Birmingham City Council

Debate between Jim McMahon and Preet Kaur Gill

Monday 31st March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

I am pleased to say that we are making sure that we deal with the waste piling up in the streets and that the council gets the support it needs, but the hon. Lady is right to say that there is an interrelationship. This dispute does not sit in isolation; it is part of wider considerations on equal pay, and we have to bear in mind that the cost of meeting the equal pay liability for the people of Birmingham is £1 billion. There can be no steps forward in this dispute that double down on the inherent problems that led to the equal pay crisis that the city has faced. These are sensitive negotiations, but it is important that the council continues to negotiate and that people get around the table to find a way through.

The hon. Lady talks about the multi-year settlement that is being prepared for and the simplification of the funding mechanism, but she also mentions redistribution. Birmingham and councils like it have not found themselves in this situation in a vacuum; it has been partly driven by central Government not distributing money in a fair way to deal with service need and deprivation, and it is very important that we get the money to where that deprivation exists. Even under the current one-year settlement, Birmingham has had a 9.8% increase—in cash, that is £131 million.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement. The Birmingham bin strike means that many of my constituents have not had their bins collected in weeks, and this week a constituent wrote to me to say that they had been bitten by a rat. I have been raising the public health situation and calling for the council to take emergency measures, so I do welcome the fact that it has declared a critical incident today.

Does the Minister agree with me that it is unacceptable that Unite pickets have been frustrating the council’s contingency plans by blocking depots, and that it is time for Unite to accept the fair deal on the table? Seventeen people cannot hold 1.2 million Birmingham residents to ransom.

[Jim McMahon]

My hon. Friend is right to say that the vast majority of the workforce of the service have agreed a way forward, by one route or another—whether by taking voluntary redundancy or accepting a new way of working—and that this comes down now to a small number of people who have not accepted that. In the end, that is where the dispute lies. I do agree that a city cannot almost grind to a halt because of such a circumstance in its waste collection service.

I encourage all parties—the local authority as the employer and the trade unions—to get around the table, and focus on the bigger prize here. After almost a decade of uncertainty on equal pay, the council and the trade unions have agreed a position from which they can move forward together. That is a significant moment in which I think all parties should take some pride. Let us not spoil it by the action today that could undermine the equal pay negotiations that have been so successful.