Bridget Phillipson has slammed the government’s response to the school concrete crisis in a scathing House of Commons speech.
The shadow education secretary was responding to a statement given by Gillian Keegan to MPs on new guidance for reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in education settings.
Pressure is mounting on the education secretary over the crumbling school scandal after it was revealed that potentially thousands more schools and colleges could be impacted by the presence of RAAC.
Yesterday, Keegan was forced to apologise after claiming others had failed to tackle the crisis in an expletive-laden outburst captured after an interview on ITV News.
It follows claims by a former senior civil servant that Rishi Sunak had slashed the government budget for school repairs by half in 2021, meaning only 50 rather than 100 schools could be refurbished every year.
Addressing the House of Commons on Monday, the education secretary said: “I want to reassure parents and children that we are taking a deliberately cautious approach to prioritising children’s safety.
“Because of our proactive questionnaire and surveying programme, we have a better understanding of where RAAC is on the school estate than in other countries.
But Phillipson decried the response of the Department for Education, describing the scandal as “an utter shambles” before taking aim at the Tories’ record on public infrastructure.
She said: “The defining image of 13 years of Conservative government: children cowering under steel props to stop the ceiling falling in on they heads. 13 years into a Conservative government and the public realm is literally crumbling around the next generation.
“The education secretary said this morning that in her view it is not the job of her department to ensure the safety of our children’s schools, that she was doing a good job.
She added: “Schools are literally at risk of collapse, she is the education secretary, whose responsibility does she think it is then?
“This is the tragic endgame of the sticking plaster politics of the last 13 years, and children have been failed by this Conservative government.”
Related: Labour’s ‘rising star’ shuts down Laura Kuennsberg in school concrete row
