Joe Morris

My hon. Friend is a passionate advocate for his constituency and for the north of the county. Too often schools in Northumberland have been victims of the mañana attitude of Northumberland county council. For far too long, whether it is on this or on SEND—special educational needs and disabilities—transport, the council has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to issues affecting the children of Northumberland. The structural issues at the school have damaged not only the community but the children’s education. One thing that really stuck out to me was a quote from a former Conservative Education Minister saying that those schools were built “one third cheaper per square metre on average than schools built under the Building Schools for the Future Programme”, which was Labour’s flagship programme. Educational services should not just be used for political gain when our country and our county’s young people depend on them. The students of Prudhoe deserve and need a safe place to continue their education. They need it in the short term, and they need it in the long term. When a report was leaked to The Observer that a senior official at the Department for Education had described the “upcoming risk” three years ago that many schools were in such disrepair that they were a “risk to life”, I do not believe that a newly rebuilt community high school in Prudhoe was one of the ones at the top of their minds. The school’s facilities were described as fantastic when it reopened, and they were a welcome investment, but it is clear that something has gone seriously wrong. I completely take the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about the need to look at a warranty. For my generation, a warranty is something we consider for a mobile phone, not a public institution like a school, but clearly something needs to be done. I would really like the Minister to reflect on what can be done to investigate how this went so badly wrong and how this community was let down, because the students of PCHS deserve nothing more. They deserve better. They deserve, at the very least, an apology. To experience a school closing for an indeterminate period of time is a disruption that no student should have to experience. It uproots lives, derails routine and destabilises students. No child should have to go through this. No parent should be forced to watch their child go through this. As the hon. Member for Strangford indicated, school is not just a building where children learn; it is a building where children should feel safe, supported and at home.