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Some interesting arguments from Ian Dunt as to why vaccine passports won’t work, and may even make things worse:  

https://www.politics.co.uk/comment/2021/04/07/why-covid-id-cards-wont-work/
 

Yay, a vaccine passports thread! This has not been done before. Can't wait.

Will they be blue?

They'll work if you need them to travel to a different country, and they won't let you in without one.

Bolleaux! What d'you think's on that chip that went in with your jab?

Yes, plenty of precedent for that with the Yellow Fever certifications.  It could and should use the same system as that, no need for techy stuff.

Domestically it's much less viable.

I've only scan read the article, but I would agree with the premises in it that:

1. We need effective track and trace, a phone-a-friend service is not effective track and trace.  Proper track and trace is highly detailed and highly invasive - for example, pull credit card and phone location records, see that you went to a supermarket, pull the CCTV and card records etc and see who you went near.  Etc.

2. We need to increase statutory sick pay to the furlough rate (or even 100% for 14 days) so people are not financially coerced into working when infected, avoiding getting a test etc.  This needs to happen anyway, as people should not really go to work with any infectious disease, even a cold.

BuT i HaVe A bLuE bRiTiSh PaSsPoRt ThEy MuSt LeT mE iN

I'm pretty sure , that's some people attitude.

Interesting article.

I think it's important to separate the requirement for "proof-of-vaccination" system imposed by foreign destinations from a "proof of low covid risk" system for venues within the UK.

A travel passport system is inevitable.

Within the UK, my take is that it's either safe to open a venue or it isn't.  Trying to weigh and measure then control risk on an individual basis will be complicated, inaccurate, and will create perverse incentives leading to all sorts of behaviour that runs counter to controlling the virus.  When you close the behavioural loop, it gets very complicated.  

Do they need to change the Yellow Fever jab every 9 months?

Are there about 10 different jabs in use and wildly different rules about gaps between doses.

They are going to need a techy system if they do this because the situation is complex and in flux and they will need to redefine the rules on-the-fly as some vaccines become ineffective.

A techy system for travel would probably combine vaccination with multiple other criteria such as a recent negative test.

This is a useful contribution- two experts, one tentatively supporting vaccine passports under certain conditions, one opposed:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/07/covid-passports-good-...

I have a paper "Health Passport" or "International Certificate of Vaccination. For each type of vaccination (Typhoid, Polio, Tetanus, various Hepatitis, Yellow Fever, etc) it has a box for date given, signature and status of vaccinator, type and batch no of vaccine, date it is effective until and official stamp of vaccinating body. That's a non-techy solution that has worked for me since 1974. OK, it's possibly easy to forge entries, if you're that way inclined, but I've had no issues with being able to keep things up to date. The type and batch no would cross-index to vaccines that have become ineffective.

For the last 3 years I've had a "MyGP" app on my phone, which contains all my basic medical records, including all the vaccinations I've had back to 1995, plus the results of all the blood tests I've had since then, too. A more techy solution, but when I was travelling before lockdown, the developing countries I visited put far more store in my paper ICV than in my phone app.