Covid-19: Road Map Debate

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Department: Cabinet Office

Covid-19: Road Map

Cat Smith Excerpts
Monday 22nd February 2021

(3 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Cat Smith Portrait Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
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University students, many of whom were not eligible for furlough for their part-time jobs, were already struggling financially. Today’s road map suggests that the vast majority of those students will not be able to return to their university accommodation until after Easter at best. They are legally being prevented from returning to accommodation for which they are obliged to pay. Does the Prime Minister think that that is fair? If he does not think that it is fair, what will he do about it?

Boris Johnson Portrait The Prime Minister
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I sympathise deeply with students who have had a time at university that no other generation has put up with. I sympathise deeply with their sense of unfairness, with the experiences they have had. They have been heroic, by the way, in the in which they have been able to bring the disease down in some university towns by obeying the guidance. We will do whatever we can to support them, working with the university sector, to make up for the experiences they have been through and to make sure, insofar as we can, that we help them to get compensation.