UK Covid live: Raab says it is ‘very unlikely’ people from US or EU will fake double-jab certification
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And here are some lines from the interviews that Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, has been giving this morning.
We can’t guarantee that some people might not do it. I think it is highly unlikely.
The point here is that, with both the European countries and the US, we are talking about high-trust countries with whom we have not just an intuitive level of high trust, we have active co-operation, so we know that we can straighten out any discrepancies we might come across pretty quickly.
Overnight, I can tell you I’ve got foreign ministers messaging me saying, “Can we work with you on a reciprocal basis because we want to get our nationals on that on that list with the Europeans and the US.” So I think we are showing leadership on this but I’m very certain that it will be reciprocated.
We have already given a huge amount through Covax, through the financing of Covax, but we can now, from domestic supply, start to give 100 million, which will get the world vaccinated.
We have got moral reasons for doing that. You look at Jamaica, Laos, Cambodia, some of the countries - Kenya - we are vaccinating and we feel a sense of moral responsibility.
Can you imagine the questions you’d be asking me if we just said that without any checks at all, we’d let anyone that applied come in?
If we can make sure that it is expanding our influence and our reach overseas, creating jobs for the UK, extending our soft power, being a force for good in the world, all of those things come together and a yacht can really boost our ability to do all of those things.
Good morning. Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, has been doing the minister for broadcasting slot this morning, and on the Today programme he effectively admitted that the government has been talking up the need for vaccine passports recently to encourage younger people to get the jab. A week and a half ago Boris Johnson made the surprise announcement that, from the end of September, vaccine passports would be required for people wanting to go to nightclubs. Since then it has emerged that ministers are also considering them for Premier League football matches and for students wanting to stay in halls of residence or to attend lectures.
Many people will have taken the view that it is blindingly obvious that the government has been using the threat of not being allowed to attend events as a means of strong-arming the young (the group with the lowest vaccine take-up) to get jabbed. But no senior minister has said so in public this explicitly, and Raab’s comment also begs the question, if the threat actually works, will vaccine passports then still be needed in the autumn?
We got 70% of people double vaccinated, in terms of the adult population. We need to encourage more and more of those who have not yet got the vaccinations to receive it. What we just don’t want to do is hold the country back for those that, for whatever reasons, haven’t taken up that offer ...
I was in France earlier this week. We’ve seen, when they signalled in various different areas that you would need double vaccination in order to proceed in one or other area, they got a big surge of people getting the double vaccinations. And so it is a little bit of coaxing and cajoling, and also making clear that ultimately, over September, when we know we’ll see an increase in cases, that we can control that with backstop, safeguard measures.
I wasn’t bringing it up to say we’re following the French model. I was bringing it up to demonstrate that what you can actually do, and in some areas, if you’re careful, is encourage take up of the vaccination.
You’d be criticising me as foreign secretary if I wasn’t learning from countries, whether it’s in Europe or in Asia, which responded very effectively to the early [pandemic]. What I’m saying is I will learn from any country that has got experience of rapid increase in take-up of the vaccine
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