CRUMBLING schools are the result of managed decline by Conservative governments, the Labour Party’s Shadow Leader of the House of Commons has claimed.
Thangam Debbonaire told GB News: “When the Tory government ended in 1997, a Labour government took over, we put in place the building schools for the future programme.
“And that’s because we knew that there were 10,000 buildings that had been built before 1941 that were going to come to the end of their design life by 2020, and a further 14,000 that were built in the 60s, 70s and 80s, that also needed to be refurbed, rebuilt or replaced by 2020.
“Now the Tories then came in in 2010 with their Lib Dem partners, who cancelled that programme, since which time we have seen a process of managed decline by successive Tory governments failing to get a grip on this problem, lurching from crisis to crisis.”
In a discussion during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Ellie Costello, she added: “We come then to the last few years in which Rishi Sunak, then Chancellor, halved the amount of building maintenance budgets in 2020.
“We’ve had a failure of gross extent to get a grip on the problem since then. In 2018, part of a school building collapsed because of the reinforced concrete.
“That was five years ago. The Labour Party pushed them to reveal the schools that were a problem.”
She added: “I think that’s a disgrace because children learning is the single best way we make our country’s future better.
“But it’s also morally important. There is a moral imperative that we do the very best we can for our children.”
