Today on Coffee House

What we learned on Thursday is that, at least while the Prime Minister is convalescing, the boffins of the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies are, in effect, running the country. Dominic Raab, who is deputising for Boris Johnson, made it crystal clear that he and his fellow ministers – who met on Thursday in Cabinet and the Cobra committee – simply followed the advice of SAGE, which is chaired by Sir Patrick Vallance, in extending total lockdown for a minimum of three weeks.

‘Now I can believe I’m alive.’ These were the first words I heard my father speak in over a month. It was 7.15 on Wednesday morning and I was just clambering out of bed for my morning jog on Bodmin Moor. I am lucky in that I can run a few miles down to an old china clay quarry on the moors with a trusty labrador and two terriers in tow without seeing a single other human being. My telephone rang and I noticed it was a Plymouth number, likely heralding a call from Derriford Hospital where my 83-year-old father, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, has been fighting coronavirus since mid-March.

Dominic Raab has this evening confirmed that there will a lockdown extension of three weeks. The First Secretary of State said that while there had been encouraging signs that the rate of infection had significantly reduced, it was still too early to break away from any lockdown measures. He said the most dangerous thing for both public health and the economy would be a second wave of coronavirus infections. While the government line remains that ministers will not publicly discuss an exit strategy on the grounds that it distracts from the current social distancing measure, Raab went the furthest he has in addressing the issue.

Ofqual, the exams watchdog, has issued a consultation document about its proposals for exams this year. It’s proposing to delegate the whole business of awarding grades to teachers, based on mocks, previous work and anything else that comes to mind. Pupils would not, under these plans, be able to appeal the 'professional judgment' of teachers as it would be 'inappropriate, ineffective and unfair'.  Well, I suppose they think that presenting adjectives in threes in the Ciceronian fashion may convince some punters, but it still isn’t enough to hide this dog’s breakfast of a way at arriving at the crucial results on which quite a few young peoples’ futures depend.