Government has adopted sticking-plaster approach to school building safety, says NAO – UK politics live | Politics
Government has adopted ‘sticking-plaster approach’ to school building safety, says Gareth Davies
Good morning. As you would expect, Labour and the other opposition parties have portrayed the Raac (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) school building safety crisis as evidence of how the Conservatives’ failure to invest properly in infrastructure is now having potentially disastrous consequences. But you might not expect the National Audit Office to come out and say more or less exactly the same thing.
The NAO is highly respected, and that is partly because it does not do partisan politics, and it does not go in for sensationalism or over-statement. Its reports, although frequently newsworthy, are burdened with so much boring officialese that it can be hard for a reader to work out what the story actually is. Most people don’t know who the head of the NAO even is, because he does not chase headlines.
But today Gareth Davies, the NAO chief, is on the front page of the Times, where he has written an article in effect accusing the government of adopting a “sticking-plaster approach” to school building safety. He says:
Getting good value for public spending means giving sufficient priority to unflashy but essential tasks such as efficiently maintaining public buildings and replacing obsolete technology, as well as to more eye-catching new projects.
Two recent National Audit Office (NAO) reports demonstrate the problems caused by underinvestment in the physical estate for two essential public services: education and health. In June we reported on the condition of school buildings, concluding: “Following years of underinvestment, the estate’s overall condition is declining and about 700,000 pupils are learning in schools that the responsible body or Department for Education (DfE) believes needs major rebuilding or refurbishment. Most seriously, the DfE recognises significant safety concerns across the estate and has escalated these concerns to the government risk register.” This week pupils, parents and teachers are experiencing the disruptive impact of addressing those safety concerns with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) ….
The underlying challenge is that adequately funding responsible capital programmes for our public services leaves less for higher profile projects. Failure to bite this bullet leads to poor value, with more money required for emergency measures or a sticking-plaster approach.
By chance or intentionally (probably by chance), Davies is using Labour terminology. Keir Starmer has often accused the government of “sticking-plaster politics”, claiming it is not addressing the long-term causes of problems.
Nick Gibb, the schools minister, was doing an interview round this morning. Asked about Davies’s article, he said he did not accept his argument that the government was neglecting school buildings. Gibb said:
We take any official report from the National Audit Office extremely seriously, but I don’t agree with [Davies’s] comments in his article. We’re spending £1.8bn a year on maintenance and improvements to [schools].
I will post more from his interviews shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.15am: Keir Starmer chairs a meeting of his new shadow cabinet. Later he is expected to announces further frontbench changes affecting shadow ministers not in the shadow cabinet.
Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
11.30am: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.
After 12.45pm: MPs begin a debate on the remaining stages of the energy bill.
1pm: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, is due to be interviewed on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show.
2.20pm: Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, gives a statement to MSPs about his programme for government for 2023-24.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
Key events
According to a report in East Anglia Bylines, a citizen journalism website, Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, privately told someone earlier this year that if she could just “keep a lid” on the Raac problem until the election, it would then be Labour’s problem. The report says:
A reliable source has informed us that in early February, two months after the risk level was raised to high, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan remarked, “We just need to keep the lid on this for two years and then it’s someone else’s problem.“
This, according to the Surveyors in Education, was when schools were given an ‘urgent deadline’ to tell the government if ‘they have potentially dangerous RAAC on their estate.’
This does sound like the sort of thing a politician in a government party 20 points behind in the opinion polls might say – but more as a joke than as a reference to a “cover-up” (to use the description East Anglia Bylines deploys in a sub-heading).
However, the Department for Education says Keegan did not make this comment. A spokesperson said they did not know the source of the claim and that, having checked, they have established it is not accurate. “She has not made these comments,” he said.
Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection to take place on 5 October, just before Labour conference
Severin Carrell
The byelection for Rutherglen and Hamilton West triggered by the recall petition against Margaret Ferrier will take place on 5 October, the earliest date available after Westminster returned from recess.
The date was confirmed this morning by Cleland Sneddon, the returning officer for South Lanarkshire council, after the Scottish National party moved the writ when Westminster resumed on Monday afternoon.
