Tory MP Danny Kruger apologises after being spotted on train without a face mask

A Tory MP pictured travelling without a face covering on during an hour-long train journey has apologised, claiming he did have one but ‘forgot’ to put it on.  

An eagle-eyed train passenger snapped a maskless Danny Kruger, a close ally of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and MP for Devizes, while he was travelling on a train from the Berkshire town of Hungerford to London’s Paddington Station.

Twitter user Edi, who posted the picture of Mr Kruger, said in the tweet: ‘Don’t blame it on the young people Boris (Johnson) when your own party aren’t even following your rules.’ 

The picture of the Wiltshire MP was posted to social media site Twitter on September 19 – less than a fortnight after the Prime Minister’s former political secretary posted on Facebook saying train users ‘MUST’ wear a face covering.  

Mr Kruger has since apologised for the incident, which he called ‘a mistake’.

Mr Kruger, David Cameron’s former speechwriter, said in a statement: ‘I boarded an almost empty carriage at Hungerford and quite simply forgot to put on my mask. 

‘When I got to Paddington I realised my mistake and covered up for the rest of my journey.

‘If the person had reminded me rather than taking a photo and posting it on social media I would of course have put on my mask then and there. I do apologise for my mistake.’ 

On September 7, less than a fortnight before his memory slip, Mr Kruger told his constituents in a Facebook message that they ‘MUST wear a face covering’ unless exempt.

In another post, on his own website, Mr Kruger, whose mother is Great British Bake Off star Prue Leith, said he ‘detests the Rule of Six, the compulsory facemasks, the Covid Marshalls and the snooping on your neighbours’. 

In the post, made on Friday, he added: ‘I know the Government regrets these measures too, and are only insisting on them because of the danger of a second spike – which now seems inevitable, but may be effectively contained by the steps we are being forced to take.

‘I do urgently hope we can relax these rules soon, and I am talking directly to ministers to make the case. I really hope we don’t need another national lockdown.’

Great Western Railway, the train operator that runs the route between Hungerford and Paddington, warns passengers on its website that they face a £100 fine for failing to wear a face covering on its services. 

Mr Kruger’s apology comes after the Prime Minister warned last week that the UK was now experiencing a second wave of coronavirus infections and announced fines of up to £10,000 for people who test positive for the virus and refuse to self-isolate.

Mr Johnson is preparing to address MPs on Tuesday amid rumours that national lockdown measures banning socialising between two households could be put in place in a bid to arrest the virus’s spread.

But Professor Paul Hunter, an expert in health protection at the University of East Anglia, said on Monday that there were examples of ‘people in authority’ who were not following the Government’s coronavirus-related restrictions.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘We’ve certainly seen a lot of confusion and a lot of mixed messages over the past few months and examples of people in authority who don’t feel that they need to follow the rules themselves.’