Elland Road’s new vaccine role as success story grows – The Yorkshire Post says

Now the challenge is maintaining the supply of vaccines, and ensuring a far more agile response to future Covid outbreaks, so that the economy – and wider society – can open up in the coming weeks with confidence.

And this need to meet inoculation targets while, at the same time, reducing infection rates explains why the Government is right to resist calls for the advent of so-called vaccine passports for those travelling abroad.

Now is not the time for such a far-reaching debate on civil liberties, and fears of ID cards being introduced through the back door, when Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi is making clear that GPs will be able to supply ‘proof of vaccine’ letters to those intending to venture overseas. The question will be managing this process – and determining the cost.

That said, Mr Zahawi’s response to the question of passports, and the compatibility of existing vaccines to new Covid variants, was far more assured than the weekend interviews undertaken by senior Labour politicians.

For, while Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham praised Mr Zahawi before making the case for poorer families to be prioritised in the next phase of the rollout, Ed Miliband, the Shadow Business Secretary, was contemptuous of the Government as Labour looks to reboot Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership.

These mixed messages explain why so many people still have more confidence in Boris Johnson’s government. And the vaccine policy will only reaffirm this belief if Britain remains a world-leader and amongst the first nations to return to normality which, after all, remains the number one goal.

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