Safety of School Buildings

Debate between Julie Elliott and Roger Gale

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

I am pleased to be able to contribute to this debate on the critical issue of the safety of school buildings. Today I want to talk about Grange Park Primary School in my constituency, which provides an excellent education for the pupils that attend it, in spite of the appalling condition of the building. It is truly a credit to the pupils, parents, teachers and the school community that they make it such a great place to learn in such circumstances.

The school was built in 1931. My own father attended the school in the ’30s, in a building that was at that time, almost 100 years ago, fit for purpose. Now, sadly, it is anything but. Grange Park Primary School was recently omitted from the school rebuilding programme, despite a number of capital failures in the building affecting walls, roofs, windows and mechanical and electrical services. I could provide the Minister with the images now. It has cracks in the internal and external brickwork over 1 cm wide—in a number of cases, wide enough to fit a pen in. It has huge cracks going up to the roof and over the roof to the chimney. There is damage to important structural elements above the windows, and it has widespread damp due to roof failures, broken windows and building movement, yet it does not qualify for funds.

I ask the Minister, why? After the CDC survey, his own DFE officials contacted the local authority to warn of the alarming condition the building was in. Would he be comfortable sending children to learn in those conditions? Does he deem this building a safe place to learn in? I would like to ask the Minister why this school building in my constituency, which so obviously needs a huge amount of investment, care and attention at the minimum, and in all likelihood a rebuild, has been omitted from the school rebuilding programme. The parents, teachers and pupils of Grange Park Primary School deserve answers, so I hope the Minister can provide them today.

When we talk about the safety of school buildings, we are talking about the very minimum that is required for a child to learn, and we are talking about the simple things that we as a country should expect from our education system and its infrastructure and from our Government. How are our young people supposed to learn and fulfil their potential when their school buildings are not fit for purpose or their school environment is crumbling around them? It is not conducive to encouraging hope and opportunity, and it does not show belief from this Government in our young people.

It is clear that the Conservatives’ mismanagement of the education system has become a hallmark of this Conservative Government over their 13 years in power, and that a lack of care and attention to our education sector is having a real effect on our children’s future. That is reflected in the alarming numbers involved: between 2009 and 2022, the Department’s capital spending declined by over a third in cash terms and by a half in real terms. These are not small numbers or negligible figures, but huge reductions in capital spending on the vital infrastructure that our schools and, indirectly, our young people need. Hiding these problems will only make them worse.

As such, I want to use this opportunity to ask the Minister how many schools in Sunderland and the wider north-east pose a risk to life. Can he really confirm today that every school building in Sunderland, including Grange Park Primary, and in the wider north-east is safe for our young people to enter and learn in? These are simple but important questions that the Government need to answer, and the longer they put this off and hide the scale of the problem, the greater an issue it will become. That is unfortunately what you get after 13 years of Conservative Government: buildings crumbling because the Conservatives will not invest in them, teachers striking because the Conservatives do not value them, and facts hidden because the Conservatives do not like them. First, we need to truly understand the scale of the problems caused by 13 years of Conservative government.

I will finish with one more question: if the evidence at Grange Park Primary is not enough to warrant funding from the school rebuilding programme, what state does a school have to be in to get this Government to invest and rebuild it? It is shameful.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee on Education.

Energy Markets (Competition)

Debate between Julie Elliott and Roger Gale

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[David Mowat]

I want to put on the record the fact that our gas prices are the second lowest in the EU, according to the EU energy portal and the International Energy Agency. I realise that we cannot spend our time bandying this around.

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

No, we cannot.

[Julie Elliott]

I will go with the Government’s stats.

What would a genuinely competitive energy market look like? It would provide good customer service, competitive pricing, pressure on supplier costs and profit margins, high levels of consumer engagement, and a wide range of retailers and rivalry between suppliers, with changing market shares and new entrants. That is what our energy market would look like, but it is not what it looks like today. It provides consistently poor levels of customer service. Complaints to the energy ombudsman are up 71% compared with last year. There are uncompetitive prices. Energy companies often say that prices here are lower than in the rest of Europe, but that is true only when tax is included. There is evidence of what is known as “rockets and feathers”. If pricing is competitive, falls in the wholesale cost should be passed on as quickly as when it increases. However, in 2011 Ofgem found evidence that energy bills respond more rapidly to rising supplier costs compared with falling costs.

