Coronavirus UK: Nightclub boss says vaccine passports WILL bring revellers back to venues

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Landlords and brewers today revolted over plans for vaccine passports for pubs as it emerged hospitality venues could be allowed to bar customers who cannot prove they have had a Covid jab or a negative test.

Boris Johnson has told MPs that landlords might be given powers to impose tough entry requirements on drinkers – and Government sources confirmed this was part of an official review of ‘vaccine passports’.  

But industry bosses said the idea was ‘absurd’ and ‘unworkable’ and signalled they would not ask customers for proof that they had been inoculated or were clear of coronavirus. 

Among them was Jonathan Neame, chief executive of the Kent-based Shepherd Neame pub group, who said he would not make having had a coronavirus vaccine a mandatory condition for people to enter his pubs.

However, Peter Marks, chief executive of the Deltic Group, which is Britain’s largest nightclub operator, said young people would ‘probably accept’ the idea because they already carry ID to get into his venues. 

And a poll for MailOnline found 59 per cent of people would back and 19 per cent would oppose businesses such as pubs using vaccine passports. The survey of 1,500 UK voters was carried out by Redfield and Wilton Strategies.

Pubs could even face a choice between being half-full with social distancing measures in place – or using vaccine certificates so they could open at full capacity, a Government source told The Times. 

It comes just as the vaccine rollout starts to slow because of supply problems. Younger people now face a longer wait and some inoculation centres are already indicating they will close temporarily next month.  

Now, Britons desperate for a post-lockdown pint at their local beer garden are facing a huge struggle to get a table when outdoor seating areas reopen from April 12 – with some pubs now booked up for months. 

However not all chains are operating a booking system, with Wetherspoon opening 394 of its beer gardens or terraces on a first-come-first-served basis. As a further 98 deaths and 5,605 cases of Covid were reported:

• The UK and the European Commission said they were working together to improve their relationship over the pandemic;
• The joint statement came after Brussels published details of a plan to restrict jab exports to Britain;
• Angela Merkel apologised to Germans after reversing an Easter lockdown announced only 24 hours earlier;
• England’s top doctor called on over-50s to book a jab while they still could access one;
• India said it was blocking all major exports of the AstraZeneca vaccine;
• Mr Johnson warned that tougher border measures could be introduced ‘very soon’ for arrivals from France;
• MPs prepared to vote on the extension of emergency coronavirus powers for several months;
• A study revealed that seven in ten Covid patients still suffer debilitating symptoms five months after being discharged from hospital.

More than a decade ago there was a campaign to stop the Tony Blair government introducing ID cards, which were scrapped by the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition in 2010 after being seen as infringing civil liberties

Mr Neame, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, said: ‘The whole essence of a pub is that they are diverse and inclusive environments, where everybody, and families in particular, are extremely welcome.

‘I mean imagine a scene where a family is reconnecting for the first time after this crisis, where grandpa’s forgotten his vaccination certificate, mum is pregnant, and the kids are too young to have had it yet.

‘Who’s going to make the judgment on the door to turn away who or what on that occasion? I also think… there are some issues with discrimination.

‘I think it’s absolutely fine to exclude people where there is a situation of bad behaviour or drunkenness, and that’s already enshrined in law, but if you’re going to exclude people for what they are, or what they have not done, that’s a wholly different issue which does touch on discrimination, civil liberties, and in this case data protection issues.’

Mr Neame also said making vaccination a mandatory prerequisite to attend a pub is ‘a fairly poorly thought-out idea’ which could lead to young staff having to deal with intimidation from customers.

He told BBC Radio 4: ‘I’m very concerned about the pressure we put on our young people – 50 per cent of people (working) in pubs are under 25 – you’re going to force them to make some very challenging judgments, because they’re not qualified or trained as door staff, as they might be in the nightclub sector. 

‘So those people might therefore be subject to intimidation, if people think they are being unfairly discriminated against, and then there’s the question about who’s going to enforce this – are police going to do random checks? I don’t think so, I don’t think that’s the society we want.’

He added: ‘This is a fraught with difficulty I think, and it is, in my view, a fairly poorly thought-out idea at this stage.’ 

Pub landlady Mop Draper, from The Compass Inn in Winsor, Hampshire, said the plan was ‘unfair’, telling ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘You are excluding probably everybody under the age of 40 because by April 12 not everybody’s going to have had their vaccine, so you really minimise how many people will be having to come out to the pub.’ 

But she added: ‘I would later on, when nearly everybody in the country has had their vaccine, it would be a sensible thing to do, because you’ve got to protect all your staff, and obviously your customers, but you can’t possibly at the moment because you’re excluding too many people.’  

However Mr Marks told BBC Radio 4: ‘It could work for us, strangely. I know a lot of publicans wouldn’t agree with me because they would hate to have this put on their toes, as it were.

‘But for us, our demographic would probably accept it. It’s a young customer base for us. They already walk around with ID such as driving licence and passports to get into a lot of our venues, and I don’t think they’d have a problem with it.’I’d have one other problem though, and that is that isn’t this going to stick another six to eight weeks on before we get chance to open? But I think it’s a market forces thing for us, to be honest.’

