Why I’m in favour of a vaccine passport

I don’t understand why this whole vaccine passport idea is causing such controversy.

What’s the big deal?

The vaccines have been proven to be 91% efficient at preventing the spread of COVID19 after a double dose https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2021/06/07/coronavirus-vaccine-cdc-study-pfizer-moderna/2631623095241. This is an incredible result. These vaccines are proven to be safe, and they are saving countless lives across the world.

Why shy away from creating a passport, which would incentivise more people to get their jabs?

Here in the UK, we are in an enviable position, leading the world with our vaccination programme. More than 40m people across the nation have received at least one dose and it seems likely that we will hit our July vaccination target.

Once everyone who can safely have the vaccine has these injections, life can return to some kind of normal. The masks can come off. The economy will be back on firmer footing.

As the founder and CEO of a fast-growing British business, I was really shocked to hear that many business owners are against the vaccine passport. Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, recently said that "while Covid status certification may play an important role in certain activities, such as international travel, our members are clear that it would not be appropriate or useful in a retail setting". Why not? Surely it would be extremely useful in a retail setting because it would offer the best protection to both staff and shoppers.

The BRC believes that a vaccine passport would hit passing trade. In my mind, that's also the point: if you want to go into shops and touch goods and thumb through the rails, you need to get your jab. That’s how incentives work: you give something and you get something you want in return.

The chief executive of the Night Time Industries Association, Michael Kill, also believes that the mandatory vaccination certificate system would be “unworkable, and would cause further anxiety for operators". Not as much anxiety as further lockdowns, I assure you, Mr Kill. How else are clubs and bars going to re-open; they can’t survive with social distancing in place forever.

But Mr Kill is right; it is cripplingly expensive for businesses to keep adapting to the new rules – so the Government should help with that. We need a national vaccine passport platform that any business and organisations can tap into for verification and tracking. We also need a technological solution that can be implemented quickly and easily so businesses aren't left high and dry. 

However, I was heartened to see the news that many of the leaders behind the UK's great cultural organisations and institutions – people like Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tom Stoppard – have backed an exploration of vaccine passports. They wrote a letter to Downing Street recently stating: “We strongly support the Government’s ambition to return to full capacity audiences without restrictions as soon as possible, and we recognise that this can be only be achieved through gathering evidence that it is safe to remove or lessen restrictions, including looking at how Covid status certification could aid the reduction of social distancing.”

I appreciate that making vaccine passports work is not simple. You need to create exemptions for those who cannot get the jab because of health reasons or allergies. But won’t having the passports ultimately make those people safer? Because when they go to the shops, they know most of the people there can’t give them a potentially fatal disease?

The Covid threat is real and is likely to present a risk to lives and livelihoods for a long time to come. I want to see this government – and business leaders – take it seriously. Many of the same businesses that are bemoaning any delay to the great reopening are also against vaccine passports. To me, a vaccine passport programme would only expedite our return to normality.

Let’s stop debating the existence of a vaccine passport. Instead, we should be devoting all that energy and attention to how we’ll make them work for everyone.