The pandemic lockdowns have posed a series of difficult questions to universities. Today we live in a world where they have been told to go over to remote learning for all but a few courses like medicine and some other scientific areas that require laboratory and practical work in a specialist location.

There is first the issue of accommodation. Many students with or without help from parents have signed on for a year’s rental in student accommodation. The students will not be able to use this and some are asking for rental reductions or cancellations of the agreements. Private landlords say they have to provide the facility whether the student uses it or not, pay any debt interest on the borrowings to own it, and meet service and utility charges to keep the building going. Some of the private landlords depend on the income from the letting to buy the basics and are not rich. Other private landlords are richer individuals or better financed companies or charities.

Some of the landlords are the Universities themselves, providing student accommodation on the main campus or owning properties nearby. They too may have taken on debts to build and own the housing and need revenue to pay the maintenance and utility bills.

The second issue is payments for tuition. Some students think there should be a discount or rebate for remote teaching. They argue that they agreed to tuition fees on the assumption of face to face teaching and lectures which are no longer available. The Universities reply that they still have the same staff on the same salaries and are providing teaching on line so the full tuition fee should still apply.

In a situation like this there is a tussle between the student, the University, the landlord and the state over should pay the bills. Where both students and university unite to say the state should subsidise, they are saying all taxpayers should make a contribution. This will include people who did not have the benefit of going to a university and people earning less than the student hopes to earn following graduation. The same may be true of smaller landlords, if they were expected to take some of the hit.

In many cases students are being told they have to pay for full tuition fees and accommodation even though they are living at home and learning on line. Do you think this is the right answer?

The decision to put the country back into lockdown ended the argument about whether the schools should stay open. It also strengthened the position of all those who wanted to have another year without GCSE and A level exams. The Secretary of State who had been defending keeping schools open and exams in the summer had to announce an abrupt change of plan. Numerous matters now need to be sorted out as arguments continue over how much longer schools will remain closed.

The loss of exams is a blow. Whilst many teachers appraise their pupils professionally and give them realistic grades, the reliance on teacher grades contains at least three problems for the Examining Boards. The first is how do the Exam Boards ensure common standards throughout . Working with a limited number of Examiners and a marking scheme for exam answers makes this easier when using professionally moderated exams comparing with previous years. . The second is how do you ensure a few teachers are not affected by the social skills and friendliness of the pupil which may not be the same as the work and talent on display. The third is how do you stop the natural process of wanting to do well and seeing the pressures on the school leading to Grade creep? Will there be surrogate school based tests and exams? What is the role of the mock exam? How much adult support and guidance is allowed for course work?

The loss of social contact and play with peers is a big loss for young children. They learn a lot from each other at school and need the challenge and stimulus of others of their age.

Have now all families in need been equipped with laptops or mobile devices that allow them to participate fully in remote learning? Have teachers been trained in offering good on line courses? What use is going to be made of bought in on line materials as opposed to teacher driven materials?

President Trump has failed to sustain a case of electoral fraud or miscounting. He was wrong to encourage protests on the day Congress met to ratify the result of the Electoral College votes.

The results of the two Senate run offs in Georgia will be highly significant. If both seats have been taken by the Democrats as the media claim the US will likely opt for a high spend higher tax strategy allied to a major decarbonisation drive. Expect plenty of drama from a 50/50 Senate.

The UK has lost market share in long distance haulage. Lower labour rates and lower taxes on vehicles in parts of the EU have allowed undercutting of UK hauliers. The UK did introduce the HGV levy to require foreign hauliers to make some contribution to road costs in the UK, as otherwise their trucks did not pay VED and they often evaded refuelling here to take advantage of lower taxes elsewhere. This has been cancelled for a year.

Now we are independent we need to reconsider our haulage industry. The first thing should be to restore the HGV levy on foreign trucks using our roads and to make sure the UK haulier does not pay twice for using our highways. The idea of the HGV charge was to make a charge for use of our roads by lorries not paying VED.

We could look at the balance of containers that come to the UK unaccompanied and those coming with a tractor unit and driver from the continent. Maybe more could be brought in more cheaply by a continental driver delivering the container to an EU port and a UK driver picking it up at the UK harbour.

The railway needs to bid for more of the longer distance work within the UK, offering single container or waggon marshalling at sufficient locations where UK drivers and haulage companies can pick up the load for the final delivery journey. This becomes more of an option with the decline of passenger use.

Today I expect Parliament to want more detail on how we get out of lockdown. The Regulations imply another quarter of badly disrupted jobs and businesses, with no early let up in controls. What would be the trigger to allow some relaxation?

As the NHS experts see vaccines as the ultimate way out, there will be active debate on how the vaccinations can be speeded up. Presumably if enough people can be protected the government’s experts would then consider allowing more social contact and economic activity.

It would be helpful to know how much vaccine of the approved types is available on delivery schedules, and to be offered reassurance about who is going to administer the doses. Will the NHS seek the help of pharmacies as with annual flu vaccines? Will the NHS speed up accepting the volunteers with medical training who are willing to cone back to work and would help inoculate people? Will others be trained to carry out the work? Will all GP surgeries and hospitals be offering the service and have supplies?

The sooner we can get back to saving jobs the better. Another national lock down has a big economic price.

