Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Bridget Phillipson

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

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

I begin by welcoming the fourth Education Secretary in the last four months to his place. For the time being, he has the best job in Government. In May, internal Department documents described some school buildings as a “risk to life”. After the Conservatives crashed our economy, does he believe that there should be further cuts to school capital budgets?

[Kit Malthouse]

I thank the hon. Lady for her welcome. She is absolutely right that this is the best job in Whitehall and, indeed, the most important Department, given that we hold the future of the country literally in our hands. She is right that the comprehensive survey of school premises that the Department undertook revealed some alarming problems, and we are working closely with local education authorities, multi-academy trusts and others to try to rectify those. She will know that we have invested significant amounts of money in the school rebuilding programme. We continue to have conversations with the Treasury about how we may be able to do more.

[Bridget Phillipson]

As a result of the Conservatives crashing our economy, school leaders are now warning that they will be forced to cut back on equipment, sport and the very staff who enable all our children to achieve and thrive. Last month, I set out Labour’s fully funded, fully costed commitments to end tax breaks for private schools and to invest in breakfast clubs for every child in every primary school in England. If the Secretary of State genuinely believes in delivering a great state education for all our children, why does he not adopt Labour’s plans?

[Kit Malthouse]

As the hon. Lady will know, we already have breakfast clubs in a number of schools across the country, which are targeted at where they are most needed. Our approach to such issues is to do exactly that: to look for vulnerabilities and the areas that require assistance and then to target funding accordingly. At the start of our hopefully long relationship across the Dispatch Box, I hope that as well as doing her job of challenging the Government to do ever better, she will recognise some of the significant achievements in education over the last decade, not least the fact that 87% of our schools are now good or outstanding and that we stand at our highest ever level in the international league tables for literacy.