Pub owners dismayed at vaccine passport plans

Boris Johnson is facing a growing backlash among publicans, MPs and even scientists over his suggestion that pubs may be allowed to ban drinkers who fail to show a Covid vaccine certificate or pass a test.

The PM sparked a wave of anger yesterday when he told a committee of senior MPs that “it may be up to the landlord” to decide whether to bar entry to people who have not been vaccinated. Scrambling to clarify his comments today, the PM said there would be a “role” for domestic vaccine certification but suggested it might not be implemented until every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine – a target that is currently set for the end of July.

But the proposal has gone down like a lead balloon among some publicans. Jonathan Neame, chief executive of Shepherd Neame, which runs 300 pubs and hotels in London and the South East, said: “The PM’s pub passport idea goes against the diverse and inclusive nature of pubs and against their very ethos. It is potentially discriminatory and fraught with difficulty. It will put huge pressure on young people and force them to make difficult judgements and I doubt that it would ever be enforceable.”

Neame said that he did not think publicans would take up the policy voluntarily, adding: “We look forward to June 21st when all restrictions will be lifted. Just as our freedom is restored and society starts to reconnect, we should not be putting up new barriers.”

Other pub groups expressed concern over the pressures this policy would place on hospitality staff. A spokesperson for Stonegate Group, which operates over 700 pubs and bars across the UK, said: “To add additional responsibility for policing whether a customer has had a vaccine is an unfair burden on licensees and their teams as well as creating an unnecessary point of conflict.”

Dermot King, CEO of The Oakman Group, which owns and operates 33 pubs across the UK, said he could see that there might be some basis for vaccine passports if they allowed hospitality venues to open earlier than planned without any further restrictions, or if there was a general vaccine passport to gain access to activities such as non-essential retail, but that it was unfair to single out pubs and restaurants.

“Probably the more sinister aspect to all of this is the undercurrent of tone, which is that somehow bars and restaurants were unsafe Covid environments to operate in, whereas in fact, they were far safer environments than most others,” he said, pointing to a report published by PHE in September, which suggested that pubs and restaurants caused less than three per cent of investigated Covid incidents in the week before curfew was announced.

He said: “If the Prime Minister’s intention is to get Transport for London to check people’s vaccine passports every time they get on an underground train, then I could see there might be some justification for extending that to restaurants, but I can’t really see why you would pick on one part of society as separate from anywhere else.”

The PM also faces criticism from MPs over the proposed plans – and nowhere more vehemently than from his own backbenchers. Conservative lockdown sceptic Steve Baker said the policy would create a “two-tier Britain” and that the UK “must not fall into this ghastly trap”, while former chief whip Mark Harper told Sky News there are “significant problems” with the need to “show papers to go to the pub”.

Even some scientists have raised concerns about the proposal. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and a leading member of Sage told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he thought the introduction of certificates and passports “crosses that line of individual and public health” and that he would “prefer to see persuasion, engagement and trust in the system that it will work for all of us.”