Angela Rayner has come under fire for blaming the previous Tory government for the Birmingham bin strikes. The Deputy Prime Minister suggested the Conservatives were responsible for Labour-run Birmingham City Council going bankrupt in 2023.

Earlier this week, the local authority declared a major incident over the impact of the ongoing walkouts. But Tory MP Andrew Mitchell, who represents Sutton Coldfield in Birmingham, said: “If Angela thinks that Labour Birmingham’s bin strike is the fault of the Tories, she must be smoking something.

“It is a dispute between two wings of the Labour Party and is wholly owned misery courtesy of the Birmingham Labour Party."

Members of the Unite union in Birmingham are holding an all-out strike in a long-running dispute after the scrapping of waste collection and recycling officer roles. It has led to rubbish piling up in the streets and residents complaining about rats.

Ms Rayner, who is also the Housing Secretary, insisted the strikes were the fault of the previous government, which was in power when the council declared bankruptcy.

She told BBC Radio 2: “The bin collection in Birmingham is a wider and bigger issue, because under the previous government, Birmingham council went bust.

“We’ve given Birmingham extra cash to support the difficult circumstances that they’re in and they’re taking action to tackle the longstanding equal pay claims that Birmingham council had.

“And they had over 10 years of austerity, they saw significant sums, billions of pounds, taken out of their budget and were not able to provide the most necessary of services.

“So we’re taking action to put local government on a better financial stabilisation after the 14 years of disaster that we’ve had.”