Birmingham: Waste Collection

Debate between Jim McMahon and Bernard Jenkin

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

I do not think that anyone could criticise my work ethic, but reorganising a third of England and the 20 million residents affected would be quite a reorganisation to deliver. As things stand, there is no intention of reorganising Birmingham, but there is absolutely an intention of resolving the underlying trade union dispute, getting people back to work, and reaching an agreement that is acceptable.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

May I point out that the strike started under this Labour Government, and under a Labour council—and despite all the Minister’s hand-wringing and anguish, the strike continues under a Labour Government, and under a Labour council? It is futile for the Government to pretend it is all somebody else’s fault, least of all the fault of the previous Government. Will the Minister avoid misrepresenting what my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) said? He made the perfectly reasonable suggestion that the Minister should reinstate the legislation that would allow agency workers to be brought in to pick up rubbish off the streets of Birmingham. Why will the Minister not do that? Because he is pussyfooting around and kowtowing to his Labour paymasters, the trade unions.

[Jim McMahon]

That certainly gets the award for the silliest question yet. There is no kowtowing or bowing. We played this with an absolutely straight bat in the interests of the people of Birmingham, as they would expect. On agency workers, our judgment is that they are not required, because the mutual aid from neighbouring councils and housing associations, and the redeployment of frontline staff from elsewhere in the council, has dealt with the waste that accumulated. We have seen 26,000 tonnes of waste cleared. As I said, now that trucks are leaving the depot as usual in most cases, more tonnes per day are being collected than during regular times, so the council is on top of this. There is no need to bring in additional agency staff in the way that the hon. Gentleman says.

English Devolution

Debate between Jim McMahon and Bernard Jenkin

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

There were three types of programme on the transition to the new Government. The first were the legacy devolution agreements that were agreed under the previous Government but had not yet passed through Parliament, which we wanted to reconcile. The second were the areas that we wanted to target—by and large, areas in the north of England to complete the map of the north and to populate that area. The third was a write-around from the Deputy Prime Minister to get a real sense of where different areas might be on their approach to partnerships, to the type of scale and to the type of geography. We saw the expression of interest process very much as a temperature check, so the proposals that came forward are certainly not binding either on local areas or on the Government. We expect further proposals to come forward, including from the same areas.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

What guarantee can the Minister give that there will be new money from the Treasury to fund the costs of any local government reorganisation in Essex, to avoid the costs of that reorganisation resulting in cuts to public services or increased council taxes?

[Jim McMahon]

That question was raised earlier, and I apologise for not addressing it. The Government will provide capacity to enable both devolution and local government reorganisation through discussions with local authorities. Some of that might be funding, and quite a lot might be support through workforce development. Last week, we launched the workforce development group —a joint project between MHCLG, other Government Departments and bodies such as the Local Government Association—to make sure that we are addressing the workforce issues. Even before the reorganisation, we know that many counties are struggling to recruit to jobs like adult social care and many districts are struggling to recruit to jobs like planning, so there is a bigger issue here that we are looking to address.