The byelection was called after nearly 12,000 voters in Rutherglen and Hamilton West signed a recall petition, the first in a Scottish constituency, after Ferrier was suspended from the Commons for 30 days after travelling to London despite suspecting she had Covid in 2021.
It will be a significant electoral test for Humza Yousaf, the beleaguered leader of the Scottish National party, with Labour widely expected to win back the seat. Labour’s annual party conference begins the weekend after the byelection, and a surprise SNP victory would get it off to gloomy start.
Boosted by repeated visits from senior party figures including Keir Starmer and officials from party headquarters in London, Labour has been campaigning hard in Rutherglen since Ferrier’s suspension was recommended in March.
The seat has swung between the SNP and Labour over the last three general elections. Ferrier first took the seat from Labour in 2015, when the SNP nearly swept the board, winning 56 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats. Labour narrowly won it back in 2017, with a 265-vote majority, before Ferrier regained it in 2019.
The seat will disappear in its current form at the next general election, to be renamed Rutherglen, with a different boundary.
UK government has been ‘world leading’ in identifying schools with Raac problems, says minister
Here are more lines from what Nick Gibb, the schools minister, said on his media interview round this morning.
We are world-leading in terms of identifying where Raac is in our school estate.
We’re talking about a small number of schools out of 22,500 schools, but we have conducted surveys since March last year, so we know where Raac is, and we’re sending in surveyors to identify Raac.
I suspect that will be all sorted out far sooner than Christmas.
We know that the 52 schools that we’ve already sent in … alternative accommodation has been found, mitigation, propping, whatever it is, has all happened in those 52 schools. I expect the same thing to happen in the remaining 104 schools.
-
He said that 5% of bodies responsible for schools in England have still not responded to a questionnaire sent out by the Department for Education to allow it to assess the Raac risk. Speaking to Times Radio, he claimed that frustration with the bodies that have not responded partly explained Gillian Keegan’s outburst yesterday.
We put in a bid for 200, but what Rishi agreed to was to continue the rebuilding programme with 50 a year, consistent with what we’d been doing since we came into office.
Of course we put in a bid for 200, but of course the Treasury then has to compare that with all the other priorities from right across Whitehall, from the health service, defence, and so on.
Starmer says it is ‘unforgivable’ children not in school because of Raac school building crisis
In his opening address to his new shadow cabinet this moring, Keir Starmer said the Raac school building crisis was an example of what he meant when he accused the government of sticking-plaster politics. Using a phrase also used by the head of the National Audit Office today (see 9.32am), Starmer said:
Children are not at school today because of the action the government has failed to take in relation to schools. That is unforgivable.
It is a metaphor, frankly, for their sticking- plaster politics: never fixing the fundamentals – always sticking plasters.
Cost of fixing UK school concrete crisis still not known, minister says
Ministers still do not know how much the concrete crisis will cost to repair, Nick Gibb, the schools minister, admitted in interviews this morning. Ben Quinn has the story.
Keir Starmer tells his new shadow cabinet they need to provide answer to question: ‘Why Labour?’
Sky News has just broadcast footage of Keir Starmer addressing the shadow cabinet after his reshuffle yesterday. He told his colleagues that they had been chosen to sit round the table for four reasons.
You are around his table because of four things: your talent, your commitment, your hunger – really, really important – and because I wanted a team that wakes up every morning determined to rise to the challenges that our country faces and determined to improve our country for the better.
He also said the team needed to provide an answer to the question: ‘Why Labour?’
This will be the last conference before we go to the country so it’s very important that we are able to show that we are ready as a party, show the changes that we have talked about, that we have the answers that the country so desperately needs, and we can answer the question: ‘Why Labour?’ and put forward our positive case to the country.
Government has adopted ‘sticking-plaster approach’ to school building safety, says Gareth Davies
Good morning. As you would expect, Labour and the other opposition parties have portrayed the Raac (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) school building safety crisis as evidence of how the Conservatives’ failure to invest properly in infrastructure is now having potentially disastrous consequences. But you might not expect the National Audit Office to come out and say more or less exactly the same thing.
The NAO is highly respected, and that is partly because it does not do partisan politics, and it does not go in for sensationalism or over-statement. Its reports, although frequently newsworthy, are burdened with so much boring officialese that it can be hard for a reader to work out what the story actually is. Most people don’t know who the head of the NAO even is, because he does not chase headlines.
But today Gareth Davies, the NAO chief, is on the front page of the Times, where he has written an article in effect accusing the government of adopting a “sticking-plaster approach” to school building safety. He says:
Getting good value for public spending means giving sufficient priority to unflashy but essential tasks such as efficiently maintaining public buildings and replacing obsolete technology, as well as to more eye-catching new projects.
Two recent National Audit Office (NAO) reports demonstrate the problems caused by underinvestment in the physical estate for two essential public services: education and health. In June we reported on the condition of school buildings, concluding: “Following years of underinvestment, the estate’s overall condition is declining and about 700,000 pupils are learning in schools that the responsible body or Department for Education (DfE) believes needs major rebuilding or refurbishment. Most seriously, the DfE recognises significant safety concerns across the estate and has escalated these concerns to the government risk register.” This week pupils, parents and teachers are experiencing the disruptive impact of addressing those safety concerns with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) ….
The underlying challenge is that adequately funding responsible capital programmes for our public services leaves less for higher profile projects. Failure to bite this bullet leads to poor value, with more money required for emergency measures or a sticking-plaster approach.
By chance or intentionally (probably by chance), Davies is using Labour terminology. Keir Starmer has often accused the government of “sticking-plaster politics”, claiming it is not addressing the long-term causes of problems.
Nick Gibb, the schools minister, was doing an interview round this morning. Asked about Davies’s article, he said he did not accept his argument that the government was neglecting school buildings. Gibb said:
We take any official report from the National Audit Office extremely seriously, but I don’t agree with [Davies’s] comments in his article. We’re spending £1.8bn a year on maintenance and improvements to [schools].
I will post more from his interviews shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.15am: Keir Starmer chairs a meeting of his new shadow cabinet. Later he is expected to announces further frontbench changes affecting shadow ministers not in the shadow cabinet.
Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
11.30am: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.
After 12.45pm: MPs begin a debate on the remaining stages of the energy bill.
1pm: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, is due to be interviewed on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show.
2.20pm: Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, gives a statement to MSPs about his programme for government for 2023-24.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
Government has adopted ‘sticking-plaster approach’ to school building safety, says Gareth Davies
Good morning. As you would expect, Labour and the other opposition parties have portrayed the Raac (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) school building safety crisis as evidence of how the Conservatives’ failure to invest properly in infrastructure is now having potentially disastrous consequences. But you might not expect the National Audit Office to come out and say more or less exactly the same thing.
The NAO is highly respected, and that is partly because it does not do partisan politics, and it does not go in for sensationalism or over-statement. Its reports, although frequently newsworthy, are burdened with so much boring officialese that it can be hard for a reader to work out what the story actually is. Most people don’t know who the head of the NAO even is, because he does not chase headlines.
But today Gareth Davies, the NAO chief, is on the front page of the Times, where he has written an article in effect accusing the government of adopting a “sticking-plaster approach” to school building safety. He says:
Getting good value for public spending means giving sufficient priority to unflashy but essential tasks such as efficiently maintaining public buildings and replacing obsolete technology, as well as to more eye-catching new projects.
Two recent National Audit Office (NAO) reports demonstrate the problems caused by underinvestment in the physical estate for two essential public services: education and health. In June we reported on the condition of school buildings, concluding: “Following years of underinvestment, the estate’s overall condition is declining and about 700,000 pupils are learning in schools that the responsible body or Department for Education (DfE) believes needs major rebuilding or refurbishment. Most seriously, the DfE recognises significant safety concerns across the estate and has escalated these concerns to the government risk register.” This week pupils, parents and teachers are experiencing the disruptive impact of addressing those safety concerns with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) ….
The underlying challenge is that adequately funding responsible capital programmes for our public services leaves less for higher profile projects. Failure to bite this bullet leads to poor value, with more money required for emergency measures or a sticking-plaster approach.
By chance or intentionally (probably by chance), Davies is using Labour terminology. Keir Starmer has often accused the government of “sticking-plaster politics”, claiming it is not addressing the long-term causes of problems.
