Manuela Perteghella

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I thank the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for introducing this important debate. I note with dismay that as Birmingham’s bin strike reaches its first anniversary, the people of Birmingham continue to pay the price. The fundamental cause of the current dispute, and the pay cuts and the reduction in pay progression, lies in the Labour council’s settlement of the 2017 bin strike. That caused the equal pay claims, which forced two section 114 notices on to the city council in 2023. But the Conservatives should check their own record. For years under the previous Conservative Government, councils were expected to do more and more with less and less. Since then, the people of Birmingham have had to suffer what Councillor Paul Tilsley referred to as the four horsemen of the apocalypse: council tax hikes, significant service reductions, the sale of important city assets, and hundred of staff redundancies. Last March, a major incident was declared due to the 17,000 tonnes of uncollected waste. Furthermore, there has been a revolving door of senior management for around a decade. As senior managers have left for jobs elsewhere, the residents of Birmingham have been left to foot the bill. As my Liberal Democrat colleague and Birmingham city councillor Deborah Harries said: “The very least a citizen can expect from their council, in return for paying their council tax, is for their bin to be collected.” That basic service has not been delivered in Birmingham for more than a year, despite residents’ being asked to pay a 7.5% increase in council tax this year, on the back of a 10% increase last year. Currently, agency crews are collecting residents’ general waste every week, but recycling and garden waste collections are suspended, leaving families with more rubbish than they can contend with.