Hancock’s vaccine passport confusion

Will they, won’t they? Only yesterday the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was saying vaccine passports were ‘under consideration’ — going directly against what Nadim Zahawi said just days before when he ruled out vaccine passports as discriminatory and un-British. 

Raab was clear that the UK was looking at both domestic and foreign passports: that as well as looking at the possibility of their use for flights and international travel, the British government is also investigating whether such a document could be used for vaccinated individuals wanting to go into a restaurant or visit the supermarket. 

So what does Matt Hancock have to say on the subject? On the Today programme just now, the Health Secretary muddied the waters even further: while the UK was looking at a foreign vaccine passport, he ruled out a domestic immunology certificate. Hancock told listeners: 

We don’t have any plans to introduce [vaccine passports] at home… if another country decides to require it then obviously you need to be able to show, through the NHS, you’ve had the jab.