Safety of School Buildings

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

The education of the next generation is an issue that is close to my heart, as is the case for Members across the House—on that we can agree this afternoon. It is our duty to ensure that children can study with minimal disruptions. I strongly support the measures that the Secretary of State has taken to address the issue of RAAC in schools throughout England.

I wish to highlight three of those measures. The first is that the Government have acted quickly to issue guidance to schools on how to manage the risks associated with RAAC, which is in sharp contrast to what the Welsh Government have done. In 2018, the Department for Education published guidance for schools about the need to have adequate contingencies if they had RAAC. It initiated its survey of the schools estate for RAAC in March 2022 and updated the guidance in light of new evidence last month.

The second point that I will make is that the UK Government will ensure that schools have the funding that they need so that teachers can focus on getting students back to school, and so that students are safe. The Chancellor and the Prime Minister have confirmed that the Government will spend what it takes to address the problem as quickly as possible so that children can go to school safely.

The third point that I will emphasise is that the Government are ensuring that the majority of schools affected by RAAC remain open for face-to-face teaching, minimising the disruption to students’ learning. By supporting schools to put mitigations in place, the Government have helped the majority of schools to remain open for face-to-face teaching, ensuring that disruption to pupils in affected schools is minimised. In contrast, the Opposition are playing politics and refusing to take responsibility for their failings in Government. They failed to address issues with RAAC, despite warnings about the problems in 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2007 from the Building Research Establishment and the Standing Committee on Structural Safety.

Finally, as a Welsh MP for Clwyd South I make no apology for commenting on the situation in Wales. I note that no Welsh MPs have taken part in the debate or been present on the Opposition Benches this afternoon. The Welsh Government have taken their eye off the ball, relying on councils to do the work that the UK Conservative Government are leading on in England. As I said in my earlier intervention, the Welsh Government ordered surveys only in May 2023; the UK Government started engaging with schools in March 2022. Where is the accountability? Where is the responsibility?

That lack of preparation work means that school surveys in Wales will not be completed until December this year. Education has been devolved to Wales for 26 years. Labour is in charge of schools in Wales, so building safety is its responsibility. The Welsh Government receive £1.20 for every £1 spent on education in England, but in 2019 the independent Auditor General for Wales discovered that only £1.05 reaches the classroom. Labour prioritises its vanity projects, such as a new blanket 20 mph speed limit, costing the economy £4.5 billion, and introducing legislation for more politicians in the Welsh Parliament, but it has cut the education budget in Wales in real terms this year. The Welsh Government’s approach to RAAC shows a woeful lack of responsibility by the Labour party in Wales, of which they and those on the Opposition Benches should be deeply ashamed.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

A couple of people have dropped out, which gives us a little more time. I will remove the time limit for a bit and see how we go. I may have to reinstate it, but a little more time is available.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I am glad that Salford has no schools with RAAC problems, but in Bolton we found out on Friday that St William of York, St Andrew’s Church of England and St Bernard’s were affected. St Bernard’s was not even on any list, and St Gregory’s is still awaiting the result. Do you agree that the Government should publish the full list, not the half-baked one that they published this afternoon?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Lady knows that she must not address her hon. Friend as “you”; otherwise, she is addressing me.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I apologise.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

I completely agree with my constituency neighbour. I stress that not just schools are affected by this crisis; it extends to public buildings, and concerns have been raised in recent days by the building industry that certain residential properties, particularly social housing, could also be affected. On hospitals alone, a report by the National Audit Office in July this year said that structurally unsound RAAC was present in at least 41 hospitals. The Turnberg building at Salford Royal Hospital is reported to be one of them.

Despite this clear national building safety crisis, there is no detail from Government on what action will or will not be taken, no detail on the urgent funding and support that will be provided to remediate and no assurances so far that the costs will not come out of existing school, NHS and local authority budgets. Worse still, there appears to be an emerging message today from Government that this crisis is stand-alone—that it is simply a sad indictment of less-regulated old building practices that are now outdated.

That is not the true story. The real culprit here is the unashamed pursuit of austerity by this Government and the coalition before them. Let us not forget that, to start with, the coalition ripped up Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme in 2010 and never adequately replaced it. Worse still, between 2009 and 2022 the Department for Education’s capital spending declined by 37% in cash terms and 50% in real terms. That is in addition to NHS and local authority budgets being slashed on a similar basis, with the effect that most ongoing public sector estate upgrade programmes were torn to shreds.

Sadly, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies states:

“The current crisis illustrates just how costly failing to keep on top of necessary investment in buildings and infrastructure can be.”

How much money was actually required, had the Government taken action on schools when it should have? The National Audit Office in 2017 published a report on capital spending that stated that it would cost £6.7 billion to return all schools to a satisfactory or better condition. That report was also clear that there is a significant risk of major costs arising from deterioration of the estate.

