A leading Conservative MP has said that he will resist the mission creep of coronavirus vaccine passports into something akin to the social credit score developed by Communist China “at all costs”.
Speaking to Breitbart London from a Conservative Party Conference fringe event against vaccine passports hosted by the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, Sir Graham Brady said that parliament needs to stand up to the government to restore the personal liberties of the British public lost during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
Sir Graham, who serves as the chairman of the influential 1922 Committee in the House of Commons, which is comprised of all backbench Conservative MPs and makes him the most powerful non-government Conservative in the UK, said that he opposes the introduction of vaccine passports on the grounds that they would serve to discriminate against people who are unable or merely choose not to take the vaccine.
Brady said that his biggest concern, however, is that vaccine passports would solidify the power accrued by the government during the pandemic, that the “big shift in the balance between the state and citizen, the big erosion of people’s liberties” could morph into a health state which lasts for years, or potentially forever.
The top Tory promised to resist “at all costs” vaccine passports being used as a means of tracking social credit, which leading privacy experts have warned will become inevitable should the government introduce such a draconian measure.
“I think we need to make sure that those things don’t happen. But the simple lesson of history is that all governments if they’re given power, they tend to want to keep it,” Brady warned.
While Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government scrapped plans to introduce vaccine passports for large public venues by last month, it has left the door open for the imposition of health papers should the government determine the country’s socialised healthcare system will be overrun during the winter months under a so-called “Plan B” scenario.
Straying away from his supposed libertarian roots, Mr Johnson has defended the idea of mandating health papers, calling them a “game-changer” and a “life-saver”.
There has been growing opposition within the House of Commons against the idea, with 83 MPs, including 44 Conservatives, 25 Labour, 12 Lib Dems, one Green, and one Independent MP, as well as sixteen peers of the House of Lords signing a declaration to oppose COVID-status certificates being used to “deny individuals access to general services, businesses or jobs.”
Vaccine passports have already been introduced in Scotland by the devolved leftist government of Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party and Wales controversially approved their introduction as well on Tuesday by one vote after a Conservative Member of Senedd (the Welsh Parliament) was unable to log in to Zoom to oppose the measure.
Without even formally being introduced as a domestic vaccine passport, facial recognition and other data collected by the NHS app, which has been used by travellers as a health pass when travelling internationally, has already reportedly been shared with the police, raising further concerns over privacy and civil liberties.
Sir Graham Brady said that parliament must impress upon the government that the powers granted to them during the pandemic were introduced on a “strictly temporary basis for a very specific purpose,” noting that last year’s initial three-week lockdown to supposedly “save the NHS” has “warped in 18 months” of restrictions.
The 1922 chairman told Breitbart that it will be up to parliament to “defend the liberties of the people” against government intrusions into their personal lives.
“We need to make sure people get the back the right to make decisions over their own lives, for their own families and to decide for themselves what kind of life they live.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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