Yesterday, Mr Johnson told the MPs that vaccine certification should not be ‘totally alien to us’ – a stance at odds with statements from some of his ministers that Covid passports were ‘discriminatory’. 

This morning, Labour shadow business secretary Ed Miliband said Ministers should not leave the use of vaccine passports to the ‘discretion’ of pub landlords if they thought it was the right move for public health.

Put to him on ITV’s Good Morning Britain that scientists might recommend the rollout of vaccine passports to encourage people to take up the offer of a jab, Mr Miliband said: ‘Maybe. I don’t think that’s really the thing that is going to persuade people to get the vaccine.

‘I think we’ve done brilliantly in this country at rolling out the vaccine and people taking up the vaccine and the key thing is a campaign of persuasion for people to take up the vaccine. That is the biggest priority.

‘Now, if the Government has got evidence that this is necessary for people to go to hospitality venues, let’s look at that evidence. That isn’t quite what the Prime Minister said yesterday.

‘And indeed if it was necessary, why would you be leaving it up to individual landlords? If this was really a public health measure, you wouldn’t be saying, ‘Well, it is going to be a landlord discretion’ – you’d be saying, ‘This is the Government’s view, this is what’s safe’. So there are many, many unanswered questions about this.’

But Conservative MP David Davis claimed that a vaccine certificate plan could see ‘indirect discrimination’ among groups where uptake of the jab is low.

He said: ‘The impact of this would be discriminatory. Under the law it would be indirectly discriminatory and that is illegal. You may well find that black and ethnic minority communities are less inclined to get vaccinated, well that would be indirect discrimination.’

Earlier this week, the former minister told the i newspaper that the plans for vaccine passports were driven by the commercial interests of football clubs and entertainment businesses rather than for the benefit of the public.

Mr Davis, who was at the forefront of the successful campaign to stop the Tony Blair government introducing ID cards in the 2000s, said he feared vaccine passports would be linked to an NHS medical ID card that could contain sensitive information about medical history that would violate people’s civil liberties.

He added: ‘There is a lot of commercial interest pushing this – football club owners, theatre owners. We don’t want to give up fundamental civil liberties to meet their requirements.’

Human rights barrister Adam Wagner told his podcast Better Human: ‘We have a long legal tradition in this country that we don’t coerce competent people to have any kind of medical treatment over their objections. There are some controversial exceptions to that around mental health and so. 

‘And I think there’s no appetite for mandating vaccines. But there’s a certain point where if you raise the incentives high enough, incentivising starts to edge over into coercion. 

‘We have to think about the exact nature of these, the uses of these measures to think about whether we’re edging into something that approximates coercion.’ 

And Gracie Bradley, interim director of Liberty, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain today: ‘This is a pretty worrying road to be going down, and I think the reality is now the Government has just been flip-flopping. 

‘We’ve had yes vaccine passports, no vaccine passports, Ministers contradicting one another. We’ve got a review underway by Michael Gove, but at the same time the Government’s already said oh yes, we’ll use it to open up stadiums, maybe we’ll use it to open up pubs.

‘And I think it’s a real failure of responsibility and it really reminds me actually of the start of the pandemic when the Government told people not to go to pubs, but didn’t tell pubs to close, pub landlords were left in a really difficult position.

‘And the reality is with vaccine passports is that there’s really significant human rights and equality issues at play here, and it shouldn’t just be left to individual business owners to try to figure those things out.’ 

Tom Stainer, chief executive of the Campaign for Real Ale, said: ‘Inviting individual licensees to make a decision on vaccination passports is likely to create confusion among customers and potentially discriminate against those who – at the time pubs are due to reopen – may not have been offered a vaccine. 

‘Pubs have already shown they are one of the safest places to socialise and unless the government is offering additional support, or earlier and full reopening, in return for requiring vaccination passports, it’s difficult to see the advantage for licensees or customers.’

Also today, a Government minister suggested that the possibility of allowing the use of vaccine passports to for pubs and other venues was outlined as part of the Prime Minister’s road map for lockdown easing. 

Children’s minister Vicky Ford was asked today why Boris Johnson appeared to U-turn on vaccine passports during his appearance before the Liaison Committee yesterday.

She told Sky News: ‘When we set out the road map way back in February to show us the way out of this lockdown, one of the things we said was that there would be reviews of different situations and there was always in that road map a review of the certifications (of having received a vaccine) and use of testing.

‘And that review – which looks at how you would use vaccines, how you would use testing to keep settings safe when we go to that widest reopening – that is due before the fourth stage of the lockdown, so it has always been very clear we would be looking at all the different measures in order to take that really widest step.’

Mrs Ford said she wanted to wait to see the results of the Government’s taskforce review into vaccine passports before expressing an opinion on their use in Britain. 

She told LBC radio: ‘Obviously I want to get back to the pub with my friends as much as everybody else. I know there has been a lot of focus on this today.’

Pressed on whether she agreed with asking people to show a Covid status certificate, she added: ‘I think we need to wait for that review.

