Brandon Lewis – Our position on free school meals ‘is the right one’
Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign to extend the provision of free school meals over the school holidays has seen the government facing considerable criticism, with Labour forcing a vote on the issue in the House of Commons last Wednesday, which was defeated by 61 votes. A rift has even developed within the Conservative party itself, with Robert Halfon, chair of the Education Select Committee, writing in the Spectator on the conservative case for the extension. Sophy Ridge asked the Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis why the government was holding out against the campaign:
BL: I think the position we have taken is the right position because what we’re looking to do is ensure we deal with child poverty at the core… We’ve increased Universal Credit, so people have got more support… but we’ve also put in place around £63 million to support local authorities to help people in their communities at a time of hardship.
Cutting self-isolation period will be ‘scientifically led’
Ridge also asked about newspaper reports that the government is considering reducing the 14 day self-isolation period that people must follow if a member of their household tests positive for Covid-19, or if they return from a foreign country not deemed to be safe by the government. The Telegraph has reported that the quarantine could be cut to as low as 7 days, with isolators able to take a test to show they do not have the disease:
BL: This will be scientifically led… We’re not ready to make a final decision or announcement on that yet, but we want to make sure we’re moving with the science… [so] that people… can live as close to a normal life as we can.
Bernard Jenkin – Test and Trace should be led by a military figure
Sir Bernard Jenkin, the chair of Parliament’s Liaison Committee, became the first Conservative MP to call for the replacement of Dido Harding, the embattled leader of the NHS Test and Trace programme. Expressing his disappointment at ‘a lack of strategy’, with contact tracing repeatedly failing to achieve its key targets, Jenkin called for the project to be reinvigorated with new direction from the military’s top brass:
BJ: I recommend that leadership of Test and Trace should be handed over to a very senior military person who is used to dealing in a crisis situation, under stress, at scale, with very high degrees of complexity and organisation. That’s what a senior military commander is trained to do.
Brandon Lewis – Dido Harding has done ‘a very good job’
However, Lewis defended Harding’s record:
BL: What Dido has done is put together and driven forward a team that has come on so much in the last few months.. We’ve tested over 28 million people. That’s more than anywhere else in Europe… Dido and the team have done a very good job to get where we are.
Rosena Allin-Khan – Free school meals campaign is ‘the best of Britain’
Dr Rosena-Allin Khan, Labour’s shadow minister for mental health, has effusively praised Marcus Rashford’s efforts on free school meals and told Sophy Ridge that Labour would be looking to arrange another vote on the issue before Christmas:
RAK: The fact that 322 MPs made the morally reprehensible decision to vote against free school meals this week is deeply saddening. But… our communities have stood up to this government and said ‘…We are going to take matters into our own hands’… and I know that Marcus Rashford and his campaign absolutely represents the best of our country.
Circuit breaker would last ‘2-3 weeks only’
Ridge asked Allin-Khan about Labour’s policy of a ‘circuit breaker’, or a time limited national lockdown, designed to stem the transmission of the virus before a return to the tiered system of restrictions. Specifically, Ridge pressed Allin-Khan whether Labour would be prepared to extend the circuit breaker if the ‘R’ number remained above the critical level of ‘1’:
SR: If the ‘R’ rate remains above 1, you’re saying that you would just lift the [circuit breaker], even though Keir Starmer doesn’t believe Boris Johnson when he says the same thing?
RAK: We are very clear that the circuit breaker would be for a 2-3 week period only.
Vaughan Gething – We’re reviewing Welsh supermarkets guidance
Andrew Marr spoke to the Welsh Health Minister Vaughan Gething, with Wales now under a 17 day ‘firebreaker’ lockdown of its own. One aspect that has been causing considerable anger is guidance that supermarkets should only sell items that are classified as ‘essential’. Marr asked Gething if this policy was likely for the chop:
VG: We’re reviewing with supermarkets the understanding and the clarity of the policy because there has been different application in different parts [of Wales]… It is hard for lots of people.
Brandon Lewis – Wales is being used as a ‘test-bed’ for ‘socialism’
But Brandon Lewis poured scorn on the Welsh government’s decision to restrict what supermarkets could sell, denouncing the guidance as ‘crazy’ and ‘socialist’:
BL: One of the challenges we’re seeing in Wales actually, and very clearly highlighted, is that it’s become this sort of test-bed for left wing socialist authority coming out with these crazy outcomes. We’ve got to make sure we don’t have that more widely across the country.
Jeremy Hunt – We need Covid tests for fathers-to-be
The chair of the Health Select Committee, Jeremy Hunt, told Ridge what he thought needed to be done to ensure that significant others could attend the birth of their children:
JH: There’s a very simple solution, which is just to say whoever your significant other is, they should get a test, and once they’ve tested negative, they can then accompany the mother at all stages of the pregnancy, and that’s what we need to sort out.
Dr Anthony Fauci – Trump has ‘misinterpreted’ me
And finally, Dr Anthony Fauci, the longstanding adviser on infectious diseases to the White House, told Marr that President Trump had taken his comments about coronavirus out of context during the final presidential debate before the election:
AM: He says that you said of the virus ‘This is no problem, this is going to go away soon’. Did you say that?
AF: No…I think it’s a misinterpretation… Once we saw person to person transmission, I was very vocal that this could be a problem that we had better do something about.
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