There is mixed evidence on supplier costs. In a competitive market, operational costs should converge, but the Institute for Public Policy Research found that operational costs for energy suppliers had in fact diverged.

On high and rising profits, given the complex ways in which energy companies organise their affairs, it is not clear exactly how much money they are making. That is not completely straightforward. The segmental accounts, which they file with Ofgem, usually have gaps and provide a snapshot of earnings. They show collective profits up by about £1 billion a year compared with 2010, at a time when sales are down and there have not been any significant reductions in fuel or operating costs. Most companies publicly aspire to a 5% margin on supply, but that is significantly higher than any other comparable industry and is obviously on top of their profits from generation.

Levels of consumer engagement are low. Notwithstanding what seems to be a one-off spike in switching following the last round of price increases in November 2013, the number of people switching supplier has fallen by about half since 2008, and switching levels are the lowest on record. That was clearly outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie). The situation is exacerbated by very low levels of trust in the industry. A recent report by Edelman showed that energy companies are less trusted in the UK than in nearly every other country in the world. That is a frightening state of affairs.

There is a static market, which is dominated by the big six firms, which hold 97% of the domestic market and 82% of the smaller business market. The domination of those six firms does not in itself indicate that competition in the market is ineffective, but the fact that no new entrant has achieved anything like the scale of operations to challenge the big six suggests significant barriers for newcomers. There has been little change in companies’ market shares in the past six years, and much evidence suggests that “sticky” customers—those who have stayed with the companies they were with before privatisation—pay a premium compared with those who switch, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) highlighted.

What are Labour’s plans to promote competition in the energy market? We will make companies buy and sell all their electricity via a pool or open exchange. Currently, most energy is traded bilaterally or even within vertically integrated companies. Other European markets have much more exchange-based trading, such as in Nord Pool, which is one reason why those markets are more liquid, more transparent and more competitive.

We will ring-fence supply and generation businesses within vertically integrated companies. If companies can supply most of their own generating capacity, they have much less incentive to trade on the open market. That again makes it more difficult for independent generators and suppliers to find a market to trade in, and prevents any proper scrutiny of the prices companies pay for electricity from their own power stations. We will therefore put a ring fence between companies’ generation arms and their retail businesses.

In the retail market, we will make it much easier for consumers to find the best deal by introducing a simplified tariff structure. I accept that Ofgem has taken some steps to reduce the number of tariffs, but to drive real consumer engagement we need to create a consistent pricing system and standardise the tariff structure. We propose to create a simple structure with a daily standing charge and cost per unit.

To sustain the benefits that those structural reforms will bring, we will create a new regulator. Our green paper proposes additional powers to penalise anti-competitive behaviour to ensure that consumers get what would be expected from a functioning, competitive market. Therefore, if wholesale prices fall and that reduction is not passed on fairly by suppliers to consumers, the regulator would have the power to require suppliers to do that. We also propose additional protections for non-domestic customers in bringing the off-grid market under the regulatory framework. A Labour Government would, until our reforms kick in, put a stop to unfair price rises by freezing energy bills until 2017.

I end with a few questions for the Minister. I outlined the comments he made about Labour’s proposed price freeze being “extremely dangerous”, but does SSE’s announcement today prove that he was completely wrong? Does he now welcome SSE’s move and agree that it should go further and commit to freezing its prices until 2017? The Minister and his colleagues have argued against Labour’s plans to ring-fence generation and supply in separate businesses within energy companies. Given SSE’s announcement today, does he now admit that they were wrong on that as well?

According to Which?, only one in five people trust their energy provider to act in their best interests. If the Minister believes that the energy market is working so well, what does he put that statistic down to? Does he also accept that the 5% profit margin that the big six energy companies aspire to is greater than in comparable industries and utilities in Europe?