Pressure is mounting on Rishi Sunak after his education secretary was caught on camera saying others had “sat on their a***” over collapsing schools.
Gillian Keegan was filmed voicing her frustrations about the response to the Raac concrete scandal, after it emerged that Mr Sunak had cut funding for school rebuilding.
In footage released by ITV News Ms Keegan – still wearing her microphone – criticised others and said she should be praised for doing a “good job”.
She said: “Does anyone ever say ‘you know what, you’ve done a f****** good job because everyone else has sat on their a*** and done nothing?”
The education secretary added: “No signs of that, no?”
The extraordinary outburst comes after Mr Sunak earlier said it was “utterly wrong” to blame him for the Raac scandal despite it emerging that he had cut funding to renew the school estate while chancellor.
Ms Keegan later apologised and said she was not referring to any “anybody in particular” when she complained about other people having “sat on their arses and done nothing” on the RAAC crisis in schools.
The education secretary told broadcasters it was an “off the cuff” remark made after the interviewer had pressed her quite hard, she said.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan (Jonathan Brady/PA)— (PA Wire)
Insisting he was not blaming other ministers or schools, she added: “It’s also frustrating that we’ve got some questionnaires that still are not there, we’ve been chasing and chasing them, we’ve written again today to say you need to get your questionnaires in by the end of the week.”
Labour’s shadow schools minister Stephen Morgan said: “This is a staggering admission that Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives have done nothing to address a problem that they have known about for years,” he said.
Meanwhile opposition leader Keir Starmer told broadcasters that the whole situation was “descending into farce”.
“You’ve got members of the cabinet coming out trying to blame other people, trying to blame people within their own teams and to say, essentially, ‘Put responsibility anywhere but on the government’,” he said.
“That is not what Britain deserves. And obviously what is now being said shows the extent to which there is this passing the buck within the cabinet. Is Rishi Sunak strong enough to do anything about it? I doubt it.”
One senior Tory extraordinarily suggested Ms Keegan was trying to make a splash to boost her profile in case of a leadership election in the wake of next year’s general election.
The MP told The Independent: “I think she’s trying to make an impact personally in a bid to stand out and line herself up for the leadership post general election.”
Labour quickly turned Ms Keegan’s comments into its latest personal attack advert against Mr Sunak - just days after publishing a poster claiming the PM does not want schools to be safe.
The clip also included comments from Jonathan Slater, the former top civil servant at the Department for Education, who this morning revealed that officials were aware of the need to rebuild between 300 and 400 schools a year while Mr Sunak was in the Treasury from 2019 to 2022.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme DfE was denied the funding to fix the schools.
“It was frustrating,” said Mr Slater, whose voice was breaking with emotion as he spoke of his “frustration” at the way his pleas had fallen on deaf ears.
He said the ministry had asked for cash to rebuild 300-400 schools per year after discovering the scale of the crumbling concrete crisis.
But the Treasury would only provide money for 100 a year and in 2021 – when Mr Sunak was Chancellor – it was cut further to just 50 even though the department had asked it to be doubled to 200 for safety reasons.
Mr Slater said he was “absolutely amazed at the decision made by the chancellor”. Asked to spell out who was the chancellor, he replied: “Rishi Sunak.”
But Mr Sunak told broadcasters on Monday: “One of the first things I did as chancellor, in my first spending review in 2020, was to announce a new 10-year school re-building programme for 500 schools.
“Now that equates to about 50 schools a year, that will be refurbished or rebuilt. If you look at what we have been doing over the previous decade, that’s completely in line with what we have always done.”
The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank said the average capital spending on schools is 50 per cent below its 2010 peak.
Rishi Sunak is being blamed for cutting investment while he was chancellor (Euan Duff/ PA)— (PA Wire)
Spending on school buildings is low in historical terms and low compared with levels of need,” said IFS research fellow Luke Sibieta.
The National Audit Office reported that the Department for Education calculated it needed about £5.3bn per year from 2021 to 2025 in order to maintain school buildings and mitigate risks.
It instead requested about £4bn per year based on the rate at which it could increase spending. HM Treasury allocated only about £3.1bn per year.
And Mr Slater’s shocking intervention comes as millions of pupils return to school this week despite fears that “thousands” more buildings are at risk of collapse from crumbling concrete.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt on Sunday refused to be drawn on how many buildings were affected as he rejected accusations that government cuts were to blame.
