Using Covid-19 vaccine passports to enable the double-jabbed to enter theatres, football matches and nightclubs in Scotland has not been ruled out, it has emerged.
Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, said that she was “highly cautious” about such a scheme, which looks likely to be introduced in England, but added that she wanted to consider whether they could play a role in the future.
As she announced the move beyond Level 0 from Monday, Sturgeon said yesterday that the Scottish government was considering “very carefully, the possible, albeit limited, use of Covid status certification for access to certain higher risk venues in future”.
An app is being developed to allow for such certification for those travelling abroad, she said, but it could also be used for certification domestically. Patrick Harvie, the Scottish Greens co-leader, and the Liberal Democrat MSP Liam McArthur questioned the first minister about her plans during a session of the Scottish parliament held online.
Harvie said that the use of vaccine passports “raises human rights implications if our ability to live our lives is dependent on our health status”.
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McArthur said: “I’m concerned the government is still humming and hawing about domestic vaccine passports a full nine months after we first pressed them for a decision.”
Last week John Swinney, the deputy first minister, indicated that Scotland would reject Boris Johnson’s Covid passport plan, which is likely to mean refuseniks are barred from large events. Swinney said that remarks by Michael Gove, the UK Cabinet Office minister, in which he described antivaxers as “selfish” and warned that they would be prohibited from attending large gatherings in the future, were not the right approach.
Yesterday, referring to her earlier statement to MSPs, Sturgeon stressed that no decision on the domestic use of Covid status certification had yet been taken.
She said: “I wasn’t seeking to emphasise it or pull it out as the big next thing that we’re definitely going to do. I wanted to be frank with parliament that we are keeping our options open.”
The app would not be immediately able to be used for domestic certification but it could be updated, she said. “I am highly cautious about Covid passports, to give them the colloquial term, for all the reasons that Patrick Harvie has set out,” she said.
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“I would be passionately and fundamentally opposed to their use for access to public services or anything that was seen as essential for people.”