Some of the experts now seem to think getting the first jab into people gives a decent level of protection. This will speed up the process if they adopt that approach, which will require clarity for those receiving the vaccine over whether to expect a second dose and if so at what interval.

Many countries have imposed lockdowns and curfews. There is no sign from the international numbers that those locking down more for longer have been more successful in reducing case numbers or deaths.

The 20 countries with most cases per million so far are mainly continental European ones that have imposed tough lockdowns, and the USA with severe lockdowns on the populous Democrat controlled east and west coasts.
The top six countries for deaths per million are small European countries led by Belgium, with Peru in seventh place in the grisly table.

Government advisers have long concentrated on recommending lock downs for long periods while we await enough people being vaccinated. Their ultimate way out depends both on good rates of vaccination and the virus not mutating in ways which defeat the vaccines.

I will press again for better treatments, better isolation and infection control in the NHS, use of the Nightingales as specialist units, better cleaning and air flow in public buildings. I have tabled more questions and will try to raise these matters in the debate.

Once again the official government advisers present the case for lock down but do not present the case about the damage lock downs do to many people and businesses so we can weigh the balance of the arguments. There is also an absence of regularly published and reliable numbers of hospital beds, bed occupancy and deaths from other lung diseases. The death figures remain with CV 19 rather than because of CV 19. I do not doubt that this is a nasty disease and some people catch a serious version of it which can be life threatening.,We need to target our response based on improving knowledge of it, and offer good safeguarding to all those most vulnerable to it.

I will seek more information about the capacity of the NHS before deciding how to vote on new controls.

Some are writing to me to support the Prime Minister and the Chief Inspector of schools in wanting the schools to open today. Others are contacting me urging closure in line with the ideas of the main teaching Union and the Opposition parties. I invite more views. I just want us to adopt the least bad answer in what is a difficult situation for the country.

The government case is based on several propositions. Children get very mild versions of the disease and the younger ones often show no symptoms so they are not much at risk. There will be testing systems to ensure early isolation of anyone with the disease.Teachers will be protected by social distancing with bubbles , limits on numbers in confined spaces to reduce the risk of any infection spreading and regular cleaning.

If children are barred from school they will lack social contacts with their friends and will miss the benefit of a class teacher. There will be more cases of depression and other mental illnesses. Exams may be disrupted leading to another year with a likely different basis for assessing a student’s level of achievement for qualifications.

Closing schools will force many more parents into home working or not working leading to income loss and further strains on other important activities that need the workforce to turn up to work in person.

The Union case argues that with the advent of a strain of the virus which is more infectious there is a danger that school children will spread the virus to others at home. Teachers need more protection than the testing and social distancing regimes adopted so far. They think seeking to limit any additional spread of the virus should take precedence over any other consideration of people’s mental health, educational progress or ability to go to work.

The government counters by saying it advises families with elderly and at risk members who do not live with them to avoid any contact with the children until those at risk have been vaccinated.

Next week I will return to issues over how we handle the virus that I have often raised before. I welcome the arrival of two vaccines which will be widely taken up by those who want protection. The UK has been first of the advanced countries to license these products and to start vaccinating people. The scientific advisers have always seen this as the way out of lockdown, so the sooner a lot of people are vaccinated the sooner presumably they will be satisfied,

Meanwhile there are other things that could help us live with the virus, as we have to do with a number of potential killer diseases without locking down society.

1, Air extraction. Where have the government got to in improving air extraction at their own buildings including hospitals to ensure rapid removal of potentially contaminated air?

2. Where are the grant and advice schemes to allow private sector businesses from shops to restaurants to improve their air extraction and make their venues safer?

3. Air and surfaces purification. Where have they reached in using powerful UV cleaners (in safe spaces) to clean up recycled air and to decontaminate surfaces?

4. Other treatments. After the initial break through with a steroid we were promised test results for a range of other possible treatments. Where have they got to with those?

5. Isolation hospitals. Why are they not using the Nightingales as specialist isolation CV 19 units to cut numbers going to District General hospitals and to allow more hospitals to be CV 19 free? Cross infection is still an issue.

6. Staffing. Why do they not do 5 above to cut numbers of staff away from work because they have CV 19 or may have been in contact with it?

7. When will they cut through the barriers to the return of retired staff who are qualified to help them?

The EU website today has no record of the EU/UK Trade Agreement under trade deals. Nor does its site give any indication of how to trade with the UK, left out from a long list of nations they refer to in the Trade section. Do they not want to keep on selling us so much, or are the just unable to update their site for the new realities? Surely they should put up the EU/UK Agreement subject to ratification, as I understand that is what they intend to do. Alternatively if they do not think they will be ratifying it they should put up the WTO terms to alert people to that.

The EU site has however been updated in one important respect. Where it seeks to show the scale and size of the EU in the world they now quote figures for the EU 27 without the UK. It shows the EU currently at a little under 15% of world GDP, with a forecast suggesting this will fall to 9% of the world by 2050. The EU cites estimates That the USA will lose less share than the EU over the next 30 years, whilst India will surge and China will do well.

I did not see any discussion of how the EU might limit its losses in share of world output, or narrow the gap with the USA. The challenge for the UK out of the EU will be shift our performance upwards to US or better levels, by varying our policy mix from the one the EU predicts will leave it declining as an economic force in the world.