Ronan Cormacain | The Constitution Unit Blog

Talk of ‘COVID passports’ as a means of proving a person’s vaccination status has increased in recent weeks. Ronan Cormacain argues that rule of law concerns necessitate that COVID passports must be created and regulated by primary legislation, which must be given time for proper parliamentary scrutiny. They should not be brought about by secondary legislation, as has been the case with a significant amount of pandemic-related legislation.

The so-called COVID passport is a way of ‘proving’ a person’s COVID status. This blogpost makes three arguments. Firstly, that the use of COVID passports ought to be regulated, secondly that that regulation ought to be by way of legislation, and thirdly that that legislation needs to be an Act of Parliament.

There are many forms such a passport could take: digital or non-digital, domestic only or international, relating to the presence of COVID antibodies or vaccination status, etc. Furthermore, there are many important questions around the content of such a law: the justification of requiring a passport, scope, international recognition, protections, necessity and proportionality, time limits on regulation, etc. This post does not address any of these questions, focusing not on the detail of any law regulating them, instead simply arguing that there should be a law regulating the matter in the UK.

Autonomous moral actors in an unregulated market, or heteronomous rules imposed upon a regulated market

John Locke’s almost mythical conception of a pre-Commonwealth era was of autonomous individuals perfectly free to make their own moral choices. There were no externally imposed rules, and we were all individuals with complete power to determine our own actions. Or as Locke put it: ‘a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other [person]’.

At the time of writing, COVID passports, or more specifically, the right to treat a person in a particular way depending upon whether or not they have a COVID passport, occupies a near Lockean regulation-free space. There is no rule that a publican may refuse entry to a person without a passport, but nor is there a law that specifically prohibits him from doing so. There is no rule that a health worker must only be employed if they have a passport, but nor is there a specific protection for those who don’t have one. Aside from the regulation of travellers to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (who must be in possession of a negative COVID test result), this is a law-free zone.

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A year ago today, the House of Commons returned from Easter transformed by Covid. Since then, accountability for far-reaching government policy and spending has often been limited, many MPs have been excluded from key virtual proceedings, and whips now hold over 500 proxy votes. Meg Russell, Ruth Fox, Ronan Cormacain and Joe Tomlinson argue that the combined effect in terms of parliament’s marginalisation has been shocking, and that there are risks of government becoming too comfortable with decision-making which evades proper parliamentary scrutiny. One year on, more robust parliamentary accountability must urgently be restored.

A year ago today, the House of Commons returned to business transformed by Covid. Since March 2020, the public has lived under some of the UK’s most restrictive peacetime laws, and to support the economy public money has been spent on a vast scale. Yet parliamentary accountability for, and control over, these decisions has diminished to a degree that would have been unthinkable prior to the pandemic. One year on, with lockdown easing, the restoration of parliamentary control and functioning is now an urgent priority.

This post highlights five ways in which the government’s approach to the House of Commons during Covid has marginalised MPs. In a parliamentary democracy, government accountability to parliament is a core constitutional principle. But in a national emergency, when time for normal process is short, the gravity of the situation can require that parliamentary scrutiny be temporarily sacrificed in exchange for broader accountability. Yet the government has failed to keep its side of the bargain. Too frequently, announcements have been made at press conferences, or briefed privately to the media, rather than presented for democratic scrutiny and questioning by MPs. Ministers have sought extraordinary powers while consistently excluding both the House of Commons as a whole, and certain MPs, from participating in proper oversight.

In the early days of the pandemic necessity arguably justified this approach. But a year on, a real risk exists of damaging precedents being set. This is magnified by the fact that some recent developments have accelerated negative trends predating the pandemic. Unless MPs collectively take a stand against parliament’s continued marginalisation by ministers, what was once extraordinary risks becoming the norm.

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