Action was needed in 2017, but in November 2020, in the Government spending review, they allocated only £3.1 billion—less than half the amount of investment required just to keep buildings ticking over safely. Then the story becomes even more absurd: in March 2022, realising that there was a problem, the Department for Education sent a questionnaire to all schools asking if they had RAAC on their estate, but later told schools not to spend any money on surveys to find out.

Even after that, in May 2022, when Government documents were leaked to The Observer showing that school buildings could be a risk to life—causing great alarm in schools up and down the country—half the schools then applied for funding to remediate and did not get a penny from Government. In June 2023, the National Audit Office said the condition of school buildings was “declining” and warned that 700,000 pupils were learning in buildings that it described as unsafe or ageing. It stated clearly that the DfE had received significantly less funding for school buildings than it estimated it needed between 2016 and 2023.

The Government knew that this crisis was coming, and the causes of this crisis were very deliberate. Austerity is, was and always will be a political choice, but it is both immoral and economically illiterate. The only political choice the Government should have made was to ensure the safety of their people. Sadly, if they had made that choice, the cost borne then would be a mere shadow of the cost required today.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

To assist with guidance, I will put a seven-minute limit on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

It is only day three of a new term, yet once again we find ourselves in the position of having an Opposition day debate on an incredibly important subject that is pure politicking from the Labour party. We have not heard anything new, other than what we heard at the beginning of the week when we devoted an hour and a half to a mature and sensible debate on this matter. I would have hoped that Labour Members would have spent the long summer recess reflecting that so often these debates make things worse, not better, because they frighten the public and spread confusion and misinformation. Sadly that has not been the case, and once again, today we have heard point scoring, misinformation and scaremongering.

I believe what the public want and deserve at this point is a responsible sense of risk and proportion about this problem. We know that 156 schools have been affected by RAAC, 52 of which—one third—already have mitigation measures in place. Only 104 schools were informed this week, which is under 0.5% of the 22,500 schools across the country. Some have been closed as a precaution, including one in my constituency that I will come on to talk about. The vast majority of schools in our country are not closed, and even some of those with RAAC have not been closed in their entirety. The majority are expected to open next week.

Unlike Labour Members, I wholeheartedly applaud this Government for putting the interests of pupils, families and staff first. The absolute last thing we could possibly want is for a disaster to happen in any one of our schools, but we should not be spreading fear or exaggerating the scale of this problem. It is recklessly irresponsible to scare children by suggesting that their schools are not safe, when they overwhelmingly are—99% of schools in this country are safe, and children have gone back and are learning in them.

Over the past 13 years, this Conservative Government have invested in their schools and school buildings. We have invested £28 billion since 2010. We have invested £15 billion since 2015, to improve the safety of our schools, with priority given to those with potential safety issues. Of course we are committed to go further than that, and as a member of the Education Committee, I have a strong focus on this area. According to the Commons Library, estimated capital spending in our schools for the past financial year—2022-23—is around £6.4 billion. That is a 29% real-terms increase compared with the year before. We are also undertaking a huge rebuilding and refurbishment programme to improve over 400 of our schools, including Blenheim Primary School in Southend, which very much welcomes being part of this programme. I am looking forward to seeing spades going into the ground. If I may, I remind the Schools Minister that he would be welcome to come to Blenheim Primary School to see that new refurbishment taking place.

Let us compare our record with Labour’s record in government. Its Building Schools for the Future programme was slow, costly and substandard. That is an apt description, I would say, of the entire last Labour Government. In 2006, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment found that half the schools built by Labour were architecturally substandard, with a mere 4% being excellent. We need to understand not only exactly why RAAC was used in schools but, more importantly, how we can avoid anything like this happening in the future. We need to ask whether all the money that we are spending on remediation measures would not perhaps be spent more sensibly on rebuilding programmes. There is a range of things we need to look at, and that is why I called yesterday for a special session of the Education Committee looking into this issue. The point of that session is to learn and scrutinise, not to point fingers as the Labour party is seeking to do today.

In Essex, we are disproportionately affected by RAAC because we had such an extensive school building programme in the 1950s and 1960s. Sadly, in my constituency, the brilliant Kingsdown School is closed this week after RAAC was found in some of its buildings. Kingsdown School is the only special school in the country that has this problem, so the House will forgive me for dwelling on its issues in particular. It is waiting for three things. The first is the result of a risk assessment. The inspectors appropriately went in very quickly last week, but the school needs the results of that risk assessment if it is to open next week. It also needs emergency equipment in the form of portaloos, demountable classrooms and a portable staff room. Those things have been promised, and the sooner they are delivered, the better. The third thing is remediation measures, because these plans are short-term and the children in the school are among the most disabled, physically and mentally, in Southend, if not the south-east. This is a special school where some of the children need special feeding equipment or a special temperature. There are hoists everywhere. This is not a normal school, and these remediation measures are vital. It is a special school, and I make no apologies for arguing that it should be a special case.

