On-trade versus schools debate rumbles on

By Jo Gilbert

Published: 05 August, 2020

Schools must “come before pubs and restaurants in future” England’s children’s commissioner has said, re-igniting a burgeoning stand-off between the education and hospitality sectors.

Flaring up initially over the weekend, Professor Graham Medley, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), said ministers might have to consider closing pubs in England if infections rise locally when lessons resume next month.

Education commissioner Anne Longfield is now putting further pressure on the idea that schools should take priority over non-essential shops, pubs and restaurants, with schools being the last to shut in any future lockdowns.

“If the choice has to be made in a local area about whether to keep pubs or schools open, then schools must always take priority”, she said, adding that schools should be “first to open, last to close”.

The comments follow a report by Longfield which points to studies suggesting that children play a limited role in transmitting Covid-19 and were less likely than adults to bring infections into the household.

When asked whether pubs could have to shut for schools to reopen, Medley, chairman of the SAGE sub-group on pandemic modelling, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think that’s quite possible.

“I think we’re in a situation whereby most people think that opening schools is a priority for the health and wellbeing of children and that when we do that we are going to reconnect lots of households.

“And so actually, closing some of the other networks, some of the other activities, may well be required to enable us to open schools.”

Schools minister Nick Gibb however rejected the notion that there will be a “trade-off” between opening schools or pubs and shops.

He told Sky News: “What we’re doing now is having a much more localised approach to tackling this virus, so where there are spikes in the infection rate, we do act very swiftly to impose local restrictions.”

“That’s what we’ve seen in Manchester, that’s what we saw in Leicester. So it isn’t necessarily a trade-off between one or another, it’s about localised action, swift action, to ensure that we tackle the virus.

“We need to ensure that everybody is adhering to the rules about social distancing and so on, to prevent there being a spike of the infection in particular areas.”

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