Sky News’ Kay Burley put a senior Labour minister on the spot this morning after it was revealed Labour has quietly ditched Tory rules demanding that councils collect bins every fortnight.

The change was quietly announced on the same day MPs voted to back assisted suicide, meaning most people missed the announcement.

Earlier this year the Tory government pledged to make sure councils collect black bins every other week, something Labour’s new guidance makes no reference to.

Home Office minister Angela Eagle squirmed this morning after Kay Burley demanded to know why the Government had made the change.

The Sky presenter asked: “Why has the government decided to axe plans by the previous government for fortnightly rubbish collections?”

“I was reading in the paper this morning people might only have their rubbish collected once a month, that can’t be right?”

Dame Angela Eagle appeared completely unaware about her government’s new rule changes, leading to her unintentionally criticising the plans.

She nervously laughed: “I have absolutely no idea! It depends what sort of rubbish, if it’s organic rubbish certainly I know in my local authority area we collect that every week, but if it’s rubbish that’s recycling there may be a reason for doing it less frequently.”

“We know which rubbish needs to be collected most frequently and that’s the stuff that rots.”

An astonished Kay Burley replied: “Erm yeah, you probably lived through the bin strikes as I did – you can’t leave rubbish that long.”

While Dame Angela appeared to suggest the rule changes would only affect recycling collections, the new guidance from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs simply states that “waste collection authorities should continue to decide collection frequency and methodology for collecting the residual (non-recyclable waste)”.

Therefore black bin collections are explicitly no longer required every two weeks at the most.

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The Tories have already blasted Labour’s decision, with shadow DEFRA minister Dr Neil Hudson saying: “Labour has tried to sneak in this massive change to bin collections which could leave rubbish piling up on the streets over Christmas.”

“This is an important issue for millions of people around the country. Keir Starmer claims he wants to fix the foundations, whilst giving carte blanche to councils to hike up taxes at the same time as cutting vital services. It is only Conservative-led councils that truly deliver efficient services like this while keeping council tax low.

“Keir Starmer’s Labour need to bin only one thing, and that’s this ridiculous change.”

Research by the Tories has already found that the majority of Labour-run councils in Wales now collect black bins less than fortnightly, suggesting England may now follow suit.

A whopping 11 Labour councils now only collect black bins once every three weeks, prompting accusations they are seeing “rubbish piling up like the 1970s winter of discontent”.