Keir Starmer has accused Rishi Sunak of prioritising cutting taxes on champagne over providing the necessary funding for school building repairs. During a visit to Park View school in north London, the Labour leader said: “At the very time that the prime minister, then chancellor, was taking the decision that he wouldn’t fund the necessary work for schools he took a decision to cut the tax rate on champagne. “He didn’t say, well, I can’t do that in relation to champagne. He took a choice to cut the rate in relation to champagne and not to sign off the necessary funding for schools.” Park View, in Haringey, has had temporary Portakabins in place after teachers learned they had reinforced concrete in the upper floor of the school.
In the 2021 autumn budget, Sunak unveiled sweeping changes to alcohol duty that rewarded low-strength drinks and sparkling wines. Starmer will challenge the prime minister’s record as chancellor during prime minister’s questions later on Wednesday. Starmer told BBC Breakfast: “They [Park View] lost 15 classrooms in one go. And straight away they had to try to teach 200 children in a big hole and the others online for a whole term … That is the human impact of the government’s failure on this.” He rejected suggestions that the Conservative coalition government had no choice but to cut Labour’s schools rebuilding programme in 2010 because there was no money left, as mentioned in an infamous note left by Liam Byrne, then the chief secretary to the Treasury under Gordon Brown, for his successor. The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme was axed in 2010 in response to concerns over its cost and scope. Starmer said: “Many people across the country are getting pretty weary of a government that has now been in power for 13 years, saying in answer to any question about their own failure, it’s not our fault, we couldn’t have done anything. Are they seriously saying to the country, that in 13 years, they couldn’t have done anything about their failures?” Pressed on what a Labour government would do and spend to fix this crisis, Starmer said his party would ensure schools were “open and safe”, but refused to outline what a programme could look like in a potential government. He said a Labour government would spend money, but noted “every time we make a commitment, we will say where the money is coming from”, adding: “We will set that out as we get to the election, in terms of our final arrangements of putting before the country, but I would just gently point out without trying to avoid the question, at the moment the government hasn’t done an audit.” Starmer’s attack came as the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said the concrete crisis in schools “reinforces” for parents that the government did not care about education. Geoff Barton told BBC Radio 4 there were “all kinds of flaws” with the BSF programme, but it at least took into account the need for repairs across the UK’s schools. Barton said: “The nation’s parents will think this just reinforces a sense that we have got a government that frankly doesn’t care, and hasn’t cared about education for many years. “I remember visiting a school in a pretty deprived part of Suffolk, which was on the Building Schools for the Future list on the day that Michael Gove gleefully announced that the programme was being pulled.” The defence secretary, Grant Shapps, refused to criticise Gillian Keegan’s warning for schools to “get off their backsides” and respond to the survey on concrete. “All of this speaks to an anxiety to get the problem resolved and to make sure the safety of children and staff is not put at risk.”