‘It has lots of ethical questions, etc, but it is being done, it has been promised that that will be there before that final stage of the lockdown in June.

‘It will look at testing and whether or not you should prove you have been tested recently, as well as other things.’

Covid Recovery Group chairman Mark Harper said the vaccination programme should signal a return to normality rather than lead to people being required to show proof of vaccination to access hospitality venues.

Speaking to Sky News about vaccine passports, he said: ‘I actually agree with the Prime Minister – that is the Prime Minister of February when he said that he didn’t think there was a case for expecting people to show papers to go to the pub and said there were very significant problems with ethical, moral questions about this issue. I’ve heard some heads of pub chains this morning set out some of those significant problems.

‘The key way we are going to deal with this issue is by vaccinating people, and we’ve already almost finished vaccinating, with their first doses, the top nine groups who are most vulnerable, who account for 99 per cent of those who died of Covid and over 80 per cent of the hospitalisations. That’s how we get out of this.’

Yesterday, the Prime Minister was asked about the idea of vaccine passports or certificates being required for entry to a pub at a meeting of the Commons liaison committee. 

He said: ‘That’s the kind of thing – it may be up to individual publicans, it may be up to the landlord. 

‘The basic concept of vaccine certification should not be totally alien to us because when you’re entrusted with the care of a patient and, say you’re a surgeon, you’re expected to have a vaccination against hepatitis B. The principle is there.’

But William Lees-Jones of JW Lees, which has 42 pubs and hotels, said: ‘Vaccine passports are un-British – the Europeans might carry identity, but we’ve never done it, and I think it brings in a whole new level of bureaucracy.

‘I wouldn’t require my customers to have a vaccine passport. The industry needs to recover, and from June 21 there will be no restrictions in our pubs anyway. 

‘We’re happy to show a passport getting on an airplane, it’s reassuring, but the fundamental of a pub is you can walk in, order a drink, and feel at ease. If the Government mandates this, it will be on thin ice.’

Dermot King of Oakman Inns, which has 34 pubs, said his ‘gut reaction’ was that he would not require a vaccine passport, but said he would consider it if it allowed restrictions to be dropped early.

He added: ‘It would be a lot of administration, and undoubtedly we’d have to keep records and send them. If customers felt safer going out and didn’t have to put up with the same restrictions once they’d produced a passport, then it could be worth it. Without those it’s just another barrier.’

Kate Nicholls of UK Hospitality insisted that visiting a pub, cafe or restaurant should not be subject to vaccination certification. 

She added: ‘It is simply unworkable, would cause conflict between staff and customers and almost certainty result in breaches of equality rules.

‘Through the success of the vaccine rollout we need to throw off the shackles of coronavirus in line with the Government’s roadmap – not impose more checks on our ability to socialise and do business.’

Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, said: ‘Our sector has already gone to extraordinary lengths to prepare for reopening and we do not believe a requirement for pubs to check whether someone has had the vaccine would be appropriate or necessary.

‘We will continue to work closely with the Government in developing guidelines for a safe and sustainable reopening in April and May.’

And Greg Mulholland, campaign director for the Campaign for Pubs, warned that the idea of pubs policing whether people have been vaccinated was ‘both unfair and also absurd’.

He said: ‘Pubs up and down the country have been without income for many months and already have the real challenge of reopening with restrictions like outdoors only opening and table service, things which make it difficult for many pubs to actually make a living.

‘So to now even suggest that pubs might take on the role of policing whether people have been vaccinated is both unfair and also absurd. 

‘Table service already means pubs having to take on more staff, despite less trade, so to have to take on door staff to check people’s vaccination history would be simply unviable, as well as alienating customers.

‘Pubs and publicans have shown they are keen to help with the fight against Covid-19 and operated test and trace before the UK Government actually got its act together.

‘Licensees and staff are ready to open safely and sensibly get back to being vitally important community hubs, but if the Government really want vaccine passports, then they need to organise this and not try to push the responsibility onto hardworking publicans who still have several challenging months ahead until pubs can open normally again’.

James Almond, whose family runs four pubs around Manchester, said: ‘I don’t think we would be asking people. I’m confident our pubs are safe without the vaccine passport.

‘It’s too offensive, our industry needs to be hospitable to win back confidence and asking for a passport on arrival is not hospitable. You don’t need a vaccine passport to show you haven’t got Covid – the rest of us are walking around without it too.’

Steve Baker, deputy chairman of the 70-strong Covid Recovery Group of Tory MPs, urged Mr Johnson to ‘not fall into this ghastly trap’ of demanding ‘papers for the pub’.

He added: ‘The Prime Minister began to tread a dangerous path when he opened the door to domestic Covid certificates. 

‘First they said we’ll need them to watch the football, and today that it may be papers for the pub. Whether the state legislates for it, recommends it, or simply allows it the result will be the same: a two-tier Britain.’

Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove is considering what requirements hospitality venues could introduce as part of a review into the potential use of vaccine certificates.

It is due to report back in June but a decision could come before May 17 when pubs and restaurants will be allowed to serve indoors again.