Excerpt:
The Face Covering (Prohibition) Bill will get its second reading in Parliament today, and if passed into law the bill would would make wearing burqas in public illegal.
The bill was proposed by Conservative MPs Philip Hollobone, Peter Bone and Christopher Chope as one of 40 proposals in their "alternative Queen's speech" in June. The proposals, which included leaving the EU and tougher regulations for asylum seekers, have earned the trio the epithet "Tory Taliban" from Labour MP Angela Eagle.
Similar laws outlawing the public wearing of the burqa were enacted by France and Belgium in 2010. Since then the debate has raged in Britain about whether to follow suit. In 2011 a poll conducted by YouGov found that 66 per cent of Britons favoured a ban, the proportion rose to 79 per cent for respondents over 60.