Rishi Sunak's government branded 'cowboy builders' over crumbling schools crisis

Prime Minister accused of 'sticking plaster politics' by Labour leader Keir Starmer

UK leader Rishi Sunak faces MPs during the first Prime Minister's Questions since parliament returned from its summer recess. AFP

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s return to the despatch box on Wednesday was dominated by a scandal involving crumbling concrete at schools across the country, which led to his party being described as “cowboy builders”.

During the first Prime Minister’s Questions since MPs returned to parliament after the summer recess, the Conservative Party leader tried to defend his government’s handling of the crisis.

Thousands of pupils have been forced to start the new academic year with online learning after classrooms were deemed unsafe owing to the presence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac). The beginning of term was pushed back for thousands more due to the presence of the lightweight concrete, which is prone to collapse.

Mr Sunak argued that only 1 per cent of the 22,000 schools in England had been fully or partially closed because of unsafe concrete.

Every institution affected had been given assistance by the government, he said.

Several MPs played on the apparent discontent in his cabinet, with jibes inspired by remarks from Education Secretary Gillian Keegan this week, when she said she was given little help to address the issue.

In a punchy debate, Labour leader Keir Starmer claimed the government's handling of the schools crisis showed “the cowboys are running the country”.

“The truth is, this crisis is the inevitable result of 13 years of cutting corners, botched jobs, sticking-plaster politics,” Mr Starmer said in his first face-off with the Prime Minister since MPs returned to parliament this week.

The opposition leader said “it’s the sort of thing you expect from cowboy builders”.

Mr Sunak suggested his opponent was seizing on an issue he cared little about in the past in an effort to make a point.

He called on Mr Starmer to check his facts, before he “jumps on the next political bandwagon”.

“Before today, he never once raised this issue with me in parliament,” Mr Sunak said.

“It wasn’t even worthy of a single mention in his so-called landmark speech on education this summer, and if we had listened to him, our kids would have been off school and locked down for longer.”

Mr Sunak said Raac in schools had been an issue for governments since 1994. He said that after new advice on the concrete was provided in the summer, ministers acted swiftly to keep pupils safe.

In an attempt to turn the tables, the Prime Minister ripped apart Labour’s school rebuilding programme, which he said was found by the National Audit Office to exclude eight in 10 schools and would spend unnecessarily.

He called the package “time consuming and expensive, just like the Labour Party".

Dawn Butler, Labour MP for Brent Central and a former shadow cabinet minister, told The National it was a mistake by the Conservatives to discontinue the Labour scheme, known as Building Schools for the Future.

The £55 billion ($68.7 billion) project aimed to renew every secondary school in England, rebuilding half of them and refurbishing or remodelling the rest. It was cancelled in 2010 under a Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition government led by David Cameron.

“It think it’s just more than terrible that this government is really showing that it doesn’t care,” she said. “It doesn’t look after its citizens at the best of times but the fact that it doesn’t care about children and the welfare of children should worry us all.”

Asked what specific actions she would have welcomed from the government in response to the Raac crisis, Ms Butler said: “The Building Schools for the Future programme – in 2010 the government should have continued with that.

“When Rishi Sunak was chancellor he should have committed to the investment in building schools and that meant building and reinforcing schools.”

She argued that some of the schools forced to close due to unsafe concrete “could have been made safe but now they will probably have to be demolished”.

“At the end of the day [the Conservatives] deserve to be out of office but until then we have to hold them to account for all the wrongs they are doing to society,” she added.

The Prime Minister spoke about the Conservatives’ achievements in government over the past 13 years, which included a claim that his government reduced the number of illegal Channel crossings. This set off a wave of laughter from MPs on the opposition benches.

Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor of the exchequer, was seen clapping her hands after he sat down, a gesture that suggested she perceived Mr Sunak's speech to be a performance.