Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [Lords]

Debate between Liam Byrne and Khalid Mahmood

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 9th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp); he spoke with wit and flair and it was good to see him put Ministers on notice that he will be a doughty fighter for his constituency. It was good, too, to follow the hon. Member for Redcar (Jacob Young). We Opposition Members miss his predecessor greatly, but I know that Mo Mowlam would have appreciated the humanity and humility that he showed in an excellent maiden speech.

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate, because in a Second Reading debate we debate the principles of the Bill, and we cannot debate the principles of this Bill without debating the ethos of the games that we wish to host. The ethos of the games is generosity, which is why I shall start with first things first, and put on record the gratitude that the House feels not only to the chairman of the games, John Crabtree, and the chief executive, Ian Reid, but to Ian Ward and the team and officers at Birmingham City Council, along with Yvonne Davies and the team at Sandwell Council, for working miracles to step in when the bid from Durban failed. They have tried to do something spectacular, which is to put together a plan for the games in four and a half years, when normally it takes seven. The thanks of this House go out to everyone in the west midlands who has been involved in pulling together the plans for what will be the seventh Commonwealth games held on these islands. The games that we plan to showcase will be the greatest Commonwealth games in history—and not just because they will be held and showcased in the most diverse, innovative and creative heart of the Commonwealth: in the west midlands and in Birmingham.

The investment brought to our region is desperately needed. Some £800 million, about a quarter of it raised locally, is desperately needed. The facilities that have come are very welcome: I was delighted to look around the fantastic new Alexander stadium with my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West); there is the fabulous new aquatic centre, which will be built in Smethwick; and of course there is the extraordinary new village that will be built in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood), with 1,500 new homes—the down payment on an extraordinary new development of 5,000 homes—that will, in total, bring to the great, lucky constituency of Perry Barr some half a billion pounds of investment. Let no one go away from this debate without understanding clearly that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr is the greatest negotiator in this Chamber on behalf of the people he serves.

Our challenge is not simply to deliver the games and to deliver the investment, but to ensure that what is a great festival of sport is also a great festival of and a great renewal of our civic spirit. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and a generation should be lifted by opportunity—lifted out of poverty, out of unemployment and out of under-investment. We Opposition Members will fight like tigers to ensure that the games are a hand up for a community and not a handout for corporate sport. The Opposition know that our success will be judged not simply by the medals that we win, but by the lives that we change. We on this side of the House know that this festival of the Commonwealth games must be a festival of the civic gospel, too, which is why I turn to the father of the civic gospel: Mr George Dawson.

The story of George Dawson is not so well known today. He was a radical preacher—born in Portsmouth, I believe—who in the late 19th century made his home on Edward Street in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood). From the pulpit he preached with extraordinary power, but he was the father of civic inventiveness in our city of Birmingham. He founded the arts club and the free Birmingham Daily Press. He was the driving force behind the Shakespeare Memorial library. He was determined to ensure that our new city of Birmingham was not simply a city that was a democracy, but a city that had a democracy of culture. That inspired the great words that still sit above the free Shakespeare library:

“The time has come to give everything to everybody”.

That democratic ethos is what should inspire our approach to the games.

George Dawson had an extraordinary congregation: around 12 of them went on to be city councillors and around six of them went on to be lord mayors, including one Joseph Chamberlain. Together, they ensured that at the end of the 19th century our city was known as the best-governed city in the world. That is the ethos that should shape our approach to this Bill. With that in mind, what would George Dawson say about the Bill that the Minister has presented to us this afternoon? Well, the first thing he would say is that the games should be built in a genuinely inclusive way. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) says that we will try to amend the Bill to include our determination to ensure that the Commonwealth games is an accredited living wage employer. Why is that important to us? It is because, across our region, 571,000 people are paid less than what they need to live on. That is one in four workers in our region. Only one in 1,000 businesses in our region is actually accredited as a living wage employer. That is why we are determined to make sure that ours is the first living wage region in the country, and why we want to see the Commonwealth games lead the way. I hope that the Minister will agree to the amendment and not seek to have it voted down by Members on his Benches.

I hope that the Minister gets a chance to discuss this matter with Mr Lee Barron, our fabulous general-secretary of the TUC in the midlands, who is bringing together a Commonwealth collective to argue the case for a much stronger social charter, but accreditation of the living wage is absolutely front and centre of our demands.

Secondly, I hope that the Government will bring forward a report that ensures that, in the village, we will deliver at least 471 homes for social rent. Why is that important? It is because the number of homes that we have built for social rent in our region has fallen by 80% since 2010. We are building council homes so slowly that it will take us until 2052 to clear the council waiting lists. That is why I hope that, when the Minister comes to Birmingham, he will meet Saidul Haque and the Citizens UK team, which has been defining some of our demands to make sure that the village that we build on the games site is genuinely a village of homes that everyone can actually afford.

The third thing that I think George Dawson would have done in this debate is to quiz the Minister on how we make sure that the Commonwealth games genuinely creates a new foundation for disability sports. We are so proud that the Commonwealth games is coming to Birmingham, and we are also proud of the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, which sits just seven miles south of the Alexander stadium. I hope that, when the Minister next comes the Birmingham, he will ask for meetings with people at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine and with the Commonwealth games team to inquire how we can create a genuine foundation for the Invictus games in our city for years to come. The Commonwealth games has a proud record of inclusivity, but we want to use it as a catalyst for transforming the strength, power, depth and stretch of the teams and the facilities that we have in our city for disability sports.

Fourthly, let us try to make sure that the legacy of our Commonwealth games is not simply nice new facilities, but lives and a generation that are changed once and for all. Crucially, how do we use the games to bring forward a new generation of leaders? We have had cuts to the youth service in our region two and a half times harder than anywhere else in the country, so let us look at the money that the Chancellor announced for youth services— some £500 million over the years to come—and have £100 million of it in the west midlands. Let us put it together with the legacy team from the Commonwealth games and create a young Commonwealth leaders programme where, in every single ward in our region, we equip, train and give a platform to a young leader to show how we can bring together communities for the future, animated by that spirit that we have more in common than that which divides us. Let us bring forward the investment in a generation of young leaders who not just bring our community closer together, but strengthen the links between our region and those of Commonwealth countries.

[Mr Khalid Mahmood]

I appreciate what my right hon. Friend is saying about the young leaders programme. We have more than 160 nationalities living in Birmingham. The Commonwealth programme will be hugely welcome and hugely appreciated, but, more importantly, it will provide the leadership for the next generation, and I thank him for raising that.