Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectators' Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Isabel Hardman, and this is the Sunday Roundup.

The Education Secretary Nadine Zaharwi was in the hot seat this morning as the Sunday interview shows made their return.

Trevor Phillips began by asking Zaharari about proposals which could see the mandatory

period for self-isolation reduced from seven days to five. You have already said this morning that you

think that we are moving from pandemic to endemic. Let's talk about some of the signals of that.

When do you want the isolation period to move from seven days to five days?

So the UK health and security agency did a very good blog on this and your viewers should

actually have a look at that. And what they looked at is because people said, you know,

the America is at five days, why are we at seven days? Actually, we begin our isolation period

when people get symptoms. In the US, it's when they test positive. So we have to be careful as to whether we move, because what you could end up is actually a perverse incentive where the spike is higher because people come out of isolation too early. But they said they will review it.

And if the evidence is there, if you are asymptomatic and you are vaccinated and boosted,

and you have two days, consecutive days of negative lateral flow tests, they said they will keep

that under review. Of course,

it would help for...

And you want that to happen as soon as possible? Well, I would obviously always defer to the

scientific advice on this. It would certainly, you know, help mitigate some of the pressures

on, you know, schools, on critical workforce and others, but I would

absolutely be driven by the advice from the experts, the scientists, on whether we should move

to five days from seven days. Otherwise, what you don't want is obviously to create the wrong outcome by higher levels of

infection. So Harwe also commented on reports in the Sunday Times, which suggests that the current

policy of providing free lateral flow tests could soon be on its way out. Another suggestion

that's apparently coming forward, and I think you are associated with this, that lateral flow tests are at some point going to have to stop being free if this is an endemic condition.

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