Civil liberties NGO Big Brother Watch has deployed a roving screen across Westminster playing previous statements by Boris Johnson, Nadhim Zahawi, and Michael Gove denying there are plans to introduce vaccine passports.
Footage of the Prime Minister telling journalists in February, “what I don’t think we’ll have in this country, as it were, is vaccination passports,” is currently being played on an 11 meter squared screen around the Palace of Westminster.
This morning, Health Secretary Sajid Javid was filmed being whisked away into a car as the billboard played the Ministers’ claims behind him on College Green.
The billboard is also playing a clip from a February BBC interview in which the Vaccine Minister claims, “We are not looking at a vaccine passport for the domestic economy. That’s not how we do things in the UK. We do them by consent. And it would be discriminatory.”
In another clip from December 2020, Cabinet Office Minister Gove tells journalists “I certainly am not planning to introduce any vaccine passports.”
Big Brother Watch’s digital billboard blasts Covid passes as “divisive, discriminatory and wrong” and includes a url to Big Brother Watch’s dedicated campaign page, stopvaccinepassports.co.uk, which urges members of the public to email their MPs and MSPs to oppose Covid passes.
On Monday night, the campaign group projected a message onto the Palace of Westminster reading “No to exclusion. No to checkpoints. No to discrimination. No to Covid ID.”
Members of the public have donated over £150,000 to Big Brother Watch’s Crowdfunder against Covid passes, with the group vowing to bring a legal challenge if vaccine passports are mandated in a parliamentary vote expected later this month.
The rights group, which is leading a national campaign against Covid passes, argues that the Government’s plans to mandate medical certification for entry to certain venues is “unevidenced, discriminatory and wrong”.
82 MPs have signed Big Brother Watch’s pledge opposing “the divisive and discriminatory use of Covid status certification to deny individuals access to general services, businesses or jobs” including 44 Conservative MPs.
Big Brother Watch Director Silkie Carlo said:
The British public and parliament have been lied to about vaccine passports time and time again.
Discriminatory Covid passes will lead to social exclusion, job losses, and the creation of a subclass of people in our country. We cannot allow this to happen.
A vaccine ID doesn’t tell you that a person doesn’t have Covid or cannot spread Covid. Covid IDs in any form will make no one any safer, whilst leading to a two-tier checkpoint society. Boris Johnson’s plans for internal health passports are unjustified and frankly un-British.
There are far more proportionate, effective and inclusive measures to keep people safe and get the country back to normal than excluding healthy people without the right health papers from society. We can never get back to anything like normal with health ID checks that would inevitably endure and expand far beyond the current situation.
We urge politicians in England and Scotland to reject divisive and discriminatory Covid passes.
NOTES
Big Brother Watch’s digital billboard will be touring central London all day, and in Westminster between 1200-1300 in particular.
Spokespeople are available for interviews. Contact Big Brother Watch’s 24h media line on 07730439257 or email info@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk
Video and photos below are available for free use with credit to Big Brother Watch.
Download link | https://we.tl/t-gTYIE4pRhn
Please note, the person shouting “you’re a disgrace” at Mr Javid is an anti-Brexit campaigner and in no way connected to Big Brother Watch or our action today. Our action today is not connected in any way to other protestors who may be in London today.
The 11m squared digital billboard is supplied by MMG.