleased to involve themselves in that work, given the importance of tackling child poverty.
John McDonnell
That is a really helpful response, but it does not respond to the fact that if we are to have a focus on poverty, rather than a debate on the welfare cap, which is breached on virtually an annual basis, it might be better to have a debate on the Government’s strategy to tackle poverty overall. Then we could have a proper discussion, and even a debate with a motion that could be amended where we want to see improvements. That is what I want to get on to now.
I hope that people have seen today’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on overall poverty, which reflects what most of us know and experience in our constituencies. It is shatteringly depressing, to be frank, because it does not show any improvement over the last few decades. The hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) mentioned that the Tory Government introduced this measure when they came into power. It was during the period of austerity, and it is worth reflecting on what that meant.
The London School of Economics’ report and other independent reports say that 140,000 people lost their lives as a result of austerity; others have estimated that the figure could be up to 300,000. In part, that was because of the grinding poverty that was imposed on people, as reflected in all our constituencies—we saw it. I remember a time when there were no food banks in any of our constituencies, because they were not necessary, but now they are, as a result of 14 years of austerity.
If we are to have a proper debate on poverty, we need to highlight as individual constituency MPs where we think the Government should be going, so I will briefly do so on the basis of what we have seen in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report. I always cite the overall figures: we have 15 million people living in poverty, including 5 million children. I think the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report says that there are 4 million people living in deep poverty, and nearly 4 million in destitution.
The statistic that always shocks me is that 1 million children are in destitution. I never thought we would use the word “destitution” again in our society; I always thought we would improve year by year and lift people out of poverty. I never thought that children would live in poverty in the way that some of my generation did.
There are groups that clearly need to be on the agenda, and my hon. Friend the Minister has mentioned some of them, thank goodness. I chair a group of unpaid carers, of whom there are 5 million in this country. If an unpaid carer is looking after a disabled member of their family, it is almost inevitable that they will be living in poverty, unless we face up to the central demand of unpaid carers, which is to address their income. It is not just about how much they can earn, which the Government have looked at recently; it is about the carer’s allowance being at such a level that people cannot survive on it.
Looking at the report with regard to families with children living in poverty, I cannot at the moment see a faster way of getting children out of poverty than scrapping the two-child limit. I am hoping that will be on the agenda as a priority when the Child Poverty Action Group reports to Parliament.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has identified that the poverty rate among disabled people is now 30%. The Government are about to consult again on the work capability assessment reforms because they lost in court to Ellen Clifford two weeks ago. I am pleased that the Government lost in court, to be frank. The basis of that decision was the lack of consultation on the previous Government’s reforms. I do not understand why our Government continued the appeal within the court, but they did. They have now lost and have been forced to bring forward their consultations on the reform of the work capability assessment.
I am hoping that those reforms will be done in co-production with disabled people—on the basis of the disability groups’ principle, “nothing about us without us”. My fear is that an overhanging £3 billion-worth of savings is required from the DWP on this issue. If that results in cuts to individual benefits, I think there will be uproar within our communities and across this House. What is also interesting in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report is that the poverty rate among people who are suffering long-term health conditions is 50%. The work that the Department of Health will now do in walk-in advice surgeries, for example, and the focus on mental health, will be key.
The household benefit cap overall is iniquitous. It forces families into poverty, particularly in places such as London, because of the high rents that are hitting people. According to the Joseph Rowntree report, the poverty rate among renters in social housing is 44% and in the private rented sector it is 35%. The Government’s refusal to accept the amendment to introduce rent controls, which was tabled by a number of Labour Members, was extremely disappointing. The Government could at least devolve that power to the individual Mayors so that they can represent their communities and introduce rent controls where necessary. I believe that Sadiq Khan has expressed his support for that power to be devolved. With rent controls, we could tackle the housing crisis that we face within our constituencies.
When we talk about poverty, we need to come forward with an agenda that will tackle it at pace, and I do not think that, in our discussions in the future, a welfare benefits cap in any form will assist in bringing forward the reforms that our constituents so desperately need.