My Lords, I tabled a version of this amendment in Committee—which seems a very long time ago; I think it was in March—on the need for a register of school and hospital buildings which are in a state of disrepair, so that local residents know what the issues are and can hold the Government to account for putting right those buildings that they have to use.
Little did I know at that stage about the huge, urgent issue that has emerged this summer around reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—concrete with air bubbles in it, as far as I can make out. According to the Department for Education, at least 147 schools in England have been affected by RAAC, but this number may grow as investigations continue. At least 27 NHS sites have been confirmed to have aerated concrete and I understand the NHS is conducting an urgent inquiry into the safety of the buildings. Thousands of patients and pupils are facing disruption as a result of this aerated concrete coming to the end of its life, which apparently means it could break and collapse the building at any moment. Very fortunately, so far no serious injuries have resulted from such collapses.
We know the Department for Education was aware of the use of RAAC in schools that were built in the 1970s and 1980s. Its report from 2018 showed that as many as 400 schools per year could need their buildings repaired as a result of the use of this material. The 2021 spending review provided funding for just 50 of those per year. At the end of 2022, the Department for Education listed building failures as one of six key risks in its annual report. Similarly, as an FoI request from my party has shown, hospitals across the country are facing huge repair costs from chemical leaks and broken fire alarms—in one hospital, raw sewage was in patient areas. In my view, sewage seeping anywhere in a hospital is totally unacceptable. This followed on from a report from November last year that the repair bill for NHS hospitals in England alone has hit £10 billion.
My amendment seeks, as a first step in tackling these issues, to get the information into the public domain. I will give one example of why this is important. School admission authorities are already being asked by parents having to choose a school for their children whether their preferred school is affected by a need for critical repairs which could disrupt their children’s education. School admissions are likely not to know, so it is really important that parents, in the case of schools, have the information to make choices about their children’s education. In the same way, NHS trusts should be able to make available similar information to patients where there is an ability to choose where an operation will take place.
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Amendment 281 in my name is intended simply to persuade the Government that it is important to provide this information to the public and to enable accountability of the Government for the state of very important public buildings. I beg to move.