Keir Starmer accuses Rishi Sunak of putting champagne tax cut ahead of school safety – UK politics live

Labour leader lays out party’s line of attack during visit to school affected by concrete crisis ahead of first PMQs in seven weeks

Good morning. PMQs is one of the toughest ordeals he has to face but, as Rishi Sunak prepares his scripts for the first PMQs of the autumn, after a summer where the Tory fightback appeared to have zilch positive impact on public opinion, at least he has one consolation. He won’t have to spend time guessing what Keir Starmer is going to ask. Not only has Labour briefed on this; Starmer has even been rehearsing his line of attack on the BBC this morning.

Starmer has been visiting a school in London affected by the Raac (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) building safety crisis and, in an interview with BBC Breakfast

The BBC analysis this morning … shows that a number of schools affected today were on the list for Building Schools for the Future, the Labour that in 2010 this government cut.

Then you add to that in 2021 a list of schools that needed work done was put before the prime minister when he was then chancellor, and he refused to allow the funding to go forward.

I think 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 for him as to why he didn’t allow that funding to go forward.

I think that many people across the country are getting pretty weary of a government that’s now been in power for 13 years saying in answer to any question about their own failure, ‘It’s not our fault, we couldn’t have done anything.’ Are they? seriously saying to the country that in 13 years they couldn’t have done anything about their failures?

These are choices. [Sunak] didn’t say, ‘Well, I can’t do that in relation to champagne’. He took a choice to cut the [duty] rate their relation to champagne and not to sign off the necessary funding for school.