Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen
10.35am GMT
Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, has a meeting with teachers’ groups today to discuss calls for the Easter holidays to be extended. Ahead of the meeting Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:
We welcome the opportunity to speak to the secretary of state for Education today about the implications for schools and colleges of the coronavirus emergency with the aim of working together to support the learning and wellbeing of children and young people during this crisis.
The concerns we will be raising with him are the challenges of keeping open schools and colleges when a growing number of staff are away from work because they are self-isolating; the potential for disruption to GCSE and A-levels and what contingencies will be put in place; and how we ensure children in poverty do not go hungry and that vulnerable young people are safeguarded if schools are closed.
9.56am GMT
Echoing a point made by Grant Shapps in his Today interview this morning (see 9.20am), Prof Jason Leitch, the Scottish government’s national clinical director, told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland today that the government advice to the over-70s, which is due soon, would not include telling them to cut off all contact with others. They should have more family contact, not less, he said.
And, even though this has been characterised as people being asked to stay at home, he said that people would not have to stay at home all the time: He explained:
We will almost certainly, as a four-country UK, we will move to a position in the next few weeks where we will ask those groups [the over-70s and those with pre-existing conditions] to not stay at home in the social isolation way that we are telling the symptomatic to do so, but to reduce their social contact.
It might be mosques, it might be churches, it might be bingo … and pubs [that people have to avoid]. What we are not suggesting, unlike those with symptoms, is that those people would cut off family contact and not be able to receive visitors.
Category: Politics, UK news, Coronavirus outbreak, Boris Johnson, Grant Shapps, Rail transport
