Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [Lords]

Catherine West Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Thursday 11th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I will speak in favour of new clause 1 in slightly blunter terms than my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern). The message to the Minister is pretty simple: this is his last chance to tell the House that he shares our ambition that the Commonwealth games organising committee will be accredited as a real living wage employer. He has hummed and hawed about this throughout the passage of this Bill and during his time as a Minister. Today is decision time, and we are looking for a clear commitment from him that the organising committee will be accredited as a real living wage employer.

The Commonwealth games, as my hon. Friend said, is an extraordinary opportunity for our city at an extraordinary time. It will be the greatest Commonwealth games that we have ever seen. I join others in putting on record our profound thanks not only to the chair, John Crabtree, and Mr Ian Reid and the team, but to Ian Ward and Yvonne Davies and the teams at Birmingham and Sandwell councils, as well as the team at West Midlands Combined Authority, for doing the impossible—bringing forward these games in four and a half years, against a timetable of normally seven years, which is what it normally takes to put a Commonwealth games in place. They stepped up when Durban stepped out, and that is why we will be the host—because people were prepared to have that ambition for the festival that my hon. Friend spoke of.

Opposition Members know that we will be judged not just by the medals that we win, but by the lives that we change. This great festival of Commonwealth sport is also for us a great festival of civic spirit. It is a chance for us to reanimate the spirit of one of the great founders of our city, the most extraordinary civic entrepreneur of the 19th century, Mr George Dawson. He was the author of the civic gospel and he inspired six Lord Mayors, including someone called Joseph Chamberlain. He was one of the reasons why we became known as the best governed city in the world, but one aspect of his genius was that he knew that culture, like sport, should be an entitlement for all, not just a privilege for some. But that civic spirit that we want to celebrate with great pride demands that the Commonwealth games organising committee is accredited as a real living wage employer.

Why is this important? Because 571,000 people across our region are paid less than they actually need to live on each week, including, I might say, many of the carers we have been clapping for every Thursday night. Let me tell the Minister the real-world consequences of living in a place where about one in five people are not paid enough to live on. It means that, in constituencies such as mine, more than half of children grow up in poverty. Fifty-three per cent of the children in my constituency live a life of poverty. That means that during the summer holidays, the food banks run out of food—literally. In the second city of the fifth or sixth richest country on earth, food banks are running out of food because people are not paid enough to live on. I challenge the Minister to stand, as I have done, in a food bank in Birmingham and watch the little arms of a nine-year-old boy strain as he picks up the food bags to help his mum carry them home. I ask the Minister to tell me that that experience is not going to scar that child for life, and tell me how many thousands of children in our city, Britain’s second city, are in exactly that position, because so few people are paid enough to live on.

Across our region, only one in 1,000 businesses are accredited as real living wage employers. We need all of them to be accredited, and if we are to achieve that, we need to set an example and that example—the best example available—is the Commonwealth games. That is why we need the organising committee to accredit as a real living wage employer.

The time has come in this debate for a bit of honesty. We know that officials from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport have said to the organising committee, “Please don’t accredit as a living wage organisation, because it undermines the case that the Government’s so-called living wage is not enough to live on.” Well, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South brilliantly rehearsed, the so-called living wage that this Government introduced is not a living wage; it is a living lie. It is £8.72 an hour, which is not enough to live on. What people need per hour to live on is not £8.72, but £9.30. I know that that 58p per hour does not sound a lot to many people in this Chamber, but over the course of a 40-hour working week, that is worth £23 a week. That £23 extra income a week makes a difference when it comes to taking decisions on heating and eating. That £23 a week extra in the pocket of my constituents lifts children out of poverty; it actually allows people to live. That is why this debate is so important.

We have offered this new clause to the Minister. I am full of hope that he will stand up and cut the argument away from me, by saying that he agrees with it and that the organising committee must now accredit as a real living wage employer. Let me warn him that, if he does not, over the next year, as he knows, I will be mounting something of a political campaign across the west midlands. If this Government refuse to take on board the new clause, I will hang that decision around every Conservative running for office next year in the west midlands from the Mayor down. This is an opportunity for the Government to do the right thing—the right thing against the judgment of history, the right thing for the people of the west midlands and the right thing for those who live their lives in poverty today.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

May I say how pleasing it is to hear us debating this Bill yet again, as we did in Committee when I was the shadow Sports Minister? I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) for doing such a wonderful job of promoting sport, particularly women’s sport, through her Twitter feed. One of the exciting things about the Commonwealth games is that women’s sport will be up in lights. For the first time in the Commonwealth games, we will have women’s cricket, which will provide a fantastic backdrop and a great example for the many girls who live not just in the midlands, but across the UK, as it will enable them to think of themselves as potential first XI players for the women’s cricket team and even to play internationally.

