Greg Smith
Main Page: Greg Smith (Conservative - Buckingham)Department Debates - View all Greg Smith's debates with the Department for Education
School Building Closures
Greg Smith Excerpts(7 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Gillian Keegan
As someone who has been the Secretary of State since October and has secured record funding for our schools—going up to £60 billion a year next year, which is higher than it has ever been by any measure hon. Members wish to use—I feel that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister very much invest in our schools.
There has been a lot of nonsense talked about Building Schools for the Future. Opposition Members consistently claim that that would have fixed the issue. I know they are not normally across the details, so I thought they might be interested in a few facts. Park View School in Tottenham, which was recently visited by the Leader of the Opposition, Hornsey School for Girls in Hornsey and Stepney All Saints School in Stepney Green were all refurbished or rebuilt under BSF, but all three are still suffering from RAAC. The Opposition do not even know how to solve the problem when it is right in front of their nose.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has been absolutely right to act decisively to put the safety of children first. As the list of affected schools has grown today, what reassurances can she give us on the number of schools still awaiting expedited surveys and the absolute cut-off point by which those surveys will be completed?
Gillian Keegan
Last time I was at this Dispatch Box, 95% of all questionnaires had been responded to. Now it is 98.6%, so the publicity has really helped to drive people who had not already responded, and we are grateful to them. I also committed that all the schools that were waiting to be surveyed would be surveyed by the end of this week, and I can confirm that that will absolutely be done. We have a good rate of surveys; we have eight companies doing them and we now have a process that means that as soon schools come in, we will get to them very quickly to survey.