Sunak failing the next generation as he refuses to protect education budgets

EMBARGO: Immediate Release

Following Rishi Sunak’s failure to guarantee that school and college budgets will not be cut in next week’s Autumn Statement at Prime Minister’s Questions, Liberal Democrat Education Spokesperson Munira Wilson MP said:

"The Conservatives are planning more public spending cuts to pay for their own economic incompetence, now it is our children who will suffer. 

"School trips are already being axed, teaching assistants are being laid off and urgent classroom repairs are being ignored as buildings crumble. Further cuts mean pupils with additional needs won't get the support they need and activities like performing arts clubs will be stolen away by this Conservative government.

"The PM’s refusal to commit to protecting education budgets mean that schools and colleges will have no choice but to make further cuts to everything, but what happens to those already stripped back to the bare essentials?

"This Conservative Government is failing to fund education. Rather than investing in the next generation, Rishi Sunak seems hell-bent on balancing the books on their backs."

ENDS

Notes to Editor

Clip from the House of Commons can be found here.

Text of Munira Wilson’s PMQ in full: 

“I know the Prime Minister has been busy failing to stand up to bullies, but meanwhile schools and colleges looking after actual children are struggling to make ends meet.

“One London headteacher has scrapped plans to hire mental health counsellors.

“A headteacher in Twickenham is not filling teaching assistant vacancies.

“Another is cutting school trips.

“Will the Prime Minister give pupils and parents a cast-iron guarantee that, in next week’s Autumn Statement, there will be no real-terms cuts to school and college budgets?”