By Peter Bradley
The Government is currently considering the introduction of some form of Covid vaccination ‘passport’. Keir Starmer has acknowledged that there’s no “yes-no easy answer on this” and reserved judgment until the details of any scheme are known.
But he has also signalled that “if we get the virus properly under control, the death rates are near zero, hospital admissions very, very low, the British instinct in those circumstances will be against vaccine passports”.
He may well be right about that instinct. But what if we don’t get Covid ‘properly’ under control? What if a virus which has already claimed 127,000 lives continues to spread and kill? What if a vaccine passport offers the best hope of our returning to something like normality without placing each other at serious risk?
This is an important debate. We need to get beyond the slogans of both those for whom any kind of ID scheme is an infringement of citizens’ rights, and those who argue simply that ‘if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear’.
Like the large majority, I accepted the need for lockdown as our principal defence against a highly transmissible and lethal pandemic. I recognised too that, in order to protect lives, it would also severely limit them. Like everyone else, I’m keen to regain my freedoms.
But, given that we are unlikely to see the end of Covid any time soon, our options are few. There are two extremes: we can remain in lockdown or under restrictions until the virus has finally been eradicated: or, as some argue, we could abandon protective measures, return to our pre-Covid lifestyles and simply accept the risks.
Or there is a third way: as developments such as the roll-out of the vaccines allow, we could review and recalibrate the balance between our right to personal freedom, our need for public protection and our desire for economic recovery. An imperfect compromise might offer the best hope of maximising the ‘normality’ we can enjoy while minimising risks to public health.
In my view this is the only reasonable option and it requires that we be open-minded about the measures we’re prepared to consider. But that does not mean that we should accept just any proposal by a Government which has repeatedly made the wrong calls, with disastrous consequences for so many. There are key tests which any scheme must pass: is it, at the time of introduction, necessary; is it proportionate; will it achieve the desired ends; will it have adverse consequences which outweigh its benefits?
So, though I’m not in principle opposed to a passport scheme, I would want convincing answers to a wide range of questions about how it might work in practice, including these:
- how reliable can any form of certification be given our current lack of certainty about how long the various vaccinations provide protection, whether they can cope with new variants and to what extent they suppress transmission?
- under what circumstances would it be introduced, how would it be monitored and under what conditions would it be modified and/or brought to an end?
- if it is introduced in the foreseeable future, how might those who have not yet had the opportunity to be vaccinated be disadvantaged and how might their rights be protected?
- would it be compulsory; what exceptions or opt-outs might there be; how would they be assessed and how would both the rights and responsibilities of those with exemptions be met?
- what other initiatives would precede and accompany it, for example to increase vaccination take-up, particularly among vulnerable people?
- what would be its scope; what sectors might be exempted and what alternative measures might apply to them?
- how would it be enforced and by whom?
- what assurances can be given about the privacy and security of data collected?
- what safeguards against fraud can be built in?
Most of us already carry and regularly produce forms of ID which grant us rights (for example, in the public sphere, to drive a car or take out a library book or, in the private and voluntary sectors, to enjoy the benefits of opt-in memberships, from streaming platforms to political parties).
But there will still be those who are reluctant to accept a vaccine passport and any proposed scheme should be designed to allay their concerns. But they should also acknowledge that our rights as individuals are inseparable from our duties to others. While those who choose to boycott the scheme should be free to do so, they should also accept that their decision might place self-imposed restrictions on other freedoms they might wish to enjoy.
When a choice has to be made, who should take precedence: the vulnerable, vaccinated pensioner who wishes to shop or socialise without encountering an avoidable risk to their health, or the libertarian who refuses to be vaccinated or wear a mask? Which of them ought to stay at home?
If – and it’s a big if – a proper system can be devised, I believe that we should regard it not as a means of suppressing our rights but, in the current circumstances, of extending them. These are complex and difficult choices. But extraordinary problems often require extraordinary solutions.
A very balanced and helpful piece on what is a very important, but difficult issue.
In its most simplest form, I don’t think vaccine passports are a bad idea; to provide greater protection to public health, and most would agree this is a good thing.
However, the issue I have is that the negative, perhaps unintentional, consequences we will see as a result of the rollout of vaccine passports. The obvious example that is often used is pregnant women- they’ve been advised not to take the vaccine. Therefore, it would be morally unjust to prevent them from taking part in everyday activities, particularly as this was through no fault of their own. The same argument would apply to individuals with any medical problems, that has prevented them from getting the vaccine.
But then on another note, people will decide not to take the vaccine out of personal choice. Despite this being very different to the scenario of pregnant women or individuals with medical problems, I still feel that people may have very valid reasons for not taking the vaccine, and that they should not be punished or locked out of society for making that decision. For example, vaccine take up is generally lower with BAME individuals than those who are white. Many BAME individuals have raised valid points around trust, as they have experienced a global pandemic, that disproportionately affects them more than white individuals. Therefore, as much as we should encourage people to take the vaccine, I believe it would not be right to punish these individuals who hold these legitimate concerns, as one example.
For all the reasons I’ve outlined above, this is why I’d be very sceptical around the use of vaccine passports, in particular, domestically.
Vaccination is a means to an end…to protect the vaccinated from serious disease and to minimise the incidence of serious disease in the community. 127,000 members of our community have died in the present pandemic and vaccination appears to be preventing serious disease and reducing the number of those who are dying.
Whilst freedom of choice is very important, I think some coercion to take vaccines is rapidly approaching and in the case of Covid a vaccination passport is the form it should take. As has been pointed out we carry all sorts of identification so why get upset about a card which informs whether we have had the a vaccination. Pregnant women and those who have a good reason not to be vaccinated are easily dealt with. Do I get the idea that people who CHOOSE not to be vaccinated are shouting about freedom of choice. Perhaps we don’t push our duties as a citizen enough.
