Safety of School Buildings

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:10 pm on 6 September 2023.

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Photo of Bernard Jenkin Bernard Jenkin Chair, Liaison Committee (Commons), Chair, Liaison Committee (Commons), Chair, Liaison Sub-Committee on National Policy Statements, Chair, Liaison Sub-Committee on National Policy Statements, Chair, Liaison Sub-Committee on Scrutiny of Strategic Thinking in Government, Chair, Liaison Sub-Committee on Scrutiny of Strategic Thinking in Government 3:10, 6 September 2023

There we have it: the hon. Lady will not say that the Secretary of State has done the wrong thing. Let the politics play itself out.

What we have here is a much more fundamental, wider systemic failure in the management of building safety, which has gone on for decades. Dr John Roberts, the former president of the Institution of Structural Engineers, wrote in The Times earlier this week:

“As a chartered structural engineer in active practice from the early 1970s, I never considered using RAAC as it did not “feel’ correct for permanent structures.”

So why was it used? One lesson is that perhaps Ministers should encourage their officials to challenge them more with uncomfortable truths—let us agree that.

The wider question is why such a critical building safety issue was systemically neglected, decade after decade. We should thank the good Lord that none of the ceilings collapsed on a classroom of pupils, or the Government would by now be announcing a full public inquiry rather like the Grenfell inquiry. There the parallels continue, because like cladding, RAAC is a long-persisting and neglected building safety risk, which successive Governments have failed to address.

I and others, including the former fire and housing Minister Nick Raynsford, the former chief investigator of the Air Accident Investigation Branch Dr Keith Conradi, and senior buildings surveyor Kevin Savage, made a submission to the Grenfell inquiry. Our recommendations to help to address the failings are principally twofold and relate to unresolved conflicts of interest in the building safety management regime of buildings, which are not addressed by the Building Safety Act 2022 or the establishment of the building safety body, which is now a statutory function of the Health and Safety Executive. At present, it is the HSE