Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement.

I will turn in a moment to the sorry story of how we got here, but let me first ask the House to reflect on two things. First, the safety of children and staff in schools today should be our highest priority, and while the voices of children are rarely heard in this place, it is their welfare, their hopes and their fears that should be uppermost in our minds today. Secondly, the mark and measure of each of us as politicians is our willingness to take and to accept responsibility: collective responsibility, not just for our own actions but for those of the Governments in which we serve—and this week, as the school year begins, there is an awful lot of responsibility for Ministers to take.

What an utter shambles this is. The defining image of 13 years of Conservative Government is one of children cowering under steel props, there to stop the ceiling falling in on their heads. Thirteen years into a Conservative Government, the public realm is literally crumbling around the next generation. The Education Secretary said this morning that in her view it was not the job of her Department to ensure the safety of our children’s schools, and that she was doing a good job. Schools are literally at risk of collapse. She is the Education Secretary, so whose responsibility does she think it is?

This is the tragic endgame of the sticking-plaster politics of the last 13 years. Children have been failed by this Conservative Government. It is RAAC that is our focus today, but the issue is wider and deeper across our schools and across our country. It is deeper because school buildings are only part of the wider failure in our education system, over which Ministers have been presiding for 13 long years. It is wider because thousands upon thousands of schools and other public buildings were built in the last century, and were not intended to last for more than a couple of decades. This was system build—quick, cheap, too often involving asbestos, and not expected still to be there in 30 years’ time. That is why the previous Labour Government took responsibility and began rebuilding them, the length and breadth of our country. That is why we launched the Building Schools for the Future programme, to give our children the start they deserved. That is because then—as now and as always—Labour puts children first.

The Schools Minister today is the same Schools Minister who scrapped Labour’s plans as one of his very first acts back in 2010. In 2010 the Conservatives scaled back plans to just 150 school rebuilding projects each year, slowing the pace of renewal. In 2021, when their then Chancellor—now the Prime Minister—delivered a spending review, he cut the pace again to just 50 a year, and today the previous permanent secretary at the Department for Education told of the Department’s bid to double the schools rebuilding programme in 2021 being knocked back by the then Chancellor, who instead of doubling it, almost halved it.

I spoke earlier of responsibility. The Secretary of State was clear just a few hours ago that she refuses to accept any responsibility, so who on the Government Benches today will take responsibility for decision after decision to slash spending on school safety? I thank the Secretary of State for having addressed some of the questions that families across this country will have, but I am afraid that there are many, many more. Time is short, so I will ask many of them in writing, but I hope that she will be able to answer these questions now, and to answer all my questions in full.

Why is the Secretary of State still refusing to publish the list of affected schools, promptly and in full, today? Why did the condition data collection survey between 2017 and 2019 not look in more detail at these issues? What strategy does the Department have right now for the wider condition of system build schools and other educational premises that are long past their design lifespan? How many other educational settings are currently believed, or suspected, by the Department to contain RAAC where that is yet to be confirmed? Do emergency services have the information they need, should something go wrong? What is the estimated timeline for completing the necessary repairs in affected schools? How long will students face disruption during this process? Which capital budgets are being raided and which priorities are being downgraded today to fund the works that are happening now? What assessment has been made of the risks of a RAAC failure in the context where asbestos is also present? There are many more questions I could ask, but the most important is this: who in this Government in the months ahead will take some responsibility for sorting out the chaos that our children face?

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank the hon. Lady, and of course that is me, but what matters is what you do. When I was given new information and had to consider the impact that this would have on our schools and children, I took action even though it was politically difficult. Yesterday, when the hon. Lady was asked about Wales and RAAC, she waved away concerns and said that there was no problem. Why? Because it involved a Labour Government with Labour policies. Today, two schools closed in Wales just as they start their surveying programme. We started our surveying programme in March 2022. One of these involves taking decisions and being honest with the public; one is trying to score political points. I answered her question: the information will be provided this week—[Interruption.]