Covid is dead, Long live the Covid Pass

Why let a good system of control go to waste.

On the 27 June 2022, Andrew Rosindell MP asked the UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his planned timescale was for the winding down of the area in his department that is responsible for the delivery lead of the NHS Covid Pass.

On 5 July he received a reply from Maggie Throup MP. She said the COVID Pass Programme is due to close by 31 March 2023 and transition options for the service are currently being assessed. She told Mr. Rosindell that the programme provides delivery, service and policy to ensure the UK meets international travel requirements including for travel to the European Union, which plans to operate the EU Digital Covid Certificate until June 2023.

You no longer need an EU Digital Covid Certificate to travel to the European Union. In fact, the only place where you do need to show proof of vaccination status is in the US and hopefully that will stop soon as well. So presumably the Covid Pass is no longer required?

Think again. In January of this year, the Secretary of State signed a Transfer of Functions document, giving control of the Covid Pass to the National Health Service (NHS) Business Services Authority. In the document, the Authority must operate the Covid Pass until 31 March 2024 unless the Directions are revoked before then.

The Authority is an arm’s length body of the Department of Health and Social Care. It provides a range of critical central services to NHS organisations, NHS contractors, patients and the public. It manages around £39 billion of the NHS spend every year.

The document was obtained by Stop Common Pass which started in 2020 and who have consistently spoken out against the use of vaccine passports.

To demonstrate how on the ball the Department of Health and Social Care is, they managed to wrongly date the signature page with last years date.

I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that they’ve extended the Covid pass for vaccinated citizens who want to travel to the US. And once the US remove their ridiculous, discriminatory and anti-science restrictions, the Covid Pass Directions will be revoked.

But until then, the Covid Pass has been renewed for another year. And with all the money it has cost the government and with all the control it gives them, do we really think they will give up on the Pass that easily? The Lockdown Files have shown the types of power hunger, little tyrants in charge of projects like this, so I’m sure they will try and cling on for as long as possible.