Nick Gibb, the schools minister, was doing an interview round this morning. Asked about Davies’s article, he said he did not accept his argument that the government was neglecting school buildings. Gibb said:
We take any official report from the National Audit Office extremely seriously, but I don’t agree with [Davies’s] comments in his article. We’re spending £1.8bn a year on maintenance and improvements to [schools].
I will post more from his interviews shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.15am: Keir Starmer chairs a meeting of his new shadow cabinet. Later he is expected to announces further frontbench changes affecting shadow ministers not in the shadow cabinet.
Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
11.30am: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.
After 12.45pm: MPs begin a debate on the remaining stages of the energy bill.
1pm: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, is due to be interviewed on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show.
2.20pm: Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, gives a statement to MSPs about his programme for government for 2023-24.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
Key events
According to a report in East Anglia Bylines, a citizen journalism website, Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, privately told someone earlier this year that if she could just “keep a lid” on the Raac problem until the election, it would then be Labour’s problem. The report says:
A reliable source has informed us that in early February, two months after the risk level was raised to high, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan remarked, “We just need to keep the lid on this for two years and then it’s someone else’s problem.“
This, according to the Surveyors in Education, was when schools were given an ‘urgent deadline’ to tell the government if ‘they have potentially dangerous RAAC on their estate.’
This does sound like the sort of thing a politician in a government party 20 points behind in the opinion polls might say – but more as a joke than as a reference to a “cover-up” (to use the description East Anglia Bylines deploys in a sub-heading).
However, the Department for Education says Keegan did not make this comment. A spokesperson said they did not know the source of the claim and that, having checked, they have established it is not accurate. “She has not made these comments,” he said.
Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection to take place on 5 October, just before Labour conference
Severin Carrell
The byelection for Rutherglen and Hamilton West triggered by the recall petition against Margaret Ferrier will take place on 5 October, the earliest date available after Westminster returned from recess.
The date was confirmed this morning by Cleland Sneddon, the returning officer for South Lanarkshire council, after the Scottish National party moved the writ when Westminster resumed on Monday afternoon.
The byelection was called after nearly 12,000 voters in Rutherglen and Hamilton West signed a recall petition, the first in a Scottish constituency, after Ferrier was suspended from the Commons for 30 days after travelling to London despite suspecting she had Covid in 2021.
It will be a significant electoral test for Humza Yousaf, the beleaguered leader of the Scottish National party, with Labour widely expected to win back the seat. Labour’s annual party conference begins the weekend after the byelection, and a surprise SNP victory would get it off to gloomy start.
Boosted by repeated visits from senior party figures including Keir Starmer and officials from party headquarters in London, Labour has been campaigning hard in Rutherglen since Ferrier’s suspension was recommended in March.
The seat has swung between the SNP and Labour over the last three general elections. Ferrier first took the seat from Labour in 2015, when the SNP nearly swept the board, winning 56 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats. Labour narrowly won it back in 2017, with a 265-vote majority, before Ferrier regained it in 2019.
The seat will disappear in its current form at the next general election, to be renamed Rutherglen, with a different boundary.
UK government has been ‘world leading’ in identifying schools with Raac problems, says minister
Here are more lines from what Nick Gibb, the schools minister, said on his media interview round this morning.
We are world-leading in terms of identifying where Raac is in our school estate.
We’re talking about a small number of schools out of 22,500 schools, but we have conducted surveys since March last year, so we know where Raac is, and we’re sending in surveyors to identify Raac.
I suspect that will be all sorted out far sooner than Christmas.
We know that the 52 schools that we’ve already sent in … alternative accommodation has been found, mitigation, propping, whatever it is, has all happened in those 52 schools. I expect the same thing to happen in the remaining 104 schools.
-
He said that 5% of bodies responsible for schools in England have still not responded to a questionnaire sent out by the Department for Education to allow it to assess the Raac risk. Speaking to Times Radio, he claimed that frustration with the bodies that have not responded partly explained Gillian Keegan’s outburst yesterday.
We put in a bid for 200, but what Rishi agreed to was to continue the rebuilding programme with 50 a year, consistent with what we’d been doing since we came into office.
Of course we put in a bid for 200, but of course the Treasury then has to compare that with all the other priorities from right across Whitehall, from the health service, defence, and so on.
