The Telegraph newspaper claims that it has seen secret government analysis of covid certification or vaccine passports. The analysis, written by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, suggests that a vaccine passport scheme could lead to an increase in the spread of covid-19 and would be prohibitively expensive for venues.
According to The Telegraph today:
The document reads: “There is potential displacement between live events venues and hospitality venues. A core concern in the sector is that certification could displace activity and business away from music venues to, say, pubs with music and late alcohol licences, etc. which could be counterintuitive and potentially counter-productive.”
It goes on to state: “Similarly, if certification displaces some fans from structured and well ventilated sports stadia, this could lead to them attending unstructured and poorly ventilated pubs instead, where they will have access to more alcohol than if there were in the stadia. Evidence from the Euros showed spikes in cases associated with pubs even when England were playing abroad.”
The impact assessment also suggests that large venues would have to hire more than 5,700 extra stewards at big stadiums for every event. It was also estimated that the turnover of affected venues could drop between £345 million and £2.067 billion if a vaccine passport scheme was introduced.
The government is coming under increasing pressure from its scientific advisers to introduce a vaccine passport scheme this Winter. However, it would be put to a vote in the commons and The Labour Party has indicated that it would vote against the scheme.
This means that the government would almost certainly be defeated. At least two dozen Tory MP’s would defy the whip and The Liberal Democrats would not support the scheme either.
The next few weeks are going to be very interesting.
