“I’m looking round the house today and I’m looking at my Conservative colleagues... I think there’s four out of fourteen wearing a facemask this morning.”

A number of Tory MPs sitting in the House of Commons were seen without face masks this morning, despite health secretary Sajid Javid’s pleas yesterday for MPs to lead by example.

The health secretary made the plea as Covid cases and hospitalisations continue to rise.  The FT’s Seb Payne asked Javid during the press conference yesterday about Tory MPs appearing in the Commons all day without masks, with Javid admitting Payne had a “very fair point” and that MPs should “set an example.”

Yet this morning there were still some Tory MPs without face masks in the chamber.

The SNP’s Pete Wishart condemned the ‘ongoing comical appearance in this place of one side of the house wearing face masks and the other side not wearing them at all.’

He said: “I heard the secretary of state for health yesterday saying we should wear face masks in crowded and enclosed spaces. He even went as far as to say that MPs should be wearing and setting an example, so come on set that example!

“I’m looking round the house today and I’m looking at my Conservative colleagues and I don’t like picking on them because I think its unnecessary but I think there’s four out of fourteen wearing a facemask this morning.”

In reply, Jacob Rees-Mogg told Wishart that “there’s no advice to wear a face masks in workplaces and the advice on crowded spaces is with crowded spaces with people that you don’t know, we on this side know each other.”

His comments also come just hours after Tory minister Edward Argar said Conservative MPs should be allowed to decide for themselves whether to wear a mask in the Commons chamber.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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