Sir Julian Lewis: May I give the Minister some friendly advice and suggest that he does not try to write this off as a little local difficulty? I am half expecting to hear him use the phrase, “Crisis, what crisis?” He cannot be blamed for not remembering the winter of discontent – using the wonders of Wikipedia, I see that it happened a year before he was born – but I can assure him that the Callaghan Government and the Labour party never shook off the pungent smell of the rubbish piling in the streets on their watch. He really does not want to have the same thing happen to him.

[The Minister for Local Government and English Devolution (Jim McMahon): I will tell the right hon. Gentleman what stinks: hearing Conservative MPs line up as if they were not in government for 14 years and creating the conditions for this to happen, while the foundations of local government were eroded. With that record, I would honestly keep the advice to myself if I were him.]