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Coffee House Shots

How did the Tories not see the school concrete crisis coming?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

Politics, Daily News, News

4.42.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2023

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Parliament is back from recess and the row which will be dominating MPs inboxes is the school concrete crisis, which has disrupted the start of term for over 100 schools. Why didn't the government act sooner? 
 
 James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. 
 
 Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

The Spectator combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of Unrivaled Authority.

0:06.1

Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online

0:11.7

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0:22.9

Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Hilt and I'm joined today by Katie

0:27.1

and Isabelle Hardman and the route that's been dominating MPs in boxes on the first week and back

0:32.4

is the route about Rack in schools which is time for reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete

0:37.6

and at the current time for cordons about 150 schools in the country that are affected Katie

0:41.8

take us through on the story and where we stand currently. Yeah so this has been rumbling on

0:46.2

for some time but of course it was the news last week that this would affect the reopening

0:50.3

of several schools that has seen it become front page news and there's lots of questions as to

0:55.4

why government hasn't acted sooner. So there's various parts of the story now going. I mean

1:01.2

first of there's concern that the number could rise as you've just alluded to. One thing

1:06.0

Labour keep talking about is that Abstestos could now be the next part of the story. Now

1:10.3

Gillian Keegan the Education Secretary was slightly not dismissive but I think played down the

1:15.2

idea of that in her media this morning if that does come to fruition you're going to have a

1:19.4

situation where the delays in time some of these schools reopening is going to move from potentially

1:25.0

a couple of weeks when they're fixing you know parts of buildings is not the entire parts. In

1:30.0

most cases of course some cases may be different but to one way you know that's a very lengthy

1:34.8

thing to deal with. So that's the risk where I think what is already a very difficult start to

1:38.9

the new term for Rishi Sunag gets even more serious particularly you know was there some words

1:43.6

coming back to haunt people and then I think the other thing part of the story is making life

1:48.8

particularly difficult for Rishi Sunag this morning is that you've had Jonathan Slater the former

...

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