Birmingham: Waste Collection

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 24th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, concern has been expressed about this situation arising again following local government reorganisation. When we discussed this matter in the Chamber previously, I suggested that one way of preventing it happening again was to revive the Audit Commission, which has not existed now for just over 10 years. I think it would help, and I am not sure whether Ministers have taken on board seriously the suggestion that an improved audit system is necessary in local government.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Lord will know, because I have stated this before in this Chamber, how much I agree with him about the problems that not having an effective audit system in place in local government has caused. We need to reinstate a sound audit that the public can rely on to know that their money is being spent locally in a way that is accountable and transparent; that is an important part of the process. At the moment we are at the White Paper stage of bringing forward the English devolution Bill, and when we get the Bill it will contain information about how the audit system is going to be progressed.