Birmingham: Waste Collection

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 24th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My noble friend is, of course, quite right to say that the leadership of the council until 2012 left not only the toxic legacy of not sorting out the equal pay issue but £1 billion-worth of debt, which is part of the issue that Birmingham is now having to deal with alongside the cuts to funding it had before. We are under no illusion about the financial issues facing councils, and we are determined to make progress on the inheritance we have been left. As he said, we continue to support the leader and his team in Birmingham, both directly and through the commissioners, to move the council on from those historic issues. Indeed, we have provided an increase in core spending of up to 9.8% for Birmingham for 2025-26. As we go through the spending review, we continue to look at how we might redress the long-standing deficit in funding that councils such as Birmingham have faced.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, rats are spawned by DEI, are not they? They are the fell and monstrous product of equalities law. There was an utterly perverse ruling that said that although there was absolutely no sex discrimination, it was not allowable to pay people a bonus to do a job that people of either sex were otherwise willing to do. That is why Birmingham went bankrupt, hence the strikes and the rats. If we are serious about growth, do we not need to roll back this tendency for judges to legislate from the bench?

[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.