Following my visit to Birmingham, I want to put on record my thanks not just to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), who has already spoken today, but to the team at Birmingham City Council, who are the best example of municipal pride, putting on a wonderful show for visiting Members of Parliament. We saw all the exciting preparations going on around the stadium and the swimming pool—that was particularly exciting for me as chair of the all-party group on swimming—which will be finished in Sandwell in time for the 2022 Commonwealth games.

As the Bill has made its passage through the House, this has been a really important time to debate principles in sport: not just ticket touting and how ticketing will be done properly for the Commonwealth games, which I am sure the Minister will come to, but gambling issues and the promotion of alcohol, where the games can promote best practice in stopping some of those rather negative images seen throughout the sporting world.

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[Alison McGovern]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

I am tempted to engage the House in a long discussion about local government finance in relation to new clause 2; however, I will try not to go on and on. The hotel levy proposed in new clause 2 has been previously proposed by Members of the House of Lords—Lord Rooker of Perry Barr and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath—and is supported by not only Birmingham City Council but, to my knowledge, a number of local authorities that have strong experience of hosting large cultural and sporting events.

Without going into too much detail about the terrible impact that austerity policies have had on local government over the past 10 years—I hope that most Members are more than well aware of that—the fact is that we in this country now have a national challenge to figure out how we can properly fund local government. Local authorities are struggling through the coronavirus crisis, having been told by the Government to do whatever it takes to fight the virus, and now the Government are falling short of their commitment to fund local authorities to do whatever it takes. That is the background and the backdrop to the situation in which we find ourselves.

[Catherine West]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, given that coronavirus is currently so job-destroying, the Government should look at this particular measure urgently?

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[Alison McGovern]

On the face of it, the hon. Member makes an argument that is understandable, in that taxes might constrain economic activity. However, many years of having taxes on economic activity show that the thing we use those taxes for can also generate and sustain economic activity. I am arguing that we ought to have a stream of investment to help local authorities sustain themselves and be able to put on events like the Commonwealth games now and in the future. If he thinks that that is not necessary, I would simply invite him to discuss the matter with any leader of a large local authority in the United Kingdom.

[Catherine West]

Does my hon. Friend accept that it might help to burden-share across the region, so that local council tax payers do not have an increase in their council tax bill? If some of the funded visitors were able to pay a small amount extra on their hotel bill, that could spread the burden of this exciting international opportunity, so that not just Birmingham has to pay for this, and it can be spread a little wider.

[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend, with her experience, makes a very good argument: it is important that we spread the burden. In any case—

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[Liam Byrne]

I can scarcely believe what I have heard this afternoon. This council has had its budged halved by this Government over the past 10 years, yet its area is home to some of the worst deprivation in the country. The leadership of the council in the past few years have been miraculous, given the challenges that they have had to go through. They have gone over and above that, helping the country out by offering to host the Commonwealth games when Durban pulled out, and we should be grateful for that, not curmudgeonly, like the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook). He should be less curmudgeonly and more welcoming of the leadership the city is providing.

I do not want to let hon. Members escape from the substantial point we are confronting now and going forward. Coronavirus has created a fiscal risk to the city that totals about £164 million, because of the umming and ahhing from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. That is not unique to Birmingham. The Local Government Association and Tory and Labour Members alike have written to the Government about this situation. One way we can de-risk it a bit is to have a pilot scheme in which a £1 levy on hotel rooms is created to help to fund some of the brilliant cultural work that needs to go on around the Commonwealth games.

Just so that hon. Members know, we have two risks coming up in the west midlands. The city of culture in Coventry has now been moved from January to June next year and that will run straight into the Commonwealth games, which will start in the summer of 2022. Frankly, it will be a pretty thin affair if all of the cultural institutions in the west midlands have collapsed. I say to the Minister today that they are on the brink of collapse now. The Hippodrome is already firing people. The Rep, which is a signatory to the letter to the Secretary of State from UK Theatre, is running a serious fiscal deficit. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is also looking at a serious deficit. In fact, when I convened a meeting with Culture Central from the west midlands last week, they were all reporting significant deficits.

I know that the Minister, because he is a responsible sort, will be working on a rescue plan for the cultural sector. I know that he is going to have difficult conversations with the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. I know what the other side of those conversations looks like, because I had them with Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Ministers in my time. The Minister’s arm will be strengthened if he is able to bring to the table imaginative proposals such as that in new clause 2. We are not asking for the moon; we are asking for £1 a night. That could, across the region over the course of four or five years, create a fund of about £4 million or £5 million, which could offset some of the costs that are needed and help to save the magnificent cultural institutions in Britain’s second city.

[Catherine West]

My right hon. Friend is making some excellent arguments. Does he remember that during the London Olympics—as a London MP, I remember this well—a series of MPs went to the Government to say that it was an extra thing for our city and therefore more resource, ideas, innovation and creativity were needed? The west midlands taxpayer cannot fund the whole project, so it is well within the remit of every MP in the region to be asking the Government for specific help and this proposal is a particularly imaginative solution.