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Fire Safety (Schools)

My hon. Friend is right. The impact does not last only a few days, weeks or months. Sometimes, schools are closed for a year and a half or more, and I hope to give evidence that some teachers' health is so badly affected that they end up retiring early or cannot return to the school where they worked. The LGA and its partners produced a very well-researched document, entitled "The Impact of School Fires", which looked at the economic and social impacts on schools and local communities. It makes it clear that""the costs of a sprinkler system can be recovered within five years through reduced insurance premiums, which would be reduced by installing sprinklers by around 65 per cent"." The LGA puts the economic case quite succinctly, but the social case is more devastating:""The review found that fires have a large direct and indirect cost"" to the community. It goes on to say that""proportionately, the highest cost of school fires occurs in the South East/London Region (representing 37 per cent of the cost of all school fires)"," but""metropolitan areas experience higher frequencies of school fires and"," therefore, the greatest total cost and risk. The report says:""One in eight schools suffers a serious arson attack and 75 per cent of school fires are the result of a malicious fire"," and goes on to say that""damage can affect exam results, mean temporary accommodation is needed and result in disruption as a result of rebuilding and insurance cannot replace lost school work and lost school days."" It states that""it is estimated that the education of 90,000 children is disrupted by school fires each year…17 per cent of schools who had experienced a fire said that it had led to a drop in staff morale, six per cent to a drop in morale amongst pupils and seven per cent said that their fire had led to negative publicity about their school."" That is a devastating blow to pupil and staff morale. It also says that""the increase in the number of extended schools (and the requirement for all schools to offer extended services by 2010) means that, increasingly, entire communities can be affected by a school fire."" A fire undermines the capacity of community groups to continue to operate. The evidence is all in place. Craig McCartney—no relation to me—is a teacher at Copleston high school in Suffolk. Believe it or not, pupils set fire to that school. The damage cost more than £1 million. Inevitably the delay between the fire and the rebuilding work meant that there was no staffroom or other facilities for 18 months, thereby causing major stress to both pupils and staff. Teaching unions and the fire service have literally hundreds of examples of personal hardship caused by school fires. After a fire in Clifton primary school in Greater Manchester, the pupils had to use a church hall, but they could not be educated on Mondays because the hall was already booked. The rebuilding work was done around the children in some of the classes, and it took a year before all the work was complete. Loss adjusters ground down the head teacher and governors over some of the costs. The children's education was severely disrupted and the impact immense: SATs results fell from 80 per cent. to around only 53 per cent. I am pleased to say that they are well over 80 per cent. again. For the affected children, the damage cannot be undone. Such was the effect of stress on the head teacher in trying to keep his school and community going, he had to retire at the age of 52 and never go back to the school again. Before my right hon. Friend was even a Minister, let alone a Minister in this Department, he had a long record of campaigning on fire safety issues. He was a very active member of the all-party group that I helped to establish some 20 years ago. I know that in this debate I have a Minister who not only understands the issues—both intellectually and organisationally—but is a friend at court in terms of what we need to do. The debate is not about chivvying along this Minister; it is about finding a way for him to put into practice what he believes is the current policy, which is that local authorities are required to install sprinklers in new schools.