Cabinet Minister Michael Gove is leading a review into how vaccine passports could be used domestically. He is expected to report early next month. The Telegraph is reporting today, that figures involved in those talks, revealed to the newspaper some of what is being considered.
Gove is meeting business groups, scientists and civil liberties campaigners as part of his review. According to The Telegraph:
Covid passport checks could be introduced at theatres, football matches, business conferences, wedding venues and even some workplaces. People would have to show proof of getting a Covid jab, recently testing negative or having antibodies after recovering from the virus to gain admittance under the plans.
Ministers are understood to be looking at using the NHS covid-19 contract tracing app, or creating a new similar version, to produce a scannable QR code showing you are Covid safe.
Businesses could be able to use Covid certificate checks so that people who have had the Covid jab and then come close to someone with the virus will not have to self-isolate.
Builders, cleaners and electricians may also be able to show they are Covid safe – most likely via a phone app showing their status – to reassure families they work for and so get business.
Writing in the same newspaper today, columnist Fraser Nelson warns of a looming biosecurity state:
The creation of a “Health Security Agency” was announced this week. An unusual name: British “security” services have not, so far, tended to involve public health officials.
But perhaps the language is simply catching up with reality: that the fundamentals of a biosecurity state are now under construction. This is what ministers think the public now want: a big shift in the dial away from liberty so the state can better provide security.
It’s happening incrementally, with no real debate.
Tory backbencher Sir Desmond Swayne called it “tyranny” in the House of Commons yesterday. It is that and then some.
