Coming up on the Peston podcast, when will it be safe to ease lockdown and relax social distancing measures?

The Northern Ireland protocol that puts a border in the sea between Great Britain and Northern Ireland,

has that started a process that would inevitably lead to Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom

and joining with the Republic of Ireland?

And is the government doing enough to protect people who are living in unsafe building because of

inflammable cladding and to compensate them for the losses that they are suffering.

All this and more with the Housing and Community Secretary Robert Jenrick, with the

First Minister of Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster, and the distinguished scientist,

advisor to the government, John Edmunds.

Also chipping in with acute commentary, we've got the former chief of staff to Theresa May,

the ex-prime minister, Nick Timothy, and Liz Kendall, a distinguished Labour frontbencher.

First up, Nick Timothy.

I think we're on the record saying you think that the government should have closed the borders

in a rather more significant way than they've done. Why is that and why do you think they

haven't? Well, I think it's, I mean, it's strange really that the borders were kept open for as long as they have.

And in particular when we knew that there were new variants which were potentially vaccine resistant.

And I think one of the lessons that we've had from different parts of the world is the more you can restrict entry into your country through border control, the less restrictive you might need to be in terms of your domestic COVID policies. And we've obviously had incredibly restrictive policies here, but we've also kept the borders open.

I think obviously we're saying this with a certain amount of hindsight.

We've been living through a terrible pandemic dealing with the unknown, but I think with hindsight,

this is going to be one of the things the government will end up criticised for.

Liz, if I could turn to you, do you think we yet have enough evidence to conclude that it would be right for kids to go back to school on March the 8th?

Well, I would like to see schools open absolutely as quickly as possible. The impact on their learning and later life chances for many children has been catastrophic.

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