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In his inteviews this morning Sajid Javid, the health secretary, defended the decision to end the advice for pupils and staff to wear masks in class in England from today. This was one of several measures announced yesterday marking the end of plan B.
Javid told the BBC:
There has long been a debate about face masks, particularly in schools. The government’s job is to take a balanced and proportionate decision, in this case balanced against the best interests of children.
It is harder to teach children and it will have an impact on their education if they are required to wear face mask at all times in classrooms.
Will I be wearing a face mask? Yeah, I think I probably would be in a week’s time.
Because prevalence is still high and there will be people there, especially if I am going to my local shop which is small and enclosed and can have quite a few people in there at one time in quite a small space, I don’t know most of those people, I think that would be sensible.
Yes it does. Of course things like this damage our democracy. From what we already know from the people who have come forward and apologised for the parties that took place, for example the one on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral, that was completely wrong. It was wrong in every single way. That is already damaging, of course it is.
