THE Scottish Government has no plans to bring in Covid vaccine passports, Nicola Sturgeon has said, citing practical and ethical flaws with the idea.
The First Minister said there were issues with data security and Covid safety around using paperwork or phone apps as proof of having been vaccinated.
“We have no plans to introduce immunity passports,” she insisted at FMQs, following mixed messages at the top of the UK Government.
Earlier this week, the new UK vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi told the BBC the government was “looking at the technology” for immunity passports.
He said: “I think you'll probably find that restaurants and bars and cinemas and other venues, sports venues, will probably also use that system - as they have done with the app.
“I think that in many ways the pressure will come from both ways, from service providers who'll say, Look, demonstrate to us that you have been vaccinated.
“We will make the technology as easy and accessible as possible.”
Baroness Harding, head of NHS Test and Trace in England, also revealed her staff were researching how to combine test results and vaccine status in the official Covid app.
She said the goal was “in the future to be able to have a single record as a citizen of your test results and whether you’ve been vaccinated”.
But the issue sparked privacy and civil liberties concerns, with campaign groups and various politicians opposing any such identification system.
Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove then downplayed the idea on Wednesday, saying people would not be required to carry identification to prove they have been vaccinated against coronavirus to go to theatres, stadiums or hospitality venues.
At FMQs, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said he was “nervous” about talk of immunity passports.
He said: “Putting personal information on to large databases has risks to privacy and the possibility of fraud hacking and theft.
“The World Health Organization questions the value of immunity passports, and the UK Government has said that it has no plans to introduce them.
“I want to go further, and I think that we need guidance.
“We might need to make changes to the law to protect people from its misuse. What is the Scottish Government’s policy on immunity passports?”
Ms Sturgeon said she shared some of Mr Rennie’s “philosophical and ethical objections”, and added there were also “practical issues”.
She said: “It’s not something we plan to do, it’s not something we favour.
“We know from trials that the Pfizer vaccine suppresses illness but we will not know for some time, once the vaccine is in use, whether vaccination prevents onward transmission.
“From a practical point of view, it is flawed to say that, just because someone has had the vaccine, they cannot pass Covid on to somebody else.
“We have no plans to introduce immunity passports, just as we have no plans to make vaccination compulsory, although we will strongly encourage maximum take-up of the vaccine.
“We will always consider whether legal changes are necessary to support our policy position, but the starting point is to make it clear that immunity passports are not something that this Parliament is contemplating.”
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