A CONSERVATIVE health minister was heckled in the House of Commons by her own party’s MPs as she was announcing a renewed mask-wearing mandate for England.
Maggie Throup, the MP for Erewash and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Vaccines and Public Health, faced numerous interventions from her own benches as she moved a public health motion in the Commons.
She declined to take further interventions as her speech wore on, causing mounting shouts and heckles from her own backbenches.
Addressing the renewed requirement for masks to be worn in certain enclosed public spaces and ignoring rising voices from the back, Throup said: “The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has found that face coverings are likely to reduce transmission through all routes by partially reducing emissions of and or exposure to the full range of aerosols and droplets that carry the virus.
READ MORE: All Scotland's Omicron cases linked to a single event, Nicola Sturgeon says
“This includes those that remain airborne and those that deposit on surfaces.”
She then addressed a change in the self-isolation rules, saying that “all individuals notified by NHS test and trace or public health officials that they are close contact of a confirmed or suspected case for Covid-19 Omicron variant will be legally required to self isolate for a period of 10 days, regardless of their age or vaccination status”.
Throup added: “Now, anyone who has tested positive for Covid-19 regardless of the variant will be legally required to self-isolate.”
This represents a change from previous policy, which did not ask fully vaccinated people or those under the age of 18 to take the precautionary step of self-isolation.
The health minister went on: “Mr Speaker, I'm confident that these two sets of regulations represent proportionate, precautionary, and targeted action ...”
This statement led the heckles from the backbenches to reach a crescendo, leading the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, to call for order.
The news comes after a group of Tory MPs refused to don masks in the Commons chamber on Monday.
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