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.”
Because the civil service has a long tradition of service to the party in power - irrespective of which party - and a commitment to confidentiality. It takes something pretty extraordinary for that to be broken
Safety of school children not important enough?
Sorry but I think we should stop canonising the civil service. Especially when they seem to leak anything and everything they want regardless of who is currently the party of power.
I’m not canonising the civil service - and actually the number of leaks remains extraordinarily low. But sure - give em a kicking in the name of “think of the children” if you want to.
Wait, are you saying that a senior civil servant with serious concerns about the safety of schools should keep quiet out of loyalty? What?
I’m saying that at the time when the civil servant was in post, there were three budgets in play - the school maintenance budget, teacher’s pay and the ‘price per pupil’ payments made to schools. When the treasury decided to reduce the maintenance budget, it was clearly A Bad Thing but it didn’t constitute a critical concern about school safety - given the information that he had - so he didn’t break the civil service code at that poin.
If it didn’t constitute a critical concern about safety why is everyone and their mother saying it did and putting out attack adverts saying that the former chancellor willfully put children’s lives at risk?
There was either information that it was a critical safety concern at the time and the most senior civil servant didn’t think it important enough to push a line on it (again even anonymously via a leak) or there wasn’t information about this at the time and the actions of the treasury need to be taken in that context.
I’m just not sure what the thought process here is. He (and the treasury) knew of a critical safety concern but didn’t say or try and do anything because of… what?.. a code? Oh no no no, I can’t say anything about roofs falling on children’s heads because I will break my oath to the civil service best stay quiet and not ruffle feathers. Huh?