PMQs: Rishi Sunak defends RAAC action over concrete-risk schools

1. Labour's Keir Starmer used PMQs to liken the government to "cowboy builders" over the RAAC crisis who seek to shift blame
2. But Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the government acted "decisively" on the RAAC crisis and called Starmer "Captain Hindsight"
3. It comes after the government published a list of schools in England with risky RAAC concrete
4. According to the list, 19 schools have delayed the start of term, with four using fully-remote learning
5. It was known that 104 schools were still affected by the concrete - around 50 others have been "mitigated"
6. The Department for Education says the list is only up to date to 30 August, so the actual number is likely to be higher
7. The government told schools to take action in late August, after three incidents involving RAAC over the summer

Thanks for joining us

We're wrapping things up here.

As we have been reporting, Labour are due to use a humble address to attempt to force the government to release documents over funding for school rebuilding when Rishi Sunak was chancellor.

We will bring you the result of this motion in our main news story.

A full list of the schools affected by RAAC is also available to view.

Otherwise, that's it from us.

This page was edited by Rob Corp and Heather Sharp. Your writers across the day were Gem O'Reilly, Emily Atkinson, Nadia Ragozhina, Jamie Whitehead, Alys Davies, Andre Rhoden-Paul and Paul Seddon.

What's been happening?

Emily Atkinson

Live reporter

Before we go, here's what's happened today:

• Just before midday, the government published its long-awaited list of which schools in England are now said to have potentially unsafe RAAC concrete in their buildings
• A total of 147 schools were identified. But the DfE told us the list was up to date as of 30 August, meaning the actual number is likely to be higher
• We then moved to the first PMQs after the summer recess, which was dominated by questions on the RAAC crisis
• Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer likened the government to "cowboy builders" who seek to shift blame, while Prime Minister Rishi Sunak insisted they acted "decisively" saying Starmer is "Captain Hindsight"
• A debate on safety in school buildings is continuing in the Commons this afternoon, with Education Secretary Gillian Keegan and her Labour shadow Bridget Phillpson going head-to-head on RAAC
• Still to come: Labour is using a humble address to attempt to force the government to release documents about what Sunak knew about RAAC in schools when he was chancellor - and responsible for allocating cash to rebuild them

We are leaving the Commons and bringing this page to a close

This debate will continue through the afternoon, and while we are drawing our live coverage to a conclusion, you can keep watching the House of Commons on the BBC iPlayer.

You can also get the latest lines and the result of the vote on Labour's Humble Address motion in our news story.

£34m on education department refurb 'nothing to do with me' - Keegan

It was raised at Prime Minister's Questions earlier, but Education Secretary Gillian Keegan had a chance in the Commons this afternoon to distance herself from the £34m revamp of the Department for Education.

Speaking in the Opposition Day debate, Labour's Sarah Owen said Keegan needed to "get a grip and explain why her offices got a £34m refurbishment when schools are crumbling under this Tory Government".

Keegan explained this was signed off by the department's commercial director and was "nothing to do with me".

She said the refurbishment was "based on a decision made in 2019 before I was a minister".

Patel: This is an operational delivery response

Priti Patel has been speaking and starts by thanking Essex County Council, teachers and pupils adding that the authority are working with local schools and academies.

She says she wants to ask questions of the front bench, saying this is an “operational delivery response” and wants assurance all funding will be provided.

Patel says this is important because “our county council is covering the costs in the interim”

Patel also has concerns about the impact on learning.

She also says the government needs to give an update on the availability of temporary classrooms.

RAAC crisis 'goes to heart of Tory incompetence' - Labour MP

Dan Carden, the Labour MP for Liverpool Walton, is up, and tells the Commons the issue of RAAC in schools and other public buildings as "a fitting metaphor for Tory rule".

"Our education system was thrown into crisis... by unsafe concrete," he tells MPs, saying the wider issue of school buildings "goes to the heart of the incompetence and short-termism of the last 13 years".

"Now our schools, the bedrock of society, are potentially collapsing around us", Carden adds, while accusing the Tories of expecting "gratitude".

"Britain is falling apart," he says, concluding: "We need nothing short of national renewal."

Education committee chair hits out at Labour humble address

The Commons has been hearing from Robin Walker, who chairs the Commons Education Select Committee.

He hit out at Labour's of use of parliamentary procedure to attempt to force the government to release documents over funding for school rebuilding.

Labour will use the humble address to hold a vote in the House of Commons later in the hopes of shedding more light on what Rishi Sunak knew about RAAC in schools when he was deciding how much to spend on building repairs when he was chancellor.

