Building Schools for the Future

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Tony Baldry]

This is an important point. The hon. Gentleman is implying that the Secretary of State misled the House last week when he said very clearly, in terms, that an individual had received more than £1 million. I am confident that the Secretary of State would not have misled the House, either knowingly or unknowingly.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tony Baldry]

Let me finish this point.

That is all the more reason why we need an independent inquiry into the BSF programme and the chaos in which the previous Government left it.

[Mr Slaughter]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tony Baldry]

Let me finish my next points.

The money that went in consultancy fees could have gone into the front line. The BSF scheme took no account of the fact that, in many parts of the country, there is a real need for new school building as a result of the growing population. That is particularly true for primary schools, but the BSF project simply did not cover primary schools at all.

In the run-up to the general election, the previous Government sought to pretend that there was more money in the BSF programme, but they did so on the basis of hoping that they would get funds from the Treasury through the use of end-of-year flexibility of capital. It is becoming apparent, as the permanent secretary to the Department for Education has now made clear, that that was never properly cleared with the Treasury by the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), then Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. The Treasury has said clearly that the right hon. Gentleman was playing fast and loose with that particular capital stream. The Treasury has made clear its opposition.

I would very much welcome an inquiry into what went wrong with the Building Schools for the Future programme and Partnerships for Schools under the previous Government. It is very unreasonable to attach any culpability to new Ministers for a grim situation that they clearly inherited and are having to deal with.

Banbury school, a large comprehensive in my constituency, was put into the Building Schools for the Future programme. Its principal has written to the Secretary of State and she has made her comments clear in local newspapers. I should like to share with hon. Members what she said in her letter to the Secretary of State:

“I wanted to write to support your decision to stop the vast majority of BSF projects currently under way, and for the reasons that you outlined. Whilst Banbury School was one of the last schools to be included in the BSF programme, nevertheless, the huge bureaucratic hurdles and ridiculous amount of wasted time in meetings with advisors and consultants, etc, means there could never be value for money for the investment…On an immediate positive note, both myself and our Senior Vice Principal now have days released from former BSF meetings, where we can spend time looking directly at our school, the needs of our youngsters and how we can support further improvement in standards.”

Even the schools in the BSF programme thought that it was a bureaucratic nightmare.

[Tony Baldry]

The hon. Gentleman can make his points—[Interruption.] No, the hon. Gentleman can make his points about his constituency because I am not in a position to cross-examine or test the evidence. What I am giving hon. Members is the primary advice—the primary evidence—of a principal in my constituency. Let me repeat what that principal said:

“bureaucratic hurdles and ridiculous amount of wasted time in meetings with advisors and consultants…means there could never be value for money for the investment.”

With all due respect to the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell), I am content to take the advice of the principal of Banbury school on this matter.

[Mr Slaughter]

The hon. Gentleman was in a position to assert that a single individual received £1.35 million. He has been asked to name that individual. It appears from his comments that he was simply parroting what the Secretary of State said in the House. If the hon. Gentleman cannot name that individual, will he withdraw that accusation today?

[Tony Baldry]

The position of the Opposition on this issue is pathetic. They come to this Chamber with synthetic anger, having got the country and schools up and down the country into a real position of difficulty, and they then have the audacity to suggest—[Interruption.] No, they then have the audacity to suggest that the Secretary of State was misleading the House. That is what the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) has been saying.

I want to make it very clear to the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) that I will trust my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education implicitly on this, because I do not believe that he would have misled the House on this matter. If that is the best point that the hon. Gentleman can make to defend the previous Government’s being so incompetent that they gave more than £1 million to an individual consultant, it is a very sad situation.

The Secretary of State has made it clear that the present Government intend to continue to invest in school capital projects, whether they involve primary or secondary schools, either to ensure that the most dilapidated schools are repaired as quickly as possible or to provide extra school places where they are needed in areas of growing population. It would be helpful if the Minister gave us all an indication of how the Government intend to approach that. I think that all Government Members recognise that the Building Schools for the Future programme was a travesty of a scheme, but there clearly are schools that require capital investment.

It is clear, for example, that Banbury school, on my patch, still requires capital investment. It serves an area that includes a number of wards with a disadvantaged school population and it has some very mature buildings. I hope that the review that the Secretary of State has set up will make recommendations about capital investment that adhere to the principles of value for money and ensure that capital investment goes to the front line to benefit pupils and schools, not consultants. It would be helpful to have an indication of how the Government intend to invest money in school buildings in the future.

