MP WHO TOOK COVID-19 INTO WESTMINSTER REFUSES TO QUIT
DEFIANT Scottish MP Margaret Ferrier refused to quit last night as Scotland Yard launched a probe into her 1,285 km round trip to Westminster while infected with coronavirus.
The SNP politician remained silent despite Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon declaring her position was untenable over her blatant flouting of the selfisolation rules.
Ms Ferrier has had the whip withdrawn by her party and at least three other fellow MPs have called on her to resign.
But her failure last night to answer the growing clamour for her to go indicated she may be planning to defy her leader and carry on sitting in the Commons as an independent.
It came as the London’s Metropolitan Police said they were investigating potential breaches of the UK’s Health Protection Regulations 2020.
Ms Ferrier could face a €4,400 fine for a first-time offence of ‘recklessly’ coming into contact with others when she should have been self-isolating under a law that came into force on the day of her positive test.
If she refuses to stand down, the MP’s constituents could potentially force her out by demanding a recall petition.
However, this could only happen if the parliamentary commissioner for standards suspends her for a fortnight. Such an investigation could take months.
Speaking at her daily coronavirus briefing yesterday, Ms Sturgeon could not hide her displeasure with her former party colleague and said Ms Ferrier should ‘come to the right decision’ and step down as an MP.’
She said: ‘This was a monumental, actually almost incomprehensible, error of j udgment on Margaret’s part, and I can’t make my feelings on that any clearer than I am doing.
‘There surely can be nobody in this country who doesn’t know that if you have a positive test for Covid you should isolate yourself, and you certainly shouldn’t sit on a train for six hours taking a 450mile journey.’
Ms Ferrier issued an apology on Thursday evening as she revealed she was tested for coronavirus last Saturday after developing symptoms.
She took a train to parliament on Monday when she should have been self-isolating. She spoke in a Commons debate on coronavirus on the same day, and was told at some point that evening she had tested positive.
Instead of self-isolating, she took a train back to Scotland the following day.
Her admission triggered an alert in parliament with officials rushing to trace who she had been in contact with.
Commons authorities said they had carried out a deep clean of areas which could have been contaminated with Covid.
DUP MP Jim Shannon, who was seated at the same dining table as her on Monday evening, with social distancing in place, is now self-isolating.
His party’s statement said the speaker’s office told him on Wednesday he was a close contact of a positive case and he immediately self-isolated.
An assistant serjeant at arms was close to Ms Ferrier when she spoke i n the Commons on Monday but has not been advised to self-isolate.
SNP staff at Westminster said that they were told on Wednesday that Ms Ferrier had coronavirus.
They initially thought she had taken the test after returning to Scotland and only learnt about her breaches of self-isolation rules on Thursday.
Ms Sturgeon said: ‘I don’t have the power to force an MP to sit down, no party leader has that power,’ she said.
‘But I can make my views known and – difficult though it is – I have done so, and I hope she will come to the right decision.’