PM shown evidence of ‘critical risk to life’ when chancellor, says former top civil servant at Department for Education

Rishi Sunak refused to properly fund a school rebuilding programme when he was chancellor, despite officials presenting evidence that there was “a critical risk to life” from crumbling concrete panels, the Department for Education’s former head civil servant has said.

After the department told Sunak’s Treasury that there was a need to rebuild 300 to 400 schools a year in England, he gave funding for only 100, which was then halved to 50, said Jonathan Slater, the permanent secretary of the department from 2016 to 2020.

Conservative ministers more widely believed a greater funding priority was to build new free schools, Slater told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, as pupils returned to many schools in England for the new term.

“For me as an official, it seemed that should have been second to safety,” Slater said. “But politics is about choices. And that was a choice they made.”

  • Syldon@feddit.ukEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    All funding has to be justified with lists on how you are going to spend it. If the Tories are not accepting buildings inspections and repairs as credible funding requests, then you will simply not get it. Councils and devolved governments can not depend on charities just providing all the help. They need cash to pay someone to do it, and the Tories are not providing that cash.

    Sunak was videoed stating that as Chancellor he deliberately stopped unnecessary cash going to areas that did not deserve it. He expanded by stating he wanted to move that cash to areas who pay the most like Tunbridge Wells.

    They do not get away with pointing fingers when they control the purse strings.