Safety of School Buildings

Ben Bradley Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

I am grateful for the chance to speak in the debate, following the statement made by the Secretary of State for Education earlier this week.

I draw the attention of colleagues on both sides of the House to the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris)—this is bad timing on my part, as she is just leaving the Chamber—about the legacy of this Government on education, which is something to be proud of. I will not use my time to repeat her points, but when I post on my Facebook page later, I will add a link to her speech so that all my constituents can see it too.

In 13 years of Conservative government, standards have gone through the roof. My right hon. Friend the Schools Minister and others in government should be proud of that and trumpet it at every possible opportunity. I can point to recent examples in my own constituency, including Queen Elizabeth’s Academy, Oak Tree Primary School and Vision West Nottinghamshire College, that have gone through difficult times in terms of quality but are rated “good”, some for the first time ever, because of incredible amounts of local work and a drive for higher standards and better opportunities for kids in my constituency from this Government. No one should let anybody tell them that the Conservatives do not care about kids, education or schools because that is demonstrably nonsense.

In the debate, Labour Members have been asking for information that they would never release themselves. If the shoe were on the other foot, they would never allow that to happen and they would vote against such a motion. They know perfectly well that there has to be the ability to have a confidential conversation behind the scenes when budgets are set, because otherwise no ideas would ever come forward and no plans would ever be made. The Government are releasing information about schools in England, which is being published today, but that cannot be done for schools in Wales because Labour-run Wales does not have that information, as work to mitigate the challenge has not been done.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State had very little choice last week when she made the decision. There is no choice about when expert advice comes forward and changes the balance of risk. She had to take a risk averse, safety-first approach. That was absolutely the right thing to do. The immediate response has been very good. I felt her frustration yesterday, because this work has not just happened in the last week but has been going on for years. The Department for Education took a decision, identified the schools, supported those schools and committed the funds to tackle the problem. That happened fairly quickly and the outcome, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury said, is that fewer schools are affected than was originally thought last week. That is something of a success.

The history of the issue goes back several years. The idea raised by Opposition Members that the problem emerged only last week or in 2022 is nonsense. I am the leader of a county council, the responsible body for maintained schools in my constituency and around it. We have been doing survey work with the DFE since 2018-19, so it has been ongoing for a long time. There have been local and national condition improvement funds to work on the quality of those schools in that time. As a result, when the announcement was made last week, we had very good data and information to be able to tackle the situation quickly.

The sum total of affected schools in Nottinghamshire—there are no affected schools in my constituency—is one primary school being delayed in its return by a couple of days. That is not an accident; it has happened because a lot of work, funding and support has gone in over a long period of time. In places where that has not happened, the DFE stepped in directly in 2022, which was a good and responsible thing to do. I pay tribute to the work of colleagues in the Department and in my own council who have managed this well over a number of years. We have a local £9-million school condition improvement fund of our own and four schools in my constituency are being rebuilt. These are all good news stories for schools, not just because of the quality of education I have described, but for school buildings in my constituency and around it.

The level of building—500 new schools over a decade—is consistent with any programme in recent decades. The numbers under the programme that Labour Members are lauding ended up being something like 25 or 30 fewer than that. They never reached the target they said they were going to reach—shock, horror! This problem was an issue back in 1997 to 2010, but it was never mentioned at any point. They tell us now that if they had been in government, they would have used their psychic powers to figure out the problem before the experts did and would have tackled it well in advance. Of course we know that that is not true or possible.

The biggest concern I want to raise is about reassurance. I have heard three times from Opposition Members that schools are literally falling down around our children—name one, because they are not. Each time I hear that, I am reminded that I will be getting emails from my constituents saying, “I am worried about my kids’ safety in their school,” when no schools are affected in my constituency, they do not need to worry and those kids have all gone back—every single one—safely to school this week. That fearmongering and rhetoric is irresponsible. Parents will be unnecessarily worried about the condition of their kids’ school when I know, for all the reasons I have described, that we have managed this well over a number of years and it is not an issue in my constituency. I urge hon. Members to think long and hard before they put that unnecessary stress on parents who are already finding this difficult.