Covid Vaccine Passports

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Nadhim Zahawi

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will make a statement on the Government plans for covid vaccine passports.

[The Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment (Nadhim Zahawi)]

Our vaccination programme has given this nation a wall of protection against this deadly virus. Data from Public Health England estimates that two doses of a covid-19 vaccine offers protection of around 96% against hospitalisation and that our jabs have prevented over 100,000 deaths, over 143,000 hospitalisations and around 24 million infections. It is this protection that allowed us to carefully ease restrictions over the past few months. However, we must do so in a way that is mindful of the benefits that both doses of the vaccine can bring.

On 19 July, the Prime Minister announced that

“by the end of September—when all over 18s will have had the chance to be double jabbed—we are planning to make full vaccination the condition of entry to nightclubs and other venues where large crowds gather. Proof of a negative test will no longer be sufficient.”

We will be confirming more details in due course.[Official Report, 9 September 2021, Vol. 700, c. 4MC.]

This approach is designed to reduce transmission and serious illness. It is in line with the approach we have taken on international travel, where different rules apply depending on whether someone has had both jabs.

I would like to end by urging people to come forward to get the jab. Some 88% of people have had one jab and more than 80% of people aged 16 and over have now had the protection of both doses. It is the best way to protect yourself, your loved ones and your community, so please come forward and join them, and make our wall of protection even stronger.

[Mr Carmichael]

First, thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to ask this urgent question; as Big Brother Watch brings its campaign against vaccine passports to Westminster today, it is certainly timely.

The introduction of vaccine passports will have enormous practical implications for the literally thousands of businesses across the country that will be required to gather and to hold our data. It is on those aspects that the answers are most urgently required from the Government—this must not be “in due course”, as the Minister has just said. The deadline for the implementation of this scheme is now just three weeks away. We must not, however, lose sight of the fact that a scheme of this sort opens the door to a major change in the relationship between the citizen and the state. Never before in peacetime have a Government in this country controlled, in this way, where we can go and with whom, and what to do. If the Government have concluded that this now has to change, at the very least this House must have a chance to make its voice heard and its views known. So when will we get the vote that the Minister promised us before the recess?

The case for vaccine passports is riddled with inconsistencies. Nightclubs have been open since July and, notwithstanding recent events in Aberdeen, they have been relatively safe. If they are safe today for people to enjoy responsibly, what do the Government expect to change between now and the end of the month? On Monday the Minister told me at the Dispatch Box:

“We do know that 60% of people who have had two jabs will not become infected with the Delta variant and therefore cannot infect someone else, although 40% will and can.”—[Official Report, 6 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 75.]

The 40% figure highlights one of the biggest dangers of the whole idea: taking people into large social gatherings where they think they will be safe from infection but in fact they are not. The Minister will know that there will always be some who cannot be vaccinated, so if entry to nightclubs or events is to be dependent on demonstrating vaccination, those people will be excluded. So can he tell the House: what assessment have the Government done with regard to their duties under equalities legislation? A study by the Night Time Industries Association found that 69% of its members view the introduction of vaccine passports as having a negative impact on business, and 70% said they were not necessary for opening their business. Why are the Government not listening to the experts in the industry? When will nightclubs and other businesses be told how will they be expected to check the vaccine status of their patrons? What legal authority will they have to do that and what will the consequences be for them if they do not do it?

On 12 July, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care told the House:

“As we move away from regulations, there will no longer be a legal requirement for any establishment to have covid vaccine certification”.—[Official Report, 12 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 32.]

When did that change and why?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s questions and I will attempt to address them. I will begin by saying to the House that no one in this Government, and certainly not this Prime Minister—it is not in his DNA—wants to curtail people’s freedoms or require people to show a piece of paper before they enter a nightclub. The reason we are moving forward on this is that we have looked at what has happened in other countries, where nightclubs were opening and then shutting again, and opening and then shutting again, and we want to avoid that disruption and maintain sectors that can add to people’s enjoyment of life and dance, as was the case for the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. We want them to be able to do that sustainably.

The reason behind the end of September date, which the right hon. Gentleman asked about, is that by then all 18-year-olds and above will have had the chance to have two doses.

The right hon. Gentleman was quite right when he quoted what I said to him at the Dispatch Box a few days ago: 60% of people who are doubled vaccinated will not be infected and therefore will not spread the infection, but 40% may do. The view of our clinical experts is that the additional relative safety of people having to be doubled vaccinated before they can enter a nightclub does begin to mitigate super-spreader events, which could cause us, in effect, to take a decision to close nightclubs, which we would not want to do.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the disruption to business; as he will know, this is a tried and tested solution that has been used extensively throughout the Government’s events research programme. It requires venues to check or scan the NHS covid pass, in the same way as nightclub bouncers check ID before entry.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the equality impact assessment. I assure him that we conducted a full equality impact assessment and consulted widely to understand the potential equality impact of covid status certification. We spoke to ethicists and representatives of disabilities, race and faith groups. The system allows both digital and non-digital proofs, to help to ensure access for all. Constituents who do not have a smartphone, for example, can confirm their vaccine status by calling 119 and getting proof via email or written letter.

