Boris set for virtual PMQs after brush with virus MP
BORIS Johnson will field Prime Minister’s Questions by video link tomorrow as he tries to ‘reset’ his government while self-isolating.
Downing Street had talks with Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle about allowing Mr Johnson to take questions from his flat, where he is due to be quarantined for another ten days after a meeting with an MP who developed the virus.
The Prime Minister will also press ahead with the launch of his ten-point plan on the environment in the wake of the acrimonious departure of Dominic Cummings and press chief Lee Cain last week.
And last night he held an hour-long video meeting with Northern Tories in which he pledged to stick to his manifesto pledge to ‘level up’ opportunity across the UK.
No10 acknowledged that Mr Johnson had a ‘huge job of work to do’.
In a clip released on social media yesterday, the Prime Minister said the Covid rules meant he had to self-isolate for 14 days despite the fact that he was ‘bursting with antibodies’ after his brush with death earlier this year.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Mr Johnson was not necessarily immune from catching the virus again, adding: ‘People can catch it twice.’
Mr Johnson will self-isolate in his Downing Street flat with fiancee Carrie Symonds. But, unlike his previous period of isolation, he will also be able to work from his office after health experts approved a route that involves walking through the No10 garden.
One minister said it was ‘madness’ for the Prime Minister to be shut away when the Government is in turmoil, adding that asking people who have had the disease to selfisolate again was ‘bringing the system into
disrepute’. Mr Johnson said he had been ‘pinged’ by NHS Test and Trace on Sunday after a meeting at No10 with six Tory backbenchers on Thursday.
One of them, Lee Anderson, the Tory MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, developed symptoms the following day and tested positive at the weekend.
The other MPs present at the meeting are all thought to have been asked to self-islate, along with two No10 officials who were present.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman yesterday insisted No10 was a ‘Covid-secure’ workplace.
Thursday’s meeting was in No10’s State Room and the spokesman said social distancing was in place, although he was unable to explain why a picture of Mr Anderson and Mr Johnson later emerged showing them standing side by side less than two metres apart.