Educational Settings: Reopening

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

We did secure a very good three-year settlement for school funding with the Treasury, and that was confirmed in the spending review 2020, despite all the other challenges on the Treasury. In addition, we have secured £1 billion of funding for schools for catch-up, and there are also specific funds to help schools tackle and pay the additional costs that they have incurred due to covid—such as the costs incurred between March and July last year and extra staffing costs incurred in November and December last year and in January when the schools went back. Schools that are in difficult financial constraints are always able to talk to their local authority, or to the Education and Skills Funding Agency if they are an academy.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

The Minister will be aware of a letter from HMC—Ipswich School is one of its schools, and it has shown great spirit in really rolling its sleeves up and saying, “We want to help. We think we can vaccinate all teaching staff within a very short period of time.” If the JCVI takes the decision that after all of the most vulnerable have had their first dose, teachers should be prioritised, would it not be the appropriate moment—at the point at which all of the most vulnerable and all teaching staff have had their first dose, which provides a significant amount of protection—to say that at that point the harms and the dangers posed by schools’ remaining closed will become greater than any potential public health risks.

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes an important point; I am sure that it will have been heard by the Department of Health and Social Care. I have a lot of responsibilities on my plate, as does my hon. Friend, but I am not responsible yet for the roll-out of the vaccine programme, which is going extremely well, with more than 6 million people vaccinated so far.