Peter Peacock Attacks SNP On School Building Programme

18th October 2009

Peter Peacock, Highlands and Islands regional Labour MSP, has urged SNP Ministers to apologise for misleading voters after the Scottish Government suffered a parliamentary defeat on its record on school building.

The Scottish Parliament passed a motion condemning the SNP for falling short of their election manifesto pledge to match the previous Scottish Executive's School Buildings Programme "brick for brick".

Former Education Minister Peter Peacock, who commissioned the previous Scottish Executive's school building programme, said: "The SNP's election rhetoric on school buildings has again been exposed for what it was - yet another cynical attempt to gain votes with promises they knew they could not deliver.

"After more than two years in government the SNP Government has not delivered a single school building. Only 14 new schools have been promised in the whole of Scotland and none of these will be open to pupils until after the next Scottish Parliament election. All the SNP has delivered is a £23 million quango called the Scottish Futures Trust which is yet to provide a single penny for new schools in Scotland.

"Thanks to the SNP nearly two and a half years have been wasted and these two and a half years could have been spent rebuilding Scotland's schools estate and maintaining construction jobs locally.

"During the previous eight years Labour approved literally hundreds of millions of pounds of expenditure covering every Council area in the Highlands and Islands and Highland has benefited from those decisions.

"Over the next eight years the SNP government will only add only one refurbished Secondary School in Wick. While good for the people of Wick, the vast amount of work that would have been undertaken in other schools has been abandoned.

"By changing the funding method the SNP government will only meet some 60% of the costs of the refurbished school and will leave the Council with a maintenance millstone around its neck for the next 30 years. It was the lack of maintenance by the Council that allowed the school to deteriorate. Under the arrangements the SNP have scrapped the Council would have got 80% of the cost of the school including a maintenance contract for 30 years to keep the school in pristine condition. What has been offered to Caithness is very much second best."

"SNP Ministers have been reduced to claiming school buildings which were commissioned or were even under construction before they took office to say they are matching the previous Executive's programme. Parliament wasn't fooled by that and neither will the people across Caithness."