With many families struggling to put food on the table Freemasons across England and Wales are currently working on hundreds of initiatives to help minimise the daily pressure on households across the UK. 

Freemasons provide 120,000 people with donations of 300,000 meals and 38 tonnes of food during the Covid-19 pandemic.

CEO and Grand Secretary David Staples is interviewed by Christopher Hope for Chopper's Politics Podcast where he spoke about the work being undertaken by Freemasons during the Covid-19 pandemic – listen from 36 minutes.

Freemasons have provided the tablets to more than 50 hospitals, care homes and hospices across their regions at the start of a new nation-wide initiative. Dr David Staples, CEO of the United Grand Lodge of England, said: “At this time of national crisis we will work together – within our local communities – to provide charity and support to those in need, as we have done for the last 300 years."

The freemasons, a centuries-old network of fraternal lodges, have long provided fodder for thriller writers and folk with overactive imaginations. "There is 'The Da Vinci Code' and the keyboard warriors going crazy," sighs Matt Felgate, a freemason from Lincolnshire's Provincial Grand Lodge. "But much to my disappointment, it’s mainly about making yourself a better person."

As grand secretary and chief executive, Dr Staples is in charge of the day-to-day running of the UGLE, which includes nearly 7,000 regional lodges around the country and 200,000 members.

At 8pm last night, a fretful nation paused for applause to show its gratitude to those fighting in the front line against the invisible enemy. The United Grand Lodge of England had asked its 200,000 members to raise a glass on Monday and toast “those working on the frontline in the NHS”.

Freemasons are calling for the whole community to ensure no one feels alone, even if they are physically self-isolating, to be remembered in a toast at 9pm tonight. Dr David Staples, Chief Executive of the United Grand Lodge of England, has called for the Freemasons' regular toast to be a ‘virtual' toast using #TimetoToast online and extended to all those we cannot meet with, yet remain close in our thoughts. 

Freemasons are calling for the whole community to ensure no one feels alone, even if they are physically self-isolating, to be remembered in a toast at 9pm tonight. Dr David Staples, Chief Executive of the United Grand Lodge of England, has called for the Freemasons' regular toast to be a ‘virtual' toast using #TimetoToast online and extended to all those we cannot meet with, yet remain close in our thoughts. 

The "Nine O'Clock Toast" is "a tradition within Freemasonry that has been observed for many hundreds of years," Dr. David Staples, the CEO and Grand Secretary of the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) told Newsweek on Monday. 

Thousands of Freemason members have been told to avoid special handshakes. The United Grand Lodge of England has written to thousands of members to advise them against physical contact.

The United Grand Lodge of England has written to thousands of members to advise them against physical contact during secret initiation ceremonies. Dr David Staples, the Grand Secretary of the United Grand Lodge of England, said the handshake ban was necessary because many freemasons were in their seventies and eighties and therefore at greater risk.