List of schools with safety-risk concrete revealed as Sunak denies cutting repairs budget – UK politics live | Politics

In the Commons Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, is now speaking on behalf of the government in the debate on the Labour motion.

In her opening remarks she claimed that Labour had descended “into the political gutter” in its handling of the Raac school building crisis.

And, challenged to explain why her department was spending £34m on an office refurbishment when that money could have been spent on schools, she said that the decision to spent that money had been signed off by the commercial director at the Department for Education in 2019. She said it wasn’t, and shouldn’t, have been a decision for ministers.

Helena Horton

Peers are being urged to permanently delete amendments to the levelling up bill that would allow housebuilders to get away with polluting England’s most sensitive rivers with sewage.

The amendments, drafted by Michael Gove, are coming before the Lords either today or next Wednesday. They are aimed at getting rid of nutrient neutrality rules, which are part of the EU’s habitats directive. If the bill passes, it will be the first time England has ripped up an EU derived environment law.

The Green party peer Jenny Jones plans to force a vote on the amendment to get it permanently deleted from the bill. This would force the government to bring the measure back in a separate bill and possibly delay it to beyond the next general election.

Two years ago Jones helped to lead a Lords rebellion that successfully blocked an 18-page government amendment to the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill and forced the government to return with a separate bill.

This move would be additional to a rebellion by the Duke of Wellington and Tory peers including former minister Zac Goldsmith, who are backing an amendment that would cancel out Gove’s.

Jones is urging the Labour party, which has sat on the fence on this issue, to join her and the Liberal Democrats in her quest to save England’s sensitive wetlands, such as the Norfolk Broads.

Jones said:

The Lords were lied to by the government about not lowering environmental standards. These amendments to the levelling up bill give peers a great opportunity to correct the mistake we made in giving ground to ministers on keeping our long standing system of environmental protections.

In the Commons Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, is now opening the debate on Labour’s “humble address” motion. (See 2.05pm.)

During PMQs Keir Starmer did not repeat the line he used on BBC Breakfast this morning about Rishi Sunak prioritising a tax cut for champagne drinkers ahead of investment in school repairs. (See 9.34am.) But Phillipson repeated the point in her opening remarks.

Phillipson also said she was glad that the Department for Education had published a list of schools affected by Raac. But she said was concerned that there might be omissions from it.

Facing what was always going to be a tricky PMQs, Rishi Sunak performed much better than might have been expected in his exchanges with Keir Starmer and at times he was even ahead. But it was also hopeless. Both assessments can be true at that same time.

On the plus side, Sunak did quite well because he sounded super-confident and, on the Raac issue, for many of the questions, he had answers.

Schools affected? That list has been published, he said.

Impact on pupils? “In the majority of cases children will attend school as normal and the mitigations take typically just days or weeks to complete,” he insisted.

Scrapping the Building Schools for the Future programme? It excluded 80% of schools, the NAO found it “a third more expensive than it needed to be” and a later review said it was “time consuming and expensive”, he said.

And – perhaps the most serious charge – halving the school repair budget as chancellor? Sunak insisted the money he set aside for school maintenance and rebuilding in his spending review as chancellor represented a 20% increase on the years before.

Some of this might not pass muster with the fact-checkers. But, in the cut and thrust of debate, Sunak sounded to his MPs like someone who had a response to the questions he was facing. Conservative MPs will have also enjoyed his questionable claim about Starmer not raising the Raac issue in the past. “Exactly the type of political opportunism we’ve come to expect from Captain Hindsight,” he said, in a jibe that chimes a bit with voters, and a lot more with the Tory press.

But there is an obvious, massive, and election-losing problem with this line of attack. If you are leader of the opposition, “political opportunism” is part of the job description. Starmer did not need to trip Sunak up with forensic questioning today. All he had to do was channel the frustrations of people who feel the government is failing, and he did this very, very ably.

His best line was probably this one.

The truth is this crisis is the inevitable result of 13 years of cutting corners, botched jobs, sticking-plaster politics. It’s the sort of thing you expect from cowboy builders saying that everyone else is wrong, everyone else is blame, protesting they’ve done an effing good job, even as the ceiling falls in. The difference, Mr Speaker, is that in this case the cowboys are running the country. Isn’t he ashamed that after 13 years of tory governmnt children are cowering under steel supports, stopping their classroom roof falling in?

Starmer was articulating what people think. Whether that’s what most people think or just what many people think does not really matter, because it’s what enough people think (the polls suggest). So he prevailed.

Is there anything Sunak could have said or done to avert this? Probably not. The Financial Times has just published a column by Robert Shrimsley which explains why perfectly. It is headlined “Sunak’s problem is that Britain has stopped listening to the Tories” and it starts:

One of John Major’s cabinet ministers once likened the relationship with voters in the last years to a couple heading for divorce, glaring at each other over the toast and where “even the sound of the milk on the cornflakes is a source of irritation”.

In those final months, Tory MPs stopped believing they could win the next election, leadership contenders prioritised their own ambitions and media supporters argued over how to shape the party after a defeat. Above all, voters simply stopped listening to the Tories. No matter that Major was a decent man and Kenneth Clarke an impressive chancellor, the public had seen enough. Efforts to change the narrative were consumed by bad news, gaffes or minor scandals which seemed to epitomise the decay.

This must all sound familiar to Rishi Sunak. Once again we see a government with a studious premier and a capable chancellor trying to appear fresh after too many years in power. And yet, as one ally laments: “The country doesn’t seem interested in what we are saying.”

If the electorate isn’t paying attention any more, then no matter what you say, you just can’t win.

Downing Street is defending what Rishi Sunak said at PMQs about Keir Starmer not having raised the school building safety issue before. Labour says Sunak was wrong, because Starmer did talk about it in his education speech in July. (See 12.46pm.) Starmer said in the speech:

So – for his Tory party to turn around afterwards and repay their sacrifice with nothing, to sit there twiddling their thumbs as teachers leave in their droves, school buildings start to crumble and absenteeism goes through the roof – that’s shameful.

But No 10 says Sunak was specifically talking about Raac.

This is from the Sun’s Harry Cole.

JUST IN: No10 sticking to guns that Starmer speech did not mention RAAC after PMQs dig.

“PM was talking about RAAC, and there has been new information recently. Starmers speech did not reference RAAC once.”

UPDATE: During PMQs Sunak said:

Before today, [Starmer] never once raised this issue with me in parliament, it wasn’t even worthy of a single mention in his so-called landmark speech on education this summer.

And at the post-PMQs lobby briefing, when it was put to her that Starmer had mentioned the state of school building in his education speech, the PM’s press secretary replied:

The prime minister was clearly talking about Raac and Starmer did not mention Raac in his speech.

Lucy Powell, the new shadow leader of the Commons, raises a point of order. She says Rishi Sunak said Keir Starmer had not raised school building safety before, including in his speech in the summer. But he did mention it in the speech. And Labour MPs have raised the issue more than 180 times, she says. Will Sunak correct the record?

Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, says Powell has now corrected the record herself. He says Sunak (who has gone) will be told about what Powell has said.