I finish by applauding the work of the headmistress, Louise Robinson, who has been working around the clock along with Conservative-controlled Southend-on-Sea City Council; Councillor Helen Boyd, the cabinet member there; and Liz Hunt. They have been working hard to get things moving. The only thing that has not been helpful at all has been the press attention on this special school. The headmistress told me that she cannot pick up the telephone because the press are focusing on this school. That is appalling when one considers how anxious the parents and children must be. It is a completely inappropriate intrusion. I finish by reminding the Labour party that by calling today’s debate—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Lady has run out of time.

[Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)]

This is a concerning issue, and the amount of politicking and scaremongering of parents, teachers and pupils that the Opposition do on it worries me. Many schools and public buildings built with RAAC are characteristic of the brutalist style of architecture favoured between the ’50s and ’70s. The buildings were cheap and not built to last, and they popped up under various Governments. That shows the seemingly prevailing attitude of short-termism at the time; Governments knew it would be somebody else’s problem in the future, as indeed it is now.

It must have been the same attitude that prevailed in 1997 and 2002, when a Labour Government took no action on RAAC, despite being warned about the dangers by the Building Research Establishment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) stood at the Dispatch Box in the coalition era and criticised Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme for often targeting the wrong schools, and in the light of this week’s evidence, it seems that he has been proven right, so I find the Opposition’s outrage quite performative. The Department for Education, as I understand it, published guidance to schools on the topic in 2018.

I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, but my back has just gone. I have a problem with my back. Carry on.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am sorry to hear that. I will move on to the next speaker, Munira Wilson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I do hope that the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe) is okay. I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the House for allowing me to go and lead a Westminster Hall debate just now; that is why I was out of the Chamber for 30 minutes. The crumbling concrete crisis is one that I first raised with the Secretary of State on the Floor of the House back in January. It is extremely damaging for several reasons. It is not just because anxious parents have had to tell their children why their schools are shut, or drive them to alternative sites. It is not just because children’s learning has been disrupted yet again, with some eating lunch in marquees or going to the toilet in portacabins. It is a concrete sign of a Government who have given up on communities up and down the country.

For many families, the school is the public service that they interact with most. When parents read about crumbling concrete; when the parent-teacher association has to fundraise for basic repairs and maintenance; and when the local school’s rebuilding plans are rejected year after year, they know that the Government have let them down and taken them for granted. Just consider how that makes our young people feel. If their classroom has buckets in various corners; if they spend all day in a coat because the boiler is broken; or, worse, if their school closes altogether, the message that they hear is that they do not matter—that their education, their future, is not worth investing in.

When the announcement was made, parents looked to the Conservative Government for three things: empathy, responsibility and leadership. I am sorry to say that they have provided none of them. A Government with empathy would not put out a social media advert saying that “most schools are unaffected”. Instead, they would tell concerned parents that one school with risky RAAC was one too many.

This may be just the tip of the iceberg. Some schools in Twickenham and Richmond are awaiting surveys. Other councils are wading through the guidance and complaining that the DfE has lost the questionnaires they have sent in. Pupils just over the river from my constituency at St Paul’s Primary School in Thames Ditton, at Langney Primary Academy in Eastbourne, or at the Royal College Manchester in Cheadle will now want the Government to give them a concrete timeline on when their at-risk buildings will be repaired.

An Education Secretary who understood collective responsibility would take the flak for her Government’s failings, not pass the buck and fish for compliments. A Prime Minister who showed leadership would listen to his officials and invest in our children. Is it “completely and utterly wrong” to blame him for the crisis? Let me ask this: who was Chancellor in 2022, when, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the three-year average spend on education capital was at its lowest since 2004? Who was Chancellor when education officials told the Treasury that it would cost £5 billion to mitigate the most serious risks of building failure, yet signed off only two thirds of that amount? Who was the Chancellor who was told to build more than 200 schools a year but approved only 50? It was the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak). These penny-pinching tactics are coming back to bite him, yet even now, the Treasury will not stump up new cash to remove the RAAC; it is putting off repairs to other dilapidated school buildings.

Every crumbling classroom stands as a concrete sign of years of Conservative neglect of our children and our communities. Of course, pupil safety is paramount and unsafe classrooms should be shut, but we should never have got to this point. This crisis was years in the making.

Liberal Democrats know that when we invest in the fabric of our schools, we invest in our children’s future. Our nurseries, schools and colleges should have been treated as critical infrastructure, yet too often with this Government, children are an afterthought. Liberal Democrats would have invested in our schools, removing risky RAAC and clearing the backlog of school repairs.

In May, I told the House:

“Neglecting school and college buildings endangers our children and may well contribute to this Government’s downfall.”—[Official Report, 23 May 2023; Vol. 733, c. 249.]

I am sorry to say, on behalf of parents, pupils and school staff, that the chickens are coming home to roost.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Before I call the shadow Minister, I want to emphasise how important it is that those who contributed to the debate get back in good time for the wind-ups. There are those who are not here, which is discourteous to the shadow Minister.