As I say, this is not something we do lightly; it is something to allow us to transition this virus from pandemic to endemic status. We are coming towards the winter months, when there will be upward pressure of infections because of the return to school and winter. Large gatherings of people, especially in indoor venues such as nightclubs, could add to that. The mitigation against that, to allow us to transition the virus from pandemic to endemic status, is the booster programme that I hope we will embark upon later this month, after the final recommendations from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Nadhim Zahawi

Monday 6th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My right hon. Friend raises an incredibly important point that we look at every single day. In my ops meetings, we have a section dedicated to the workforce and specifically to the volunteers, so that we can make sure that they are put on notice of where and when we think we will need them. The only caveat that I would add is that we have built a very large infrastructure, but it has to flex depending on the advice from the JCVI, the MHRA and, of course, our chief medical officers.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It will not be lost on many people that the various lines of defence that the Minister listed in his statement did not actually include his plans for vaccine passports, presumably because they do not offer us any defence at all. Taking a leaf from the book of the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), may I remind the Minister of what he said on Twitter on 12 January? He wrote:

“We have no plans to introduce vaccine passports…No one has been given or will be required to have a vaccine passport.”

When no less a person than Claire Fox said,

“Good to hear. Again. Can we hold you to this?”,

the Minister replied:

“Yes you can Claire.”

For Claire and the many others like her who want to hold the Minister to his words, may I ask when we will get the vote that he promised us?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s question. It is an important question that I want to address head-on, because it is about statements on Twitter; I understand that I am “trending” on Twitter.

I was asked about this by Tom Swarbrick, who replayed to me my February interview. I said to him that the difference between then and now was first that the Delta variant is so much more infections than the previous variants—it takes only a very few particles for someone to be infected—and secondly that we have learnt from the experience of other countries which attempted to reopen sectors such as the nightclub sector and then had to close them rapidly because of super-spreader events. We do know that 60% of people who have had two jabs will not become infected with the Delta variant and therefore cannot infect someone else, although 40% will and can. This is a relative risk that we want to avoid: what we do not want to do is open the industry and then have to shut it down again because of those super-spreader events.

I hope that I have explained myself to the House. It is important that when politicians have new evidence—new data—they are able to change their minds.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Nadhim Zahawi

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Lady makes a number of important points, especially the final one, where she reminded the House, as I did in my statement, that a number of countries have opened up and then had to reverse some of their decisions, which is why we are being very careful to ensure that this transition is successful and then that transitioning the virus from pandemic to endemic status is as successful as possible. She asked about children’s vaccination. She will know that the Scottish Health Minister, Humza Yousaf, has accepted, as the Welsh, Northern Irish and ourselves in England have done, the JCVI guidelines on vaccinating vulnerable children, children living with vulnerable adults and those approaching their 18th birthday. If the JCVI goes further, as it is reviewing more data on vaccinating all children, I assure her that we have available the supply of Pfizer and Moderna to undertake that, while we also continue to deliver on the double vaccinations of all adults by the end of September. She asked about the immunosuppressed and of course the guidelines have gone out on the precautionary measures that immunosuppressed people would take; similar to the rest of the country, they should be careful and wear masks in crowded indoor spaces—there is advice on ventilation as well. The JCVI has gone further in its interim advice for our booster campaign, where it has placed the immunosuppressed at the top of the priority list. That campaign will begin in early September—that is the operational target we are working to for beginning boosting and of course co-administering, wherever possible, the flu vaccination.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Given the massive opposition that there is among those who operate nightclubs and events, the decision of the Government to make the introduction of covid identity cards voluntary is probably a sensible one, but may I explore with the Minister what he means when he says, “We reserve the right to mandate their use in the future”? We might have hoped, Mr Speaker, that the right that the Government sought to reserve was the right to seek the permission of this House to make their use mandatory in the future. I hope that this was just a small piece of ministerial arrogance that led the Minister to mis-speak, but I would like his assurance that we will be given the opportunity to express a view on this before the mandatory use of covid identity cards is introduced.

Last week, I asked the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care a whole range of questions about the practical consequences of this voluntary scheme. I asked what constituted large events, who would be the judge of what they were, what was meant by encouraging businesses, and what would be the consequences for any businesses that resisted the encouragement from the Government. The Secretary of State had no answers to those questions. Will the Minister today answer the questions, if not necessarily for the benefit of the people in this House, then at least with a bit of respect to those who operate nightclubs, big events, restaurants, bars and others who have absolutely no idea what is going to be required of them?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

It is unlike the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) to accuse any colleague of being arrogant, and I certainly hope that I did not come across as such. He is always courteous and polite—I have certainly found him to be so over the years. He asks several important questions. On reserving the right, the Government will of course come back to the House if the decision is to mandate the double vaccination requirement for nightclubs, crowded unstructured indoor settings, large unstructured outdoor settings and, of course, the very large events such as business, music hall, and spectator sports events. In the meantime, we encourage the use of the NHS covid pass in facilities or at events where people are likely to be in close proximity to large numbers of people from other households. We are working with the sector. Indeed, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), met people from the sector yesterday, as he does regularly. The sector itself will have seen what has happened in other countries such as the Netherlands. It is in the interests of all of the sector and of businesses to reopen and reopen permanently, and not have to open and close, open and close, which is why we are working with the sector in this period and giving people a chance to get their double vaccinations by the end of September.