UK Covid live: Johnson hopes schools in England will reopen from 8 March; enforced hotel quarantine confirmed

Back in the Commons Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, asked Johnson to confirm that a public inquiry would be launched this year.

Johnson said of course there would be a time to learn lessons. But he said the government was working flat out at the moment on dealing with the pandemic. Now was not the time to launch an inquiry, he said, because it would distract officials.

Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, asked Johnson to maintain the universal credit uplift and improve support for the self-employed.

Johnson said the SNP should stop talking about an independence referendum.

I’ve updated the post at 1.38pm with the full quotes from Boris Johnson on schools reopening from 8 March. You may need to refresh the page for the update to appear.

Johnson is responding to Starmer.

He says there will be a time to review what happened. But he criticises Labour for supporting government policies and then attacking them.

He asks what Labour has done to reassure the public.

He challenges Starmer, again, to say schools are safe.

And he criticises Starmer for wanting to change the vaccination priority list. That list was drawn up to save lives, he says. Now Starmer wants politicians to over-rule the experts. He says Starmer should say which vulnerable groups should have to wait.

And he says the Labour policy would delay the exit from lockdown.

He says all politicians will be asked what they did, collaboratively, to beat the virus. He says he is not sure Starmer’s choice was the right one.

Starmer says it is quite something for Johnson to open schools one day, close them then next, call them vectors of transmission, and then criticise Labour for saying they are unsafe.

He says Labour welcomes any steps being taken to open schools. But it wants to look at the details, he says.

And he repeats his call for the vaccination of key workers to be accelerated, with teachers and teaching staff being vaccinated during half-term. (See 12.49pm.)

Starmer says, if the PM is saying he did everything he could to save lives, is he really telling grieving families that those losses were inevitable, and nothing could have been done to save lives.

Sir Keir Starmer says he accepts that Boris Johnson regrets what has happened. But this was not inevitable, he says. He says what has happened has been down to mistakes made by the prime minister.

He says 20% of deaths happened in care homes. He says he does not think Johnson realises how offensive it was to blame care homes for what happened.

He restates his criticism of Johnson for delaying lockdown measures. He says there have been 50,000 deaths since 11 November. That’s 50,000 deaths in 77 days.

That’s a scarcely believable toll on the British people.

In isolation any of these mistakes are perhaps understandable. Taken together it’s a damning indictment of how the government has handled this pandemic.

Johnson says the government will publish its plan for leaving lockdown after the half-term recess, in the week beginning Monday 22 February.

So I can tell the house that when parliament returns from recess in the week commencing 22nd February subject to the full agreement of the House, we intend to set out the results of that review and publish our plan for taking the country out of lockdown. That plan will of course depend on the continued success of our vaccination programme, the capacity of the NHS and on deaths falling at the pace we would expect as more people are inoculated.

This means schools will not be able to reopen for all pupils immediately after half-term, he says.

But he says he hopes schools will be able to reopen in England from the week beginning Monday 8 March.

If we achieve our target of vaccinating everyone in the four most vulnerable groups with their first dose by February 15, and every passing day sees more progress towards that goal, then those groups [will] have developed immunity from the virus about three-weeks later, that is by March 8.

We hope it will therefore be safe to begin the reopening of schools from Monday, March 8.

With other economic and social restrictions being removed thereafter as and when the data permits … then or thereafter I should say.

Johnson summarises the restrictions already imposed at the borders.

And he announces the new measures: people arriving from 22 countries where new variants pose a risk, including South Africa and South America, will have to isolate in government-provided hotels for 10 days, he says.

He says Priti Patel will give further details in her statement later.

Boris Johnson starts with condolences to all those who have lost loved ones.

He says the biggest vaccination programme in history has been launched. He says 6.8 million people have now been vaccinated – 13% of the adult population.

Four-fifths of those aged 80 or over have been vaccinated, he says. And he says over half of those aged over-75 have been vaccinated.

With Boris Johnson due to make a statement to MPs on Covid and schools within the next hour, this is really only a half-time verdict, but Johnson will be hoping the second half goes rather better. In his exchanges with Sir Keir Starmer, he was defensive, unpersuasive, and frankly sounded rather beaten. Starmer asked why the UK death toll had been so high – rightly arguing that this is the one question on everyone’s lips – and Johnson stuck to the same line he deployed at last night’s press conference, that now is not the time to go into this. It’s a feeble holding position, and you could sense that he knew it. Starmer then ran through the familiar charge sheet about the PM being repeatedly slow to act, which was as compelling as it always is. Johnson did land a hit in his final answer, with his swipe about Starmer’s criticism of Kate Bingham, but it did not really alter the scorecard. He could tell he was floundering because at one point he appealed for MPs to work together in the national interest – always the last refuge of a minister who is sinking.

Starmer, was usual, was precise, effective – and somewhat understated. He always seems keen to criticise Johnson on grounds that would be persuasive to the public mainstream, rather than using arguments that appeal to Labour activists, and we saw that again today. One response to what Johnson said last night would be to attack his honesty; it is just not true for him to say he did everything he could have done to avoid Covid deaths. See 8.54am. But Starmer stuck to attacking Johnson on competence, not on probity. Whether or not this is the best tactic is probably a matter of debate.

The most newsy thing Starmer said was about prioritising teachers for the Covid vaccine. Ironically, for the second week in a row, this amounts to Starmer lining up at PMQs with a policy position favoured by Priti Patel. So far the government has been adamant that it won’t rewrite the phase one priority list for vaccinations, but ministers might start to wobble if they think Starmer (and Patel) have the public with them on this one.

Labour has issued a press release saying key workers should be included in phase one of the vaccination programme, which currently only covers people over the age of 50, health and care staff and people with serious underlying health conditions. At PMQs Sir Keir Starmer said teachers should be vaccinated during half term (see 12.13pm), but Labour is now saying a wider range of key workers should also get priority.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow chancellor, said:

The NHS rightly deserve congratulations for their impressive and speedy rollout of vaccinations. But now we need to go further and faster. Not only will vaccination acceleration save lives it will help us to carefully and responsibly reopen our economy and crucially ensure children are back in school as transmission reduces.

Ministers must bring forward plans to vaccinate key workers as soon as possible. Police officers, teachers, firefighters and transport workers are just some of the key workers who have kept society functioning through this pandemic and are more exposed to the virus. We cannot afford to slow our vaccination efforts now.