PM: Vaccine passports for foreign travel 'in the mix' but you won't need one for pub trips

15 February 2021, 11:39 | Updated: 15 February 2021, 12:29

Boris Johnson has said he thinks vaccine passports for travel are likely to be brought in at some stage in the future but people shouldn't need one for things like going to go to the pub.

Speaking to the media from south London, the Prime Minister said: "I think inevitably there will be great interest in ideas like 'can you show that you had a vaccination against Covid' in the way that you sometimes have to show you have had a vaccination against Yellow Fever or other diseases in order to travel somewhere.

"I think that is going to be very much in the mix down the road, I think that is going to happen.

"What I don't think we will have in this country is - as it were - vaccination passports to allow you to go to, say, the pub or something like that.

"I think that that would be going it a bit."

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The Prime Minister also said that he expects there to be an increase in "rapid testing" as more of the population is vaccinated.

Mr Johnson said: "Looking at the future, what we hope to have is such a high proportion of the population vaccinated that when you couple that with rapid testing - lateral flow testing - you really start to get the kind of answers that you're talking about.

"So I think it's in the context of ... having vaccinated a lot of the population, as we're already doing - and we'll do a lot more of in the next few months - that the rapid test approach will start, I think, to come into its own."

Yesterday Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told LBC the government is "considering" Covid vaccine passports for both domestic and international travel.

Foreign Sec. doesn't rule out vaccine passports for domestic use

Speaking on LBC's Swarbrick on Sunday, the secretary of state confirmed the government "hasn't ruled out" introducing the Covid documents both within the UK and for overseas travel.

The measure would effectively require people to show their vaccine passport in order to move internationally and within Britain's borders.

Mr Raab told LBC the modalities and mechanisms for reopening the country still "need to be worked out" but that ministers are considering the introduction of domestic Covid passports.

"It's something that hasn't been ruled out and it's under consideration, but of course you've got to make it workable," he said.