Chamber and committees

COVID Vaccine Passports

Letter from the Convener to Minister for Parliamentary Business, 28 September 2021

Firstly, can I thank you for your response on 24 September to the follow-up questions from your evidence session with Committee earlier this month regarding how the proposed vaccine certification scheme might work in practice.

While it is unusual for the Committee to undertake this type of scrutiny in advance of an SSI being laid, as you will be aware the Parliament has a compressed timeframe when considering made affirmative instruments and the Committee wishes to ensure that the regulations are lawful and can be correctly interpreted by users.

As a consequence, we have an additional point of clarification to raise relating to data protection legislation. Your letter notes that when the scheme goes live, the person’s name, date of birth and vaccination data will be visible, and that the app will be updated later in October to include separate Domestic Certification summary information that will include the person's name and either a tick or a cross. How will you ensure against the potential misuse of this initial information? For example, someone employed by the venue could take a screen shot of that information.

The COVID-19 Recovery Committee will no doubt have a similar interest in the data provided by the user. I am copying this letter to its Convener for interest.

I would be grateful for a response by Thursday 30 September.

In addition, the Committee has yet to be informed of the proposed laying date of the SSI. While you may have already laid these regulations ahead of your response to this letter, the Committee would be grateful for advance notice.

While the First Minister’s announcement earlier today that enforcement action for businesses rolling out the system will be delayed until October 18 to “test, adapt and build confidence in the practical arrangements” of the vaccine passport scheme, it was also confirmed that the regulations will still be laid as planned.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Stuart McMillan MSP

Convener of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee