Piers Morgan tells 'catastrophe' Gavin Williamson to resign

Piers Morgan interviews Gavin Williamson - Credit: ITV

Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan has called on Gavin Williamson to resign as education secretary for being a “catastrophe”.

The interviewed started with co-presenter Susanna Reid claiming that he had “failed” many children.

She told him: “I remember we talked to each other early on in the pandemic when you cancelled two sets of exams which directly impacted my family – the A Levels and GCSEs. Then we went into a system where students didn’t know how they would be assessed, many of them didn’t have laptops so they couldn’t get online learning, and then you brought in a totally catastrophic algorithm to decide what grades they might get, so many were downgraded.

“They lost out on future life chances at the universities they wanted to go to. Back in December, you told schools they needed to stay open, even threatening legal action against them, and then come the new term you decided that schools needed to be closed.

“Still half a million haven’t got laptops to access online learning, and they still have no idea how their exams are going to be assessed.”

It prompted Piers Morgan to ask numerous times if he had offered his resignation to the prime minister at any stage in the pandemic.

“Is there a problem on the line, can you not hear me? You seem to be ignoring me”.

He continued: “Given the level of failure in your reign as education secretary during this pandemic, given that 92% of teachers in England want you to go, given you are described by the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats as the worst education secretary in history, have your looked in the mirror and thought ‘you know what I’ve done a terrible job, I’m going to say to the prime minister it’s time for me to step aside and let someone more competent take over’.

“Have you had that conversation with yourself and the prime minister?”

Williamson simply responded: “We’re dealing with a global pandemic where we’ve had to make decisions at an incredible pace, decisions that none of us would have wanted to take.”

Morgan added: “But you’ve made a series of bad decisions, education secretary, decisions that have had huge ramifications for teachers, for students, for parents you’ve been a catastrophe. Own it!”