School Building Closures

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. As soon as we had information, we took a decision in every case. When we first saw the incident in 2018, we took a decision and we put out new guidance and warnings. We put out new guidance in 2021-22. We started surveys directly in 2022, when the previous Secretary of State started to get more concerned about RAAC in our school estate. We then sent in surveyors directly, because the responsible bodies were not moving quickly enough.

Let me turn now to the initial advice. Three new cases emerged over the summer, and some were subject to advice, as the hon. Lady says, which came on 21 August. I instructed those involved to get more technical information. The last case is really what tipped us into making a decision. It was a very difficult decision—I am not sure the hon. Lady would have made it because Labour do not tend to make these difficult decisions, and the Labour Government in Wales have still not done so—because of the impact on children and because of the impact on our school leaders and teachers. The last case, which was in another school setting in England, took place on 24 August. We went to investigate that to see what had happened.

On my own decision, I went abroad because that was the first time that I could go abroad. I went abroad for my father’s birthday, knowing that I would still be chairing the meetings, which I did on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and then I made the decision—as we had now made a decision— to come back from holiday immediately. My return was delayed by one day because of the air traffic control incident, so I got back to announce the decision on Thursday.

When I looked at the new case, I said that we needed to get technical evidence. The second thing I said was that we needed to operationalise this. I knew that this would be difficult. I did not want to put schools in a position where, if I put out a notice via the media or directly, they would be left with the problem. I wanted to stand up caseworkers. I wanted to stand up portacabins. I wanted to speak to utility companies to make sure that everything would be in place so that we could minimise the length of time that it took to put up those portacabins. I wanted to put more structural engineering companies in place, because I knew that we would do more surveys. I also wanted to make sure that we had a nationwide propping company, so that we could put the largely horizontal structural solutions in place to fix everything.

When we have to make a major decision, there is no point creating more issues than we need to. We need to operationalise that decision, which is what I decided to do. The time from the last case to the announcement was one week. That is probably one of the quickest decisions that most people have made in this House and we operationalised it, all while I was still working, as I always do.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Education Committee.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister with responsibility for the schools system and the permanent secretary for spending two hours this morning with the Education Committee on this issue. They were able to provide a number of useful answers, including on the provision of temporary classrooms.

I have to say that I was very disappointed last night to receive what was a non-answer on that question about temporary classrooms, which had already been asked at the Public Accounts Committee. I am glad that Baroness Barran was able to go further with the Select Committee today. The information that she provided us with was that there were seven cases from before the summer requiring temporary buildings. The Department is now aware of 29 schools that will require some form of temporary accommodation. Eleven have that temporary accommodation in place. As of Friday, there is the potential for as many as 180 single classrooms and 68 double classrooms to be needed as temporary accommodation.

I urge the Secretary of State to ensure that those are provided as swiftly as possible and that schools and responsible bodies have certainty about when those will be in place, so that we absolutely do what she said—to minimise disruption of children’s education. A key concern of the Select Committee is children not in school, and anything that can be done to minimise that disruption, to create greater certainty for the teachers and the leaders who have done such an amazing job of responding to this, will certainly be welcome.