Letter to my MP on Plan B vote in Parliament on 14 December 2021
Yesterday the House of Commons voted for a number of statutory instruments (ie: regulations) for England, including Covid passes (#VaccinePassports); compulsory vaccinations (#MandatoryVaccinations) for NHS workers; and making facemasks compulsory in a wider range of venues. All the measures passed, despite the biggest revolt by Tory MPs since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, as BBC News reported.
This is the letter I wrote to my MP in advance of the vote, which outlines my broad views on how we are dealing with the pandemic; the use and abuse of ‘the science’; and why Freedom is important, not least in public health.
Rt Hon [your MP’s name] MP
House of Commons,
London
SW1A 0AADear [your MP’s last name]
I am pleased to see that you are against the proposal for Vaccine Passports (Covid status certification) in the ‘Plan B’ public health statutory instruments, which will be voted on in the Commons today.
I am against Vaccine Passports, and the general reintroduction of Lockdown-type measures and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs), as their efficacy is unproven, even after 21 months. Moreover, they have, and have had, significant detrimental effects on the businesses, the economy and employment; on non-Covid health and healthcare; on child development and education; and on social and family life; and they undermine social solidarity and trust.
On Vaccine Passports, neither at the Downing Street press conference nor subsequently has it been explained why requiring Covid status certification at events, etc, will markedly reduce infections when the vaccines don’t significantly prevent transmission. Thus one tends to assume they are not being introduced for public health but for public control.
Moreover, there has never been a cost-benefit analysis of the interventions to tackle Covid — or the cost of delivering them — and the costs and impacts of those policies and possible externalities. (If we are going to apply the precautionary principle to Covid, and now to the Omicron variant, we should also apply it to the possible effects of Lockdown and NPIs — though it is not clear how a government can practically make policy based on the precautionary principle.)
I am also against Vaccine Passports not only as I believe they are unnecessary, but because it is wrong to unduly restrict our Freedoms and take away our Liberties. Not least as a free and trusting citizenry is more likely to find and adopt good solutions to the pandemic and its effects, and to put its trust in guidance given them by their government.
In the longer-term Vaccine Passports and possible mandatory vaccination is going to increase distrust by and alienation of many citizens, particularly those already disconnected from politics and government, which includes many in minority ethnic and recent immigrant communities. I also believe it is immoral to effectively require people to have an injection in order to be able to fully participate in society, as control over our bodies is at the very core of our existence as free individuals. To open the door to mandatory vaccination and the state being able to determine what can be done to our bodies is to enter a dystopian future, one which has some of the characteristics of serfdom and slavery.
Yours sincerely, etc.
