Birmingham: Waste Collection
Debate between Jim McMahon and Julian Lewis(4 days, 19 hours ago)
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Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Given that the Minister no doubt sincerely believes that the offer on the table is a good one, why does he think the unions are not accepting it?
Jim McMahon
It is clear from the negotiations that there are a number of moving parts. I should declare that we are not replicating those negotiations in this Chamber; they should be between the employer, the employees and the trade unions, and we should not try to circumvent that here. Our belief is that the agreement strikes the right balance between giving support to the workers affected—those in the WRCO roles—and not undermining the equal pay work that has been done. For far too long, we have seen women being underpaid for the work that they do.
Birmingham City Council
Debate between Jim McMahon and Julian Lewis(3 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Jim McMahon
The hon. Gentleman is trying to set up the good council and the bad council by party politics, but I am afraid that has been exhausted. The previous Government did this all the time: they would parade councils of a different colour around for shaming, whatever the issue, while for one of their own they would just hope that everything would move on and that nobody would notice. We are not interested in doing that.
This is about a new partnership, where national Government and local government work together to resolve these issues. If a Conservative council finds itself in trouble—there have been some, I should say, and there may be more in the future—I am not going to name and shame it and parade it around in the way the hon. Gentleman is trying to do today. We stand ready to work with councils of all political parties in the interests of the people at a local level, because that is what matters.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
May I give the Minister some friendly advice and suggest that he does not try to write this off as a little local difficulty? I am half expecting to hear him use the phrase, “Crisis, what crisis?” He cannot be blamed for not remembering the winter of discontent—using the wonders of Wikipedia, I see that it happened a year before he was born—but I can assure him that the Callaghan Government and the Labour party never shook off the pungent smell of the rubbish piling in the streets on their watch. He really does not want to have the same thing happen to him.
Jim McMahon
I will tell the right hon. Gentleman what stinks: hearing Conservative MPs line up as if they were not in government for 14 years and creating the conditions for this to happen, while the foundations of local government were eroded. With that record, I would honestly keep the advice to myself if I were him.