Covid-19 Update

Steve Brine Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very doubtful that the people of Salford would be deprived in the way that the hon. Lady describes, but I will of course look into it urgently and my hon. Friend the vaccine Minister will be taking it up immediately.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Many parents will have faced home schooling last year with a sense of necessary resignation. My sense is that many of them are now quite desperately worried about their children. So it is fantastic news that the Prime Minister has said today that as the vaccines roll out and the most vulnerable are protected, that will move in lockstep and we will get the country back to school. However, do all schools have to wait for the 8 March date, even primary, given that we all agree, as he has said today at the Dispatch Box, that schools are safe?

[The Prime Minister]

I hear my hon. Friend loud and clear. I know his views will be shared by many in this House. I just want to go back to the key thing that we need to establish: it will not, alas, be until the middle of February that we have real, material evidence that the vaccines are working in terms of driving down the mortality rate among those crucial groups. So if we were to give schools decent notice to come back, we are driven more towards 8 March by that logic rather than coming back earlier. Believe me, we have been round and round this many times, and it is about as fast as we think we can prudently go. I think that is what the country would want; people would want schools open but they would want them open in a cautious and sensible way.