Local Government Funding: Birmingham

Roger Godsiff Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Roger Godsiff (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) on securing this debate and making such an excellent case on behalf of the people of Birmingham. I also congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) and for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) on adding to it with their comments.

Madam Chairperson—

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Godsiff, it is appropriate to call me “Ms Dorries” in here, just to save you all tying yourselves up in knots.

[Mr Godsiff]

I apologise, Ms Dorries. I feel frantic that my city faces a shortfall in its budget next year of £150 million. That could well lead to the closure of children’s centres, leisure centres and libraries and, as has been said, cuts to care services. I feel doubly affronted that the Government have a transition fund of £300 million, yet not one penny has gone to Birmingham. Furthermore, 83p in every pound of that £300 million has gone to Tory shire counties. That is not fairness; that is great injustice.

Reference has been made to what the chief executive of Birmingham City Council said in his front-page interview with The Guardian today. He said that Birmingham faces a “catastrophic” situation if nothing is done, and that youth services in Birmingham are virtually non-existent. Birmingham is the youngest city in the country. It has a huge population of young people, many of whom are Muslim. What does the Minister think the effects will be if youth services in Birmingham cease to exist? Where will those young people go? The Government are rightly concerned about radicalisation among young people, but if they do not have centres to go to where they have the opportunity to mix with young people from other communities, play with them and enjoy life with them, they will be more and more vulnerable to the small percentage of people within their communities who seek to radicalise them.

Birmingham has had more arrests under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 than any city in the country. Only this week, two people in Birmingham were given long sentences for funding the Brussels bombing attacks. If the Minister wants to prevent young people from becoming radicalised, he must give them not only hope but facilities. If a city such as Birmingham has virtually no youth services, as the chief executive said, I fear the consequences.

I am sure that the Minister is an honourable man, but I remember that the Tory Secretary of State Nicholas Ridley said in the 1980s that local councils needed only two meetings a year—one to hand out the contracts, and the second to review them—and that local government did not really need to exist. I very much hope that the Minister will give some assurance that he does believe in local government and that he does believe that Birmingham City Council has the problems that have been outlined today; because if he does not, there will be consequences, and the people of Birmingham will know exactly who is to blame.