Peter Black and South Wales West Liberal Democrats

The condition of school buildings

Peter Black: The first short debate that I delivered in the Assembly was back in 1999. My subject then was school buildings, and the Deputy Presiding Officer was the Minister for education at the time. This issue has occupied my thoughts for a considerable time. I feel strongly about it, and I am hopeful that we can start to resolve the many problems that local authorities have faced, not just for that period of time, but for long before that.

I spent most of the last four years asking the then Minister for Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills to get the relevant information, so that she could properly assess the backlog of school building maintenance and repairs around Wales. In the end, we had to rely on PricewaterhouseCoopers, on behalf of the Welsh Local Government Association, to identify-over a year ago-a £749 million gap between the resources required and the funding available. It is that gap that we are talking about in this motion. No local council can come up with that kind of money easily-and I accept that no Assembly Government can come up with it easily either. However, it is a gap that needs to be addressed, and it is an issue that needs to be addressed across Wales.

Soon after that report came out, the Government abandoned its manifesto commitment to make all schools fit for purpose by 2010. In effect, we had had four wasted years in which a lot of money was being thrown at the problem without knowing what the problem was. The Government was sticking to manifesto commitments that it had not agreed with local government beforehand, and it was trying to hold local government to delivering on those manifesto commitments even though local government was not responsible for that particular promise.

I have just listened to the Minister, and Jane Hutt seems to have resurrected that target of making all schools fit for purpose by 2010. Jane, I appreciate your courage, and I hope that, now that you have brought that target back, you will put the money in to ensure that it is delivered. Now that we have heard you make that commitment in the Chamber, we will be asking you questions on it in Plenary after Plenary, and, no doubt, in the Enterprise and Learning Committee too, to see what progress you are making in delivering on it.

However, it is still your target, Minister. It is no good passing the buck to local councils, saying, 'This is the target that we are setting for you', if you have not agreed with local government that it will deliver that target on your behalf. It is your target and your responsibility, and you should ensure that the funds are available to reach it. Clearly, this is a partnership, and I do not expect all the funds to come from the Assembly Government, nor do I expect them all to come from councils. However, I do expect a far greater degree of joint working than has been in evidence in the past, and I expect us to make some substantial progress towards delivering it.

I will depart from my usual practice, and refer to a Labour press release. Lorraine Barrett raised, in an intervention, an entry on my weblog, which states, as she says, 'The basis of our governmental system is that schools are funded by democratically elected Councils and that they are the ones who should be accountable to their electorate for the decisions they take on funding'.

That is absolutely right. That is the case, and, if local councils have the resources, they will do that. However, let us be clear about this: that press release goes on to say that, because of that, I accept that Liberal Democrat controlled councils must take their share of responsibility for dealing with the state of school buildings locally.

In Swansea, we have a backlog of maintenance and repair work to our school buildings that would cost £147 million. The Liberal Democrats have been running that council for three and a half years. No-one is sensibly going to tell me that we have built up that backlog in that time; we have not. That backlog is the result of systematic neglect by previous Labour administrations in Swansea, as is the case elsewhere in Wales. The Liberal Democrats are running that council and are now taking responsibility and starting to put things right. Therefore, yes, we are taking that responsibility, but we are not going to take responsibility for your mess, Minister; that is quite clear.

The Minister also referred to the £9 million that has been made available to every local council. She said that not all councils have spent that amount. The Liberal Democrat-led council in Bridgend, in my region, has not spent all of its £9 million. Why not? Because some of that money is allocated for building schools, such as Pen-y-fai primary school, which needs land to be compulsorily purchased before the work can start. Where are those compulsory purchase Orders? They are on the Minister's desk. We are still waiting for them to be agreed by the Minister so that building work can go ahead on that school. It is all very well to say that local councils need to take responsibility, Minister, but you also need to take responsibility.

This is a long-term problem that requires genuine partnership between the Welsh Assembly Government and local government to tackle it. My plea is that the Government should stop hiding behind the figures and start to put the funding in place to realistically deal with the problem by following a proper timetable.