Rishi Sunak prioritized cutting tax on champagne rather than provide extra funding to rebuild British schools when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer said, as he sought to make political capital out of an snowballing row over crumbling public buildings.
The UK prime minister is under growing pressure to explain funding decisions after more than 100 schools were told to close buildings days before the start of term, due to concerns about the safety of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, or RAAC. In recent days, it emerged that Sunak funded repairs at only a quarter of the schools requested by the Department for Education.
“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 at the same time to cut the tax rate on champagne,” Starmer told BBC TV in an interview on Wednesday. “These are choices.”
Starmer’s attack highlights a crisis that isn’t going away for the prime minister. He’s still under pressure to publish a list of schools affected by presence of the dangerous concrete, while hospitals, court buildings, military buildings and the Houses of Parliament all being studied to see if they contain RAAC. The prime minister on Wednesday comes up against Starmer at the first session of prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons, and is likely to face the same line of questioning.
Schools Minister Nick Gibb told Sky News on Tuesday that the education department in 2021 had bid for funding to repair 200 schools a year, but that Sunak as chancellor had chosen to stick to an existing program refurbishing just 50 a year. Gibb sought to excuse the decision saying the Treasury “has to compare that bid with all the other priorities across Whitehall.”
“The least that we’re entitled to is to know what risks were pointed out to him in 2021 when the prime minister took those decisions and an answer from him as to why he didn’t allow that funding to go forward,” Starmer said.
While Labour have directly linked Sunak’s past decisions to the present disruption at schools, the premier has insisted claims he was to blame for the problems were “utterly wrong,” and that one of the first decisions he’d made as chancellor was to agree to a 10-year program to rebuild 500 schools.
There were two budgets in 2021, in which Sunak froze alcohol duty — which would normally be assumed to rise in line with inflation, and also announced that he was “radically” simplifying the levy, introducing a system designed around the principle of “the stronger the drink, the higher the rate.” The changes pushed down the cost of champagne and English sparkling wines.
Treasury documents for the second budget that year show that the duty freeze was projected to cost the Treasury £560 million in the present tax year, which runs to April 2024, while the reforms to the system of levies were expected to cost a further £115 million.
Separately, the BBC reported that at least 13 schools confirmed to have RAAC had funding to rebuild withdrawn in 2010. They had been approved for rebuilding under a program brought in by the last Labour government that was later scrapped by the Conservative-led government, which imposed spending cuts after coming to power, it said.
The building material RAAC is less durable than concrete, and is prone to collapse when exposed to wet weather, as moisture soaks into its aerated holes. Ministers are assessing which public buildings built between the 1950s and 1990s could be at risk.
