Sajid Javid has claimed Conservative MPs do not need to wear masks in crowded indoor rooms because they are not ‘strangers’.

The Health Secretary was blasted for the comments, which appear to go against scientific advice on using face coverings to stop Covid-19 spreading.

Confronted with a picture of the cabinet meeting on Tuesday – in which ministers were huddled closely around a table indoors, in a poorly ventilated room – Mr Javid claimed the scene was ‘perfectly consistent’ with Government advice.

‘What we said is that people should consider wearing masks in crowded places when they are with strangers, when they are with people they are not normally spending time with,’ he told Sky News.

Presenter Niall Paterson pointed out that the picture was released by the Government on the same day that it again advised the public to wear face masks in crowded settings, and asked the Health Secretary: ‘So can you not catch Covid from your friends?’

Boris Johnson’s former aide Dominic Cummings was among those to pile into the Health Secretary online, branding him ‘trainwreck Saj’ for suggesting that ‘MPs dont (sic) need masks cos ‘theyre (sic) not strangers’.

Twitter user Jenny Lindsay wrote: ‘If you can only get covid from strangers , why could we not see our families last Christmas hmmm?!? Absolute joke of a government’.

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Official government advice on wearing face masks says: ‘We expect and recommend that members of the public continue to wear face coverings in crowded and enclosed spaces where you come into contact with people you don’t normally meet.’

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