Safety of School Buildings

Kate Osborne Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)]

Earlier today the Prime Minister said that he had acted decisively on RAAC. Earlier this week, the Secretary of State said that schools in which critical RAAC had been identified had been fixed immediately. As we have come to expect from this Government, neither of those statements are true. Critical RAAC was identified at St James Catholic Primary School in my constituency in June and action was not taken immediately—or, indeed, at all. It was told that it could open in part and then, as with many other schools, it received just 24 hours’ notice that it had to close in full.

Schools would not be in this position had the Government acted decisively. They have known RAAC was unsafe since 2018, and they could and should have taken action much earlier. Decades of cutting money from vital public services has literally left buildings crumbling and left our kids at risk, sitting in unsafe buildings. The Government’s decisions have left all our public services on their knees, not just our schools but crumbling hospitals and courts. It is not just the buildings: whole services have collapsed.

Staff, too, are being failed: workers in schools, the NHS and local government have all been left propping up services. Huge increases in workload, coupled with real-terms pay cuts, have also left public sector workers at the point of collapse. We know that the Government’s rhetoric on levelling up is yet more untruths and we know why: the Prime Minister boasting about moving money from poorer areas to richer areas, cutting tax on champagne, spending millions on new offices while our northern communities like Hebburn, Boldon, Jarrow and Gateshead in my constituency are left behind. It does not surprise me to see so many of my colleagues from the north-east present today.

Communities are neglected and left paying the price of Tory chaos while Ministers, their spouses and their cronies get richer. Conservative Members attempt to gaslight the country into believing that everything is okay, but despite their panto screaming during Prime Minister’s questions, they know the reality: that 13 years of Tory Governments has ruined our country. From the cost of living crisis and food and energy bills to our waters, schools and NHS, every part of our country is falling down.

The Secretary of State likes to keep saying that decisions were “nothing to do with me”, but the fact that our schools and the country are falling apart is absolutely down to the Government. At this moment, thousands of parents are petrified because of this crisis, while we have a Prime Minister and a Secretary of State with feet of clay. They need to accept that their time is up, and move aside so that the Labour party can start clearing up the mess that they have caused.