Another important point is that in the Building Schools for the Future programme, the previous Government simply ignored primary schools, although often in our constituencies it is in primary schools where the school population is growing. In counties such as Oxfordshire, there is a double whammy at the moment. The fact that the previous Government left our nation’s finances in such a parlous state, with one pound in every four being spent on interest, means that it is increasingly difficult for county councils, through their schools capital programme, to allocate money for new school building projects.

For example, the Grange school in Banbury, which has a number of temporary classrooms, was hoping that it would be able to receive money from the county council’s own capital programme. That is looking increasingly difficult, simply because there is not the money in the budget.

None of us in any way underestimates the difficult decisions that have to be made by Ministers. I hope that this Minister will not be distracted by the rather synthetic anger from those on the Opposition Benches, because they are the guilty men who have got us into this situation. Rather than coming to this Chamber and chuntering as they are this afternoon, they should be ashamed of themselves for the position in which they left our nation’s schools and our nation’s education.

No debate or contribution on education should pass without our remarking on the fact that 10 years ago, the United Kingdom was fourth in the world for the quality of our science education; we are now 14th. Ten years ago, we were seventh in the world for the quality of our children’s literacy; we are now 17th. Ten years ago, we were eighth in the world for the quality of our children’s mathematics; we are now 24th. So we are talking about every area of academic endeavour over the past 10 years. It is not just the Building Schools for the Future programme that the Labour party left in a shambles, but educational standards as a whole. The present Government will have to sort out all that in the coming years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on securing this timely and hugely important debate. He has campaigned tenaciously on this issue on behalf of the schools in his constituency and I applaud him for it.

This has been an energetic and passionate debate, and rightly so. Education fires up people’s passions. Many hon. Members from various parties were drawn into politics because they want to work to give all our children and young people the best possible start—an aim with which I think we all agree. However, the whole House should also agree that cutting Building Schools for the Future so soon after the birth of the coalition Government is a shameful and shambolic example of ministerial arrogance and incompetence.

Time and time again in this debate, we have heard of the anger in hon. Members’ constituencies—real anger, not synthetic—about the decision to scrap school buildings. My hon. Friend the Member for Halton, my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) have made excellent speeches. I also highlight the excellent contribution made by the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), who illustrated the cross-party anger about the matter. The rally in London on Monday organised by the teaching unions and my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Education showed the depth of anger not just in the House, but across the country among parents, young people, teachers, school governors and local authorities.

We have heard that the manner in which the decision was made showed breathtaking incompetence and arrogance. It was incompetent because the Secretary of State, whom I like very much and think is an incredibly intelligent man, was not on top of his brief. It was a debacle because information was not provided to hon. Members when the Secretary of State made his statement to the House on 5 July. It was a shambles because error after error appeared in the cancellation lists. I think that we are currently on our fifth or sixth list, but I might be a bit behind the curve.

What matters more than any of that is the fact that 735 schools will now not be refurbished or rebuilt as planned. It is confusing. Dyke House school in my constituency was due for financial closure this Friday. It has decanted all its students to another site ahead of the two-year building programme. The head teacher has invested another £400,000 to facilitate the build, and the local authority has invested £3 million to ensure that it takes place. There has been no word whatever about whether the project can proceed. I asked a named day question about Dyke House school on 6 July, to be answered on 12 July. Almost two weeks after that answer was due to be provided, I have not yet got a response from the Department. I had the privilege to serve as a Minister in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and I found it an incredible honour to work with the most passionate, energetic and professional officials anywhere in Whitehall. This is not the officials’ fault; it is a symptom and a sign of ministerial dysfunction and incompetence, and the ministerial team should be ashamed of themselves.

[Mr Slaughter]

My hon. Friend is identifying some of the perhaps unintended consequences. It is not just that schools are being left with crumbling buildings; local authorities’ plans for redeveloping schools have also been thrown into chaos, causing not only financial loss but the sort of loss that my hon. Friend is discussing. In some local authorities, including mine, academies have had a full modernisation programme but other schools have been left to rot, resulting in a two-tier system. It is a complete shambles.

[Mr Wright]

I agree absolutely. At the moment, we are debating the Academies Bill on the Floor of the House; I think that we are about to suspend for a Division on it. The Academies Bill will set up a two-tier system of education as well.