Education: Return in January

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I will certainly happily provide the latest information on the distribution of laptops in the hon. Member’s constituency. The reason we announced the uplift to the distribution of 1 million laptops is that we recognise that the challenges of the pandemic require more digital provision. That is why we took the move to increase it from 500,000 to 1 million.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

This feels slightly like my own first day back at school, though rather near the bottom of this particular class.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the importance of his mass testing programme for schools derives from the danger that infected children may be spreaders without symptoms?

[Gavin Williamson]

If my right hon. Friend is a new boy back in school, I think the Chief Whip is the headmaster, so he will probably be keeping a close eye on my right hon. Friend. However, it is good to see him back with the Conservative Whip, as I very much felt it was a great privilege to work so closely with him when he was Chairman of the Defence Committee and I was in a previous role.

My right hon. Friend is right that, actually, many children who have coronavirus do not exhibit symptoms of having coronavirus. This is why the move to mass testing in secondary schools is so important. It gives us the opportunity to identify so many more children who have the virus and just do not know it. That means that so many more households can be informed that they also need to be tested as they may also have the virus. This is an important step in defeating this virus and taking the battle to covid to ensure that we defeat it and are triumphant in doing so.