Where will it end if we need a vaccine doc?

FOREIGN governments have always been able to insist that travellers must provide proof of vaccination against diseases which are dangerous in their own country. There is nothing new in that.

To insist on such a document or app for travel to venues within the UK is entirely new and sinister. People like the former Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption are worried about the suppression of civil liberties under the guise of health protection. The introduction of a vaccination record to create a global system of biometric ID is potentially part of an authoritarian system to “Build back better” and control the population more closely. The Government is known to be working on a system for the creation of an “interoperable digital identity market”.

The people of Switzerland have the ability to stop projects of this sort. They did so last month in a referendum. The rejection rate among the cantons ranged between 70.7% and 55.8%. In Switzerland it is the people who decide when to call a referendum, not the government. It stops politicians enforcing silly ideas.

Tony Blair tried to introduce an electronic identity card but failed. During that time I entertained three Xhosa clergymen for a few days with a sightseeing trip around Derbyshire. Of all the indignities they suffered under the apartheid regime, one of the most detested had been the the “pass laws” which required them to carry an identity card at all times.

When I explained what it was all about they were astonished.

Once a government starts a scheme of this sort, you can never know how its use will be extended, whatever official assurances may be given. The Edwardian satirist Saki (HH Munro) expressed our plight very well. “Prime ministers are wedded to the truth but, like other married couples, they sometimes live apart” – none more so than the present resident of Number 10 Downing Street.

Edward Spalton, Etwall