Educational Settings: Reopening

Mark Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

The hon. Member raises an important point. This is something that my hon. Friend the Minister is monitoring very closely with our expert advisers.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

Before I ask my question, may I take the Minister back to something that he said in his statement? I think he said that schools were closed to stop community transmission. In our evidence last week, Dr Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer, said that it was the other way around—that there was no evidence that schools drove large-scale community transmission; it was community transmission that led to infections in school. What I want to press him on is what he said about the criteria for reopening schools. He mentioned a number of indicators: hospitalisation rates and so forth. At what level do those indicators have to get to in order to trigger the reopening of schools? These are decisions not for scientists, but for Ministers, and we want to know: what point do those measures need to get to for Ministers to take the decision to reopen schools to all children?

[Nick Gibb]

The reason why schools have been asked to restrict access to children other than vulnerable children and the children of critical workers is nothing to do with the safety of the schools themselves. It is about reducing community activity. That in turn will help to reduce transmission risk in those communities. That is the reason behind adding school closures to the other closures in the economy that took place prior to that decision, which we were advised to take in January. My right hon. Friend rightly asks: what are the criteria that will determine whether and how soon we will move out of the national lockdown position? As he reminds me, I mentioned those in my opening comments about hospitalisation rates, mortality, the rate of vaccination and the challenge of new variants. We do rely on the advice of SAGE, the Joint Biosecurity Centre, Public Health England and the chief medical officer as well as the deputy chief medical officer, Jenny Harries, when those criteria are assessed and whether they believe that it is right to start to undo some of the national restrictions that we are now facing.