Birmingham: Waste Collection

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Thursday 24th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

That was more of a rant than a question, but I will answer it anyway. Workers have the right to make representations, and the council must take all its workforce into account, including the 7,000 women who historically were paid far less than their male counterparts for equivalent roles. Every council has had to do that, and it is right and proper that they do so. It has been an enormous exercise. In my own council it took nearly three years to work through the process, but I was happy to do it. It is absolutely right that people doing equal work deserve equal pay.

[Lord Cryer (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister touched repeatedly on the original cause of the dispute, which is equal pay. Did she say 7,000 women were assessed as being underpaid? On that basis, what is the cost of the compensation to those employees?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The costs are included in the issues that Birmingham is facing overall. We are working with the council on options to address those costs. The commissioners in Birmingham have been working very hard to do that. The additional £131 million funding we put into Birmingham this year will help to address some of the deficit it has faced recently. In fact, we included in our funding for Birmingham a new one-off recovery grant of £39.3 million, which shows our commitment to correcting unfairness in the funding system. We also put in place an in-principle agreement to exceptional financial support totalling £1.24 billion across the country. We are helping Birmingham with its financial issues, but they are of long standing. The overall funding formula we have been looking at as we go into the spending review across the country does not deliver funding in a way that delivers the best funding settlement to where the most need is. That is something we will have to address going forward.