Starmer says it is ‘unforgivable’ children not in school because of Raac school building crisis
In his opening address to his new shadow cabinet this moring, Keir Starmer said the Raac school building crisis was an example of what he meant when he accused the government of sticking-plaster politics. Using a phrase also used by the head of the National Audit Office today (see 9.32am), Starmer said:
Children are not at school today because of the action the government has failed to take in relation to schools. That is unforgivable.
It is a metaphor, frankly, for their sticking- plaster politics: never fixing the fundamentals – always sticking plasters.
Cost of fixing UK school concrete crisis still not known, minister says
Ministers still do not know how much the concrete crisis will cost to repair, Nick Gibb, the schools minister, admitted in interviews this morning. Ben Quinn has the story.
Keir Starmer tells his new shadow cabinet they need to provide answer to question: ‘Why Labour?’
Sky News has just broadcast footage of Keir Starmer addressing the shadow cabinet after his reshuffle yesterday. He told his colleagues that they had been chosen to sit round the table for four reasons.
You are around his table because of four things: your talent, your commitment, your hunger – really, really important – and because I wanted a team that wakes up every morning determined to rise to the challenges that our country faces and determined to improve our country for the better.
He also said the team needed to provide an answer to the question: ‘Why Labour?’
This will be the last conference before we go to the country so it’s very important that we are able to show that we are ready as a party, show the changes that we have talked about, that we have the answers that the country so desperately needs, and we can answer the question: ‘Why Labour?’ and put forward our positive case to the country.
Government has adopted ‘sticking-plaster approach’ to school building safety, says Gareth Davies
Good morning. As you would expect, Labour and the other opposition parties have portrayed the Raac (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) school building safety crisis as evidence of how the Conservatives’ failure to invest properly in infrastructure is now having potentially disastrous consequences. But you might not expect the National Audit Office to come out and say more or less exactly the same thing.
The NAO is highly respected, and that is partly because it does not do partisan politics, and it does not go in for sensationalism or over-statement. Its reports, although frequently newsworthy, are burdened with so much boring officialese that it can be hard for a reader to work out what the story actually is. Most people don’t know who the head of the NAO even is, because he does not chase headlines.
But today Gareth Davies, the NAO chief, is on the front page of the Times, where he has written an article in effect accusing the government of adopting a “sticking-plaster approach” to school building safety. He says:
Getting good value for public spending means giving sufficient priority to unflashy but essential tasks such as efficiently maintaining public buildings and replacing obsolete technology, as well as to more eye-catching new projects.
Two recent National Audit Office (NAO) reports demonstrate the problems caused by underinvestment in the physical estate for two essential public services: education and health. In June we reported on the condition of school buildings, concluding: “Following years of underinvestment, the estate’s overall condition is declining and about 700,000 pupils are learning in schools that the responsible body or Department for Education (DfE) believes needs major rebuilding or refurbishment. Most seriously, the DfE recognises significant safety concerns across the estate and has escalated these concerns to the government risk register.” This week pupils, parents and teachers are experiencing the disruptive impact of addressing those safety concerns with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) ….
The underlying challenge is that adequately funding responsible capital programmes for our public services leaves less for higher profile projects. Failure to bite this bullet leads to poor value, with more money required for emergency measures or a sticking-plaster approach.
By chance or intentionally (probably by chance), Davies is using Labour terminology. Keir Starmer has often accused the government of “sticking-plaster politics”, claiming it is not addressing the long-term causes of problems.
Nick Gibb, the schools minister, was doing an interview round this morning. Asked about Davies’s article, he said he did not accept his argument that the government was neglecting school buildings. Gibb said:
We take any official report from the National Audit Office extremely seriously, but I don’t agree with [Davies’s] comments in his article. We’re spending £1.8bn a year on maintenance and improvements to [schools].
I will post more from his interviews shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.15am: Keir Starmer chairs a meeting of his new shadow cabinet. Later he is expected to announces further frontbench changes affecting shadow ministers not in the shadow cabinet.
Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
11.30am: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.
After 12.45pm: MPs begin a debate on the remaining stages of the energy bill.
1pm: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, is due to be interviewed on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show.
2.20pm: Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, gives a statement to MSPs about his programme for government for 2023-24.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
