Vaccines Passports and Health Social Credit Score a ‘Slippery Slope’ to Tyranny, Says Baker

Lockdown sceptic Conservative MP Steve Baker has warned that threatening to ban unvaccinated young people from university and other recent Big Government proposals was a “slippery slope” to tyranny.

Reports have claimed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is considering mandated vaccinations for all university students if they want to live in on-campus accommodation or attend lectures.

Mr Baker also criticised alleged government proposals to launch a communist China-style social credit store app that will reward Britons on what food they buy and how much exercise they take.

The reports come amidst government plans to introduce vaccine passports for entry to nightclubs and other large venues, which, Mr Baker observed, could fundamentally change the relationship between the individual and the state.

Speaking to talkRADIO on Monday, the MP for Wycombe said: “I would have thought we could do better than threatening vaccine passports [for students] because I do think it’s a proper slippery slope.

“We’re now looking at digital IDs, a social credit system being trialled to get people to deal with obesity, central bank digital currencies will enable the state to enormously intervene in our lives, and reasonably you can sit back and say, ‘Wow! What is going on with the change in the relationship between the individual and the state?’ I can see why some people are quite frightened.”

Mr Baker said of the slippery slope from vaccine passports to social credit scores: “What do people think that tyranny actually is? It’s this kind of total control over what you do and rewards and punishments by the government for not complying with the ideas of ministers and officials for what is right in your life.

“To implement such a system would be the end of freedom in any meaningful sense. You’re not free if you can only be free in minor matters of glutting your lives with simple pleasures.

“All that stuff’s important… But you should be free to go through your life, making choices, bearing the consequences, and seeking to improve yourself and the lives of others.

“If we’ve lost sight of freedom as a virtue in itself, a thing worth striving for, we really are going to have to reinvent the entire conversation from hundreds of years of human history which have elevated our civilisation to the great levels we thought we reached.”

Last week, the prime minister had announced that from September, full vaccination would be the condition of entry to nightclubs and other large venues, with proof of a negative test being unacceptable.

Sources have since claimed that Johnson could be bluffing, making only threats in order to force younger Britons to be vaccinated. Reports in recent days have also suggested the prime minister backs measures that could see university students banned from classes and halls of residences if they are not inoculated against the Chinese coronavirus.

While there are a few dozen Tory rebels and the Liberal Democrats who would oppose domestic vaccine passports, it would take the largest opposition party, Labour, the defeat the government, which has a large majority.

Labour’s leader Keir Starmer has signalled on Monday that he might back proposals for vaccine passports for entry to large venues. The House of Commons has, however, already passed a bill forcing care home staff to be vaccinated — a move that privacy and civil liberties advocate Silkie Carlo, from Big Brother Watch, warned could put “millions of other workers” at risk of “vaccination demands at work due to the expanse of this law”.

A report by The Telegraph on Monday revealed that a third of large businesses are considering vaccine passports for their employees.

According to a British Chambers of Commerce survey, 31 per cent of businesses with more than 50 employees were considering mandatory vaccination for their staff, while nine per cent said they had already brought in the requirement, and eight per cent said they were “likely” to do so in future.