Welsh first minister defends passing of vaccine passports due to technical mishap
The first minister of Wales Mark Drakeford has defended the Welsh parliament’s approval of vaccine passports by one vote after a Conservative member could not log on to Zoom.
He told the BBC Radio 4 Today program this morning: “The point of the covid pass is to allow businesses to stay open. If we don’t have this defence, and coronavirus numbers rise over the autumn and the winter, then these are the venues that will be the first to be closed. So the purpose of this is not to penalise anyone. It is to give business an extra defence to allow it to continue to operate”.
Discussing Covid-19 figures in Wales currently, he said, “Numbers in Wales at the moment are very high indeed, higher than they have been at any point in the pandemic. Over a thousand young people per one hundred thousand of the population are falling ill with coronavirus”.
“Vaccine passports, which are a tough measure than we are introducing in Wales, are on the prime minister’s Plan B, so it is already being planned for in England should numbers be at a level where it should be necessary. So I don’t think that is complacency. I think that it is showing that government’s across the United Kingdom are contemplating measures that may be necessary if we have a tough autumn and winter. Here in Wales, the covid pass will now be part of our landscape. It is going to happen in Scotland where the vaccine certificate is coming in, and it is being planned for in England”
Denying that the policy stops people having fun, Drakeford said, “People can absolutely have their fun, and by having the vaccine passport in place, they can go on having their fun for longer”.
Playing down the claim that the vote was not legitimate because of the MPs’ zoom issue, Drakeford said, “The way the vote was conducted is not for the government it is for the parliament. It is members’ responsibilities to make sure that they are in the Chamber or on Zoom, and 59 of 60 members managed to do that”.
