Universities: Nuclear Energy Sector Skills

Debate between Baroness Barran and Earl Russell

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, is not the truth of the matter that the UK is not on track to meet its greenhouse gas emission commitments made at COP 26 only two years ago? The climate emergency is now, and it is already probably too late to keep our planet below 2 degrees, let alone 1.5 degrees, of climate change. If nuclear fusion technology is achieved, it will not arrive in time to save us. Should our immediate focus not be on renewable energy skills that can make a fundamental difference to net zero immediately?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely do not accept that the UK Government are not on track to meet their climate targets. We are ahead of every other major nation, as the noble Earl knows. We are also doing a lot of work in relation to green skills. Again, we will publish a green jobs plan in the first half of 2024, but we have very attractive green skills offers across every level, from skills boot camps up to the highest possible qualifications.

Schools: Catering Facilities and RAAC

Debate between Baroness Barran and Earl Russell

Monday 23rd October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, while I welcome the commitment to free school meals made by the DfE in its guidance, I note that 214 schools are now known to be impacted by RAAC. How many of these 214 schools are now unable to provide catering facilities, and what action is being taken to ensure their continued provision of hot food?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Of the 214 schools the noble Earl referred to, 202 are providing full-time face-to-face education and 12 are in hybrid arrangements. In all cases, we work with the school to make sure it can offer pupils, particularly those eligible for free school meals, a meal. Not all of them will be having a hot meal—in some cases, they are having packed lunches as a temporary measure—but the critical thing is that children are back in face-to-face education.

Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings

Debate between Baroness Barran and Earl Russell

Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Russell (LD)]

I thank the Minister for coming to the House today and updating us on this issue. As a parent myself, I am sending a child to a new school. I have every sympathy with parents who are deeply worried about the situation and everything that teachers across the country are doing. If safety had been prioritised over budgets, we would not be in this position today.

The Statement says that, within a matter of weeks, a list of all schools will be published

“once mitigations are in place”.

Although I welcome the change of heart from the Government, does the Minister feel that, with 10% of schools left to conduct surveys, those surveys will be available in a couple of weeks?

Further, the Statement says that the Government will spend “whatever it takes”. This was later clarified as coming from existing educational budgets. Given the scale and urgency of the problem, does the Minister really feel that school budgets alone will be capable of dealing with this problem?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their remarks. I feel that I must start by countering the assertions from the noble Earl that safety has come second to budgets and that budgets have been prioritised over safety. I want to be 100% clear with the House: there is not a single case in which we have known of an immediate risk to life and the department has not acted. We have an urgent capital support fund, which we use in such cases. I want to make it clear on the record that what the noble Earl said is not an accurate reflection of the facts.

The noble Earl also referred to the publication of the list of schools, to which we have committed. To be clear, our priority—I think that many Members of your Lordships’ House would agree with this—was to communicate with parents first. When the names of schools started to leak into the press at the end of last week, one school in particular was so inundated by the media that it was unable to communicate with parents and get on and plan its mitigations. It was a school for children with profound learning difficulties. If there is one school that all of us in this House would want to keep open, it is a school for children with learning difficulties. I really think that there was an extremely good reason why we prioritised that.

I do not recognise the figure of 10% of schools needing to be surveyed. That simply is not accurate. We are confident that in the next few weeks we will be able to complete the surveys that are needed.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, focused significantly on funding and the Chancellor’s statement. The Chancellor was crystal clear in his statement. Let me just run through the funding that we are offering schools immediately. It will cover immediate capital costs relating to, for example, temporary classrooms, propping or whatever else might be needed. It will also cover revenue costs. For example, we will work on a case-by-case basis with schools but, if additional school transport costs arise, we will cover them. If schools need to rent space in another building, we will help with that. All reasonable requests will be dealt with reasonably. Our absolute aim is to remove friction for schools so that they can get children back in classrooms as quickly as possible.

I remind the House that we have, through our various school rebuilding programmes, already rebuilt more than 500 schools since 2010. We have added 1 million new school places to accommodate the increase in the number of pupils. The noble Baroness referred to the track record of the Labour Government in Wales on funding, but I remind the House that we are working with and supporting the Labour Government in Wales and with colleagues in Scotland, because they had not started this survey programme. We are all aiming for the same thing, to resolve this as quickly as possible, but we need to be fair when hurling things around. I am not suggesting that the noble Baroness was not being fair, but I am trying to set the balance. I really commend my predecessor, my noble friend Lady Berridge, and colleagues in the department who have been tireless in working on this issue.

The noble Baroness also questioned whether we could have done more sooner. I do not want to repeat myself but our understanding of how this building material behaves is as good as anyone’s. The new evidence that came out this summer is genuinely new. It is since the end of term that we have become aware of these three cases. I stop and think about the case that happened 10 days ago, and what would have happened if that had happened in 10 days’ time. This Statement would feel very different for us all.

On co-ordinating with fire and rescue services and local resilience forums, I am sure that the noble Baroness will understand that our absolute priority at the moment is working with each individual school. We have about 50 caseworkers working with individual schools. We have project directors going on-site. As soon as we get through this first phase and all children are back in education, we will of course co-ordinate, and the Government will gladly accept any other suggestions that the noble Baroness makes.