Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 02 March 2021
I am not going to get into a debate about interpretation of the data. There is a range of data about the risk of transmission in schools, among teachers and among young people. It is important not to oversimplify it. Suffice it to say that the safety of teachers and everyone who works in a school environment is paramount. That is why we are taking a phased approach to the return of schools and not taking the decision to have all secondary school pupils back full time from 15 March. In our judgment, and that of our expert advisers, to do so would involve taking risks that would not be appropriate.
As for the question on vaccination, much as I would dearly love to stand here and agree to every request that is made for priority vaccination, if I were to accede to that request I would be driving a coach and horses through the JCVI’s expert clinical advice. We would also be doing so in a way that no other Government across the UK is doing. While we have limited supplies of vaccines, and so cannot vaccinate everybody at once, we have to choose the prioritisation basis according to the best clinical advice. As people will know, such advice is for vaccination of the first cohorts—groups 1 to 9—and the JCVI’s advice is to continue to do so progressively, based on people’s ages. Many teachers will have been vaccinated already, and many others will be vaccinated over the next couple of weeks. Those in the younger age groups will be vaccinated as we move to cover the whole adult population by the end of July.
I do not make this comment in relation to teachers in particular, but every time that we take somebody who is younger and fitter, and who is therefore at lower clinical risk from the virus, and vaccinate them ahead of somebody who is at greater clinical risk, we make political choices that are not backed up by clinical advice.