A group of over 200 businesses, faith, and political leaders in Britain have joined with doctors and healthcare staff to denounce any imposition of vaccine passports.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Reclaim and Reform (formerly the Brexit Party) parties, alongside NHS staff, entrepreneurs, business leaders, sports professionals, media personalities, musicians set out the ‘Together Declaration’, which states that the introduction of vaccine passports or any form of digital identification would compromise the rights and freedoms of the British people.
In a press conference held in London on Wednesday afternoon, bar owner and nightlife lobbyist Alan Miller said that he joined the campaign because “the idea that we have a discriminatory two-tiered society where we have security guards asking people for some of the most sensitive information was just too much.”
Miller stressed his view that the Together coalition is made up of people from a wide range of political opinions and that it is important for the people of the country to sign the petition to express their opposition to vaccine passports and digital ideas.
Author Laura Dodsworth noted that vaccine passports were deemed to be against British values and discriminatory by the government’s own vaccine minister Nadhim Zahwahi, who said in February “That’s not how we do things in the UK. We do them by consent.”
Dodsworth said that vaccine passports “will exclude, divide, compromise privacy, and create a medical ‘papers please’ checkpoint society.
“At the very least, they set the precedent for future erosion of health privacy and checkpoints. But given the lack of clarity and consistency from the government about vaccine passports, it’s easy to imagine them leading to a permanent form of digital ID,” she warned.
In comments made to Breitbart London, the leader of the Reclaim Party, Laurence Fox said: “The suppression of debate and lack of opposition to vaccine passports is horrendous. It is why I am supporting a new campaign – Together. It has been formed to reject vaccine passports, Digital ID and other forms of medical certification.
“There is no justification for the government to continue to restrict our liberties nor to enforce the disclosure of our medical status in order to participate freely in normal society.”
“An emergency three-week lockdown turned into almost two years of lockdown and now, at the end of this horrible tunnel, the government wishes to deepen Covid inequalities. Any sort of vaccine passport inevitably leads to evils that any free democratic society would want to prevent – segregation and exclusion, suppression of movement, and government surveillance of free citizens going about their daily business.
“I have seen punters harassed by officious Covid busybodies in nations that have already introduced similar schemes and that is only the most minimal of the impacts that these passports will create.”
Despite government ministers such as Michael Gove stating that there would not be a requirement for health papers, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced in July that starting from late September, the government would impose a vaccine passport requirement for “nightclubs and other venues where large crowds gather. Proof of a negative test will no longer be enough.”
Business leaders, such as the anti-Brexit activist and head of Pimlico Plumbers Charlie Mullins, have been warning for months that they would require ‘jabs for jobs’.
During the press conference, barrister Francis Hoar said: “The principle of medical consent is put in grave danger by having any form of mandatory vaccination.
“I would hope that all people who believe in a free and democratic way of life should object to [vaccine passports] and I hope by signing this declaration by joining this campaign, we can stop this dangerous trend in its tracks.”
The press conference was then joined by Reverend Dr Jamie Franklin who said: “As a priest in the Church of England and as a Christian leader, the idea of vaccine passports in churches is unacceptable and impossible for us. For the church of Jesus Christ to shut out those deemed by the state to be socially undesirable would be anathema to us and a denial of the truth of the gospel.”
“Our Lord Jesus said himself: come to me all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. He emphatically did not add: as long as you have been double jabbed with the Pfizer vaccine.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka