Covid-19

Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con) [V]]

She sounds like an extremely sensible young lady to me. I hope that the noble Lord reassured her that the issue we face with school closures is not that schools are unsafe for pupils or teachers. The problem is that the new variant is so pervasive that we need to use every lever at our disposal to reduce all contacts outside households, wherever possible, to reduce the pressure on the NHS. I am sure she will be aware that her teachers will, I have no doubt, have implemented a lot of protective measures to ensure that children who can still attend school are safe. Perhaps he might also like to let the young lady know that we are offering biweekly asymptomatic testing for all secondary school and primary school staff. Over 90% of secondary schools and colleges have now registered for this testing.

[Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD) [V]]

My Lords, we can probably all agree that sending pupils back to school on the Monday and keeping them home from Tuesday was not a wonderful situation to put schools, pupils and families in. The Government are clearly trying to give some indication of a timescale well ahead this time, which is welcome, but as a single parent of three boys, who are here at home with me now, it is evidently the case that parents and schools need good notice. There also needs to be some understanding of the pressures on parents. What does a phased return mean? Will it mean one child stays at home while a parent drives the other to school? How will it be managed? Is it regional? The more notice that can be given, the more arrangements can be made at school and at home to make this work. I hope the Government will continue to work to give the earliest possible indication of how schools will be brought back to functioning.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con) [V]]

The noble Lord speaks on behalf of parents throughout the country. He is absolutely right that, when we do start to re-open schools, we want to ensure that will be sustainable. That is why we have taken the difficult decision, in the light of the current data and the current situation, to say that we will not be able to open school immediately after the February half term. He will also know that we have promised to give at least two weeks’ notice to schools, colleges and universities of when they can return to face-to-face teaching to do exactly as he says: to allow student, staff and parents to prepare.