Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to promote a global vaccine passport scheme.

The Government committed to explore whether and how COVID-19 status certification might be used to reopen the economy, reduce restrictions on social contact and improve safety. COVID-19 status certification aims to provide reassurance that an individual is at reduced risk of transmission. This could allow some freedoms to be restored more safely, for example by allowing mass events to admit more participants, increased passenger numbers and reduced border restrictions for travellers and social distancing rules to be relaxed.

The Government believes that COVID-19 status certification could have an important role to play both domestically and internationally, as a temporary measure. Equally, we want to be sure that the benefits of any such approach is rigorously tested, along with analysis of the potential economic impacts that COVID-status certification would have across different settings. We will continue to gather evidence on the extent to which COVID-19 status certification is an effective measure to control the epidemic and reduce hospitalisations and deaths and continue to explore the equity and ethical concerns. The Government will set out its conclusions from the COVID-status certification review in advance of 21 June in order to inform the safe reopening of society and the economy.