While we are talking about vaccines, the incidence of childhood diseases is rising because mothers choose not to have their children vaccinated and this is partly due to an ignorance about the serious outcomes of diseases like measles. Is it fair to children not to have them vaccinated. I contracted measles, mumps. Scarlet fever, chickenpox, german measles in my first year at school in 1949 and I remember how miserable they were. I can think of ways to make mothers be more responsible but
I am sure it would cause an outcry but shouldn’t we be shocked that children are not being protected on the whim of an adult.
The passports pose a difficult question but would it be so terrible if they become reality?
You wake on any given morning and immediately your mobile phone pings a number of GPS satellites, cell towers and repeaters every few minutes it contains a unique mobile phone number, an IMEI number and a serial number to name but a few. When you get into a car the registration plate is processed by ANPR equipped cameras as you pass by. When parked up and walking around the increasingly connected streets, your movements are overseen and often captured in glorious 4k on CCTV.
You haven’t been asked for nor required to provide any identification, but your movements have been recorded and subject to legal access, you can be identified very easily down to what you were wearing and where you travelled on any given hour or any given day. Head into a shop, yet more CCTV, perhaps a security guard watching your movements, at the till bank card transactions are monitored, purchases are collated, categorised, scrutinised and then processed by algorithms. All designed to determine what socio-economic grouping you neatly fit into, which then informs advertising companies, marketing agencies and their customers what they should try selling me next.
I don’t like it, but I live with it. I do draw the line however at the selling of my data, especially to third-party, faceless corporations that are often based internationally, purposefully to avoid taxation and in many cases culpability. So whilst I really don’t mind the government holding yet more data on me, I do not like the thought of a government outsourcing contract(s) to companies, that are ultimately focused on turning a profit and not protecting or upholding society. They do not work for me or my neighbour or the wider electorate, they work for their hedge fund managers and investors and therein lies the problem for me. Who is processing what data and for what purpose, are they corruptible and do they answer to us?
My expectation is that the current government will be seeking to outsource another juicy contract, likely to a Tory donor, that will ultimately end up costing the taxpayer far more than is needed; as wealth continues to flow upwards at a time when we should be seeking to reduce the national debt.
Every vaccination has been recorded, I assume that every second dose will also be recorded against us as individuals. You like I, have probably completed the recent census, providing yet more data that is already tied to an NHS Number, ergo your NI number and ultimately a Passport number and driving licence too, if you are old enough and privileged enough to have them. A simple web form or app which can query that data is all that is needed to check anyone’s vaccination status, providing a digital passport.
However imagine the potential abuse of power that would undoubtedly lead to the segregation of society, based purely on whether you’ve had a covid vaccine or not… Simply put I believe that community outreach programmes, education which is targeted to reach less engaged areas of society are the way forward. I also think the government already holds enough data to be able to reconcile who has or has not been vaccinated and it shouldn’t require another multibillion-pound, data harvesting contract “CoVID Passport” to achieve it.
Is your NHS Number not a passport? A health record? I smell another opportunity for a shake-up of the NHS… Finally, I’d feel far more comfortable and reassured if THIS CURRENT government wasn’t in power and overseeing it all… and as for covid deniers, 127,000 dead and counting, in one of the smallest countries on the planet – wake up you are slowing down our recovery.
All these comments include valid points and are very helpful.I do think that the huge response by the elderly particularly in the take up of the vaccine compared to other countries ( eg France), is because we do have a different culture and history.This is perhaps because we are more diverse, more pragmatic and have a very strong narrative of ‘pulling together’ during the Second World War.
We also have a strong tradition of continuing to hold our politicians to account and seeking to improve and reform our parliamentary system to make it less corrupt, more representative, and by definition more democratic.So I hope all of this will be the way we tackle the debate about passports.
I have lived both in Catalonia and in France recently and have experienced the way both Spain and France have sought to resolve racial tensions and the independence movement in Catalonia.
Both countries suffer from extremely high levels of corruption amongst their political classes and far less accountability of politicians.( eg we wrote to our local politicians and never received replies in those countries here we do!).We were astounded too about the levels of ‘black money’ that were used in many transactions where solicitors and others were complicit.And more tellingly the acceptance of this by others).
Both countries have ID cards!Both countries have very huge amounts of form filling ( often triplicate etc etc), and multiple police forces, most armed, and on the whole not well received or respected.
So to sum up, I think the level of debate in this country comes ‘from a different place’.It comes from how we responded in a shared emergency and crisis ( as in the war), it comes from our willingness to listen to others, to share our ideas, and above all that nebulous thing ‘common sense’.
As an ‘oldie’ myself I think our critical thinking and the way we will resolve the question of vaccine passports will depend on our past responses and our history as well as ‘ common sense’ after all the options , risks, arguments etc have been listened to.This is our type of democracy.It is by no means perfect and we need to modernise, reform, become more diverse, more representative etc.Itbus a very fragile thing.It can easily be crushed, muzzled and silenced.The Catalans experienced that when they saw armed police drag old women by their hair out of polling stations who were peaceably going to vote in a referendum.Europe looked on, as democracy was crushed by state police.Now there are democratically elected politicians serving long prison sentences in Catalan prisons!
Democracy is what is at stake here as well as defeating, Covid.I think , from what I have seen so far and experienced myself, that I am proud to be British, proud to be the daughter of a soldier who fought fascism in North Africa and Italy, and proud to go today for my second jab!