A war is raging in Westminster over vaccine passports – but the battlefield is yet to be defined

A war is raging in Westminster over vaccine passports, but it’s a war in which the battlefield is yet to be defined – and in which neither side seems to be fighting with much conviction.

After months of brushing aside the idea of vaccine passports as discriminatory, Boris Johnson seems to have come round to the idea that he won’t be able to avoid them, but there is little sign of any great appetite to put them in place.

It didn’t take long for ministers to realise that countries around the world are bound to start demanding proof of vaccination in order to travel, and to recognise that the UK had better cooperate.

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But it was a while longer before the penny dropped that, if the government doesn’t develop a certification scheme for domestic use, others will do.

People inside government say that if individual companies, shops, pubs and venues aren’t given an official system to use, the danger is that a variety of different checkpoints and exclusions will start springing up, using criteria that may very well be discriminatory or fail to protect public health.

So a review chaired by Michael Gove is looking at what an official system might look like, with its deliberations apparently now focused on QR codes on a smartphone app – backed up by a photograph to stop friends swapping phones, and an optional paper version for those who don’t have a mobile.

It’s not an ID card – but it’s very close to the sort of thing that the PM once said he would tear up and eat if he was ever asked to carry it.

Monday’s update from the Gove review revealed that it is still far from decided if certification should be introduced or where it might be used.

Visitors to theatres, nightclubs, festivals and sports matches might “potentially” have to show their papers. Pubs and restaurants might be allowed to relax social distancing if they voluntarily implement checks. And nobody seemed quite sure whether shops will be expected to examine their customers’ credentials before letting them through the door.

Suddenly, after thinking that lockdown restrictions would be a thing of the past come 21 June, visions arose of queues of fashion-hungry punters scanning their phones on their way into H&M or pregnant women – who currently can’t have the jab – having to take tests three or four times a week just to participate in normal life. Pub landlords were tearing their hair out at the “Hobson’s choice” between losing income by keeping drinkers at widely-spaced tables, or having to spend more on bouncers to turn away guests at the door.

The hardcore libertarians and lockdown-sceptics of the Tory right were quick to denounce passport issuers and all their works, with Liberal Democrats also taking a strong line in opposition.

But the two biggest opposition parties, Labour and the SNP, were slower to line up in opposition and even now they have not firmly committed to voting against – largely because they don’t know what proposals will eventually be put before the Commons.

The war is happening now, but an actual plan is not expected to emerge for weeks and a vote is unlikely before June. By then, sunset clauses may have been added to sweeten the pill, the list of venues where certificates will be required may have shrunk, and public demand for protection may have vanished with the dwindling numbers of Covid cases.

With his general personal preference to let people get on with with their lives with minimal interference from the state, Johnson would probably be happy to let the whole thing wither on the vine.

It’s a fair bet that, come the summer, we’ll find ourselves being asked more often to show that we’ve been tested or had the jab. But any prospect of having, police state-style, to produce your papers at every turn looks a long way off.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock

Political editor