Speaking in the Commons, Walker said Labour's repeated use of humble address posed "huge risks" and while there was a "need to ensure proper scrutiny" he would not support the motion.

He went on to say he "fundamentally believes there needs to be more investment in replacing school buildings to address issues like RAAC and asbestos that cause real harm."

"This is a hugely important issue we need all governments to get right work," he adds, urging the UK government to work with the devolved administrations "to take positive measures to make schools across UK utterly safe".

Angry response to Keegan's comments

Branwen Jeffreys

Education editor

There has been an angry response from head teachers to the education secretary saying while she was sorting things out, schools needed to get off their backsides and respond with information about RAAC.

The two head teachers' unions have published a letter in which they say schools were having to crisis manage and a lot of the confusion lay within government.

Writing to Gillian Keegan, they say it’s misleading to suggest individual headteachers have failed, and that her language was unacceptable.

They add some multi-academy trusts and local authorities have been angered by receiving a letter asking for information they have already returned.

The government has set a deadline of this Friday for replies to its questions about RAAC, which were first sent out in March 2022.

Keegan told school carried out own RAAC survey in 2019

The education secretary takes an intervention from an MP who raises the case of a school that identified RAAC problems in 2019 but had to do their own survey and had funding bids rejected.

Gillian Keegan says: “The responsible body did the right thing by doing their own survey. That’s what everybody was asked to do in 2018 and 2019.”

She says if the school gets in touch with her she will be happy to get back to them.

We are moving decisively to address RAAC - Keegan

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan is speaking in the Commons now and starts by saying: “This government is committed to making sure every child in this country gets a first-class education.

"But more than that, underpinning that, is a deeper one, to ensure that children are safe and secure in the places that they learn," she tells MPs.

She says nothing is more important than the safety of children and staff in schools.

“I understand that parents, schools and this House are concerned about the issue of RAAC and we are moving divisively to address it,” she adds.

Labour's Phillipson concerned over list omissions

Back to the Commons now where opposition MPs are taking part in a debate on the safety of school buildings.

Referring to the list of schools affected by RAAC published by the government earlier, shadow education secretary Briget Phillipson defends Labour's school repair programme in Wales.

"I'd like to put forward a few facts," she says, "school capital funding has increased by around 122% in cash terms and 23% in real terms.

She goes on to say today's priority must be safety, and that she has concerns there could be omissions from the list of schools affected by RACC published by the government earlier.

BBC Verify

Did Starmer mention school buildings safety in key speech?

During PMQs – which was dominated by the issue of the safety of school buildings following the discovery of crumbling concrete - Rishi Sunak accused the Labour leader of “political opportunism”.

Sunak said “the issue… wasn’t even worthy of a single mention in his so-called landmark speech on education this summer”.

We’ve gone back over Sir Keir Starmer’s education speech in July.

He didn’t mention reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) but did say this, while criticising Sunak’s government:

“His Tory Party… sit there twiddling their thumbs as teachers leave in their droves, school buildings start to crumble and absenteeism goes through the roof.”

When asked about this by journalists after PMQs, Downing Street said: "The PM was clearly talking about RAAC and Starmer did not mention RAAC in his speech."

Will Sunak come clean? asks Labour's Bridget Phillipson

Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson opens the Labour-led debate in Parliament, which seeks the release of Department of Education papers which she says "would tell us what has, and what hasn't been happening in our schools".

She says the government again refused to release the papers yesterday, and the PM again evaded questions about them during PMQs.

She goes onto say the motion is about more than the documents being sought, about more than RAAC, and about more than schools and their safety.

She says today it is quite simply about responsibility: "Whether the PM was told that urgent action was needed to secure the safety of schools, when instead he slashed the cost of champagne."

She goes onto say the issue is also about whether he will "accept responsibility for the choices he makes, or whether he will be clear where responsibility lies".

Labour to seek Sunak school funding documents

A debate on concrete is now getting under way in the Commons.

Labour is trying to force the government to release documents on what Rishi Sunak knew as chancellor about crumbling concrete in schools when he was deciding on funding repairs.

The Department for Education published today a list of 147 schools it says has reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, known as RAAC.

The party are set to use a parliamentary procedure called a humble address motion to try to force the release of various documents from 2020 to 2022, spanning his tenure at the Treasury.

Sunak says claims he was to blame for the problems were "utterly wrong".

