'Major mistake' to keep schools closed in pandemic, Covid inquiry told

The Covid inquiry has been told that it was a 'terrible mistake’ to prioritise Eat Out to Help Out over schools

Keeping schools closed while re-opening pubs and restaurants was a "major mistake" and represented a failure to act in children's best interests during the pandemic, the former children's commission has said.

Anne Longfield, who was children’s commissioner for England until February 2021, described the pandemic as having been a “disaster” for many disadvantaged and already vulnerable children to the Covid inquiry.

The second round of the Covid inquiry public hearings are looking into the UK's handling and decision making during the pandemic.

Scheduled to run until at least April next year, the inquiry will also look into the impact of the pandemic on the healthcare system and vaccines.

Ms Longfield also criticised the “indecisive” and even at times “indifferent” government approach to the impact of policy decisions.

'Ignored and overlooked'

Ms Longfield said it was unclear whether the potential negative consequences of lockdowns were understood by decision-makers, or were “heard but were ignored and overlooked”.

In her witness statement to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry’s module two hearings on core UK decision-making and political governance, she outlined three areas where she said the government had “failed most badly to act in children’s best interests”.

Doubling down on this point when giving live evidence to the inquiry on Friday, she said Rishi Sunak's Eat Out to Help Out scheme "was a terrible mistake" and to the detriment of education.

She told the hearing: “That, for me, was a terrible mistake and one which played a huge part in children’s very negative experience of the lockdown period.”

She said the pandemic had exposed the “precarious nature” many children were living their lives in and the levels of disadvantage across the country, but that the impacts were soon forgotten.

While she thought “seeing the real-life impact of vulnerability during Covid might be a changemaker”, instead the impact on the most disadvantaged children had been “quickly forgotten”.

The machinery of government was in no way “set up to be able to support children and represent their best interests”, she said, adding that it had been “very clear that there was no-one at the Cabinet table who was taking children’s best interests to those decisions”.

Her previous calls for a dedicated minister for children were met with a response that this came under the remit of the Education Secretary.

At the time this role was held by Sir Gavin Williamson, but Ms Longfield told the inquiry: “It was very clear he wasn’t part of some of those (decision-making) discussions. There was an empty chair at the table.”

These were the policy towards school opening and access to education; decisions about children’s ability to socialise and use public spaces; and decisions to reduce the safeguarding protection to vulnerable children receiving social care.

These decisions have increased the risk of reduced outcomes, wellbeing and life chances for children, she said, and may have increased vulnerability to harm “for some children who lost their life during the pandemic, not due to Covid, but due to violence”.

While she accepted that initial school closures across the country were necessary, she added that the decision to keep them shut “for most children from March 2020 to September 2020, while at the same time increasing social interaction in other parts of society, was a major mistake”.

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