Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish the (a) scientific and (b) medical evidential basis for the decision to restrict face-to-face teaching in universities until 17 May 2021.

We have worked extremely closely with scientists and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) to understand and model various scenarios to inform our plan to re-open the country without putting unsustainable pressure on the NHS. We have also examined economic and social data to get a balanced understanding of the impacts of carefully easing restrictions. The government has also carefully considered data on the impact of COVID-19 and lockdown on ethnic minority communities, the vulnerable, the young, and low-income groups.

The government considered all the scientific advice and models that suggested that allowing additional indoor mixing at an earlier stage when prevalence was higher and fewer people had been vaccinated could result in significantly higher numbers of infections and that is why restrictions outdoors were eased before restrictions on most indoor activity. As the number of people vaccinated increased, we have been able to take steps to ease restrictions further.

A wealth of data, papers and evidence is being published at the same time as the roadmap, to ensure transparency on the information the government has had available to it in reaching its decisions. This includes the following information from Public Health England:

• Information on vaccine effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccination
• A surveillance report with a more detailed summary of the findings so far from Sarscov2 Immunity and Reinfection Evaluation (SIREN) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI)-Watch.
• A technical paper on the SIREN analysis being published (as a pre-print) by the Lancet.

The papers from SAGE include:

• Minutes from the last 4 SAGE meetings.
• Children’s Task and Finish Group paper: ‘COVID-19 in higher education settings’, 10 February 2021.
• 3 papers from Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) with a summary of modelling on scenarios for easing restrictions, together with the supporting papers from modellers at Warwick University and Imperial College London.
• A collection of papers from SPI-M on “relaxation of non-pharmaceutical interventions and the re-opening of schools”, and the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) (the behavioural experts’ sub-group of SAGE) on return to campus for the spring term and the risk of increased transmission from student migration

The return of students was not considered in isolation but as part of the government’s overall roadmap. All areas included in the roadmap (as well as higher education) are informed by advice from the scientific and medical experts. Additional papers published by SAGE in relation to Step 3 of the roadmap can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/sage-meetings-may-2021.