Government will not publish DfE funding submission - Downing Street

Downing Street says it is not publishing the Department of Education's submission requesting more funding for school rebuilds when Rishi Sunak was chancellor.

Starmer raised the issue earlier during PMQs, when he said there is a "simple way" to clear up questions about the PM's role in decisions over the school concrete issue.

He asked the PM why he doesn't commit to publishing funding requests from the Department for Education on school rebuilding, and "what risks he was warned of before he turned them down".

After PMQs, the PM's official spokesman said: "We don't as a matter of course publish advice to prime ministers, or ministers. I'm not aware of any plans to change that long-standing approach," the PM's official spokesman says.

Concrete dominates PMQs, but what else came up?

Alys Davies

Live reporter

If you managed to follow the flurry of back and fourths at PMQs, I commend you. But just in case not, here's a sum up of the key points covered - much of which was dominated by the issue of crumbling concrete.

Concrete:

• Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer asked PM Rishi Sunak whether - in reference to Education Secretary Gillian Keegan's comments on Monday - that he should be "thanked for doing a good job" in relation to the RAAC issue
• Sunak sought to reassure parents, stating that the government is doing "everything it can" to fix the issue quickly and to minimise disruption

• Starmer listed a number of schools throughout the exchange, which he said were on Labour's building list in 2010 but missed out on rebuilds under a Tory-led government - he said this was an "inevitable result of cutting corners" and the sort of thing you "expect from cowboy builders"
• He also criticised a £34m contract he said Keegan had signed for the refurbishment of her own offices

• Sunak called Starmer "Captain Hindsight" - saying the issue of RAAC had never been raised by him at the despatch box
• He also said the previous Labour government's school rebuilding programme was found by the National Audit Office to exclude 80% of schools and was "needlessly wasting resources"

Other matters:

• The SNP's Stephen Flynn asked when the PM would be getting "off his backside" to do something about the economy - referencing high mortgage rates and stagnant economic growth
• Sunak responded by claiming the UK has had "the fastest recovery of any European economy after Covid" according to new figures published
• The bankruptcy situation at Labour's Birmingham council also came up - Tory backbencher Nicola Richards asked whether the PM agreed that Labour always runs out of money, with Sunak responding: "We can't let them bankrupt Britain"
• Other questions covered issues ranging from solar farm planning applications to plastic in wet wipes and youth mental health.

Patel questions Sunak over schools' RAAC costs

RAAC was very much the topic of the day during PMQs - and it's worth recapping this question about funding from former Tory cabinet minister Priti Patel.

She asked Sunak to "try to commit to fully funding both the capital and revenue costs that are associated with getting children back into school".

He replied: "I am happy to give her the reassurances - as the chancellor already said - new funding will be provided to schools to deal with this issue."

Sunak said that the DfE was in the process of increasing the number of dedicated caseworkers from 50 to 80, and had more than doubled the number of survey firms to "rapidly assess" all the revelant schools.

Number of schools affected by RAAC likely to be higher

PA Media

Turning our attention away from the Commons, we bring you an update on the RAAC crisis in schools.

The Department for Education (DfE) has told us that its list of schools in England where RAAC is present is only up to date as of 30 August.

So the actual number is likely to be higher.

In the next two weeks the government will publish an updated list of further cases confirmed since then.

Some 156 schools were named initially, but the DfE has changed that to 147, because nine of those schools have since been found not to have RAAC in their buildings after all.

SNP calls on Sunak to 'get off his backside'

PMQs: SNP calls on Sunak to 'get off his backside'

The SNP's Stephen Flynn recalled the start of the Liz Truss era with her becoming PM a year ago and asked why several indicators have not got better since she left office.

Rishi Sunak said while the SNP accused him of "being a laggard when it came to growth," the UK had the fasted recovering economy after Covid.

BBC Verify

Has spending on school maintenance risen?

The prime minister said “funding for school maintenance and rebuilding will average £2.6bn a year over this Parliament” adding that the amount spent last year “was the highest in a decade”.

Last year, about £2.7bn was spent on it in England, the highest since 2016, but we do not have comparable figures going back 10 years.

The highest in a decade would of course be comparing current spending with spending by a Conservative-led government.

While we also can’t compare it with the last Labour government, we do know that overall investment spending on education peaked in 2010 (when Labour left power) and has not returned to that level after adjusting for rising prices.

We also know the £2.6bn that Rishi Sunak mentioned was not as much as the £4bn a year between 2021 and 2025 that the Department for Education said it needed to “mitigate the most serious risks of building failure”.