LONDON (LifeSiteNews) — England is inching closer toward rolling out its winter “Plan B” protocol, including vaccination certification and mandatory masking.
On September 14, British Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced plans for the autumn and winter through which the government supposes to limit the spread of COVID-19 over the coming months. In his speech to Parliament, Javid revealed that the Johnson administration would be operating under two main protocols: “Plan A” and “Plan B.”
The “Plan A” strategy involves encouraging vaccine uptake by rolling out the booster shot program to over 50s (which commenced in mid-September), offering the jab to 12–15-year-olds — against the advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) — and tightening the track and trace system run by the British socialized healthcare system (NHS).
The supposed backup strategy, known as “Plan B,” proposes to initiate special approval for entry to certain venues, only made possible for individuals who have taken an experimental COVID jab and been verified as such through the “NHS COVID Pass,” an app which displays the user’s COVID shot status. Face covering will also be legally mandated “in certain settings.”
According to a new document published Monday, the “Proposal for mandatory COVID certification in a Plan B scenario,” extreme restrictions on entry into nightclubs and other “large” venues will be triggered “[i]f the data suggests the NHS is likely to come under unsustainable pressure.”
LifeSiteNews contacted the Department of Health and Social Care after Javid’s initial announcement for clarification on what specific conditions would trigger the enactment of “Plan B” measures. A department spokesman told LifeSite that the determination is “complex” and that the government will be monitoring hospitalizations “and various other things” to assess the level of pressure. There is no one measurement, such as hospital bed capacity, that will force the introduction of the government’s contingency plan, he said.
The NHS COVID Pass currently displays a “COVID status” based upon whether a person has received a jab, has tested negative for the virus, or has proven natural immunity. “If mandatory certification were introduced, the NHS COVID Pass would switch so that it certified individuals based on vaccine status only,” the new document reads.
Vaccine-only certification will apply to “all nightclubs and other venues open after 1am with alcohol, music and dancing,” “indoor events with 500 or more attendees,” “outdoor, crowded settings with 4,000 or more attendees,” and “any settings with 10,000 or more attendees.”
Closing any perceptible loopholes, the government document noted that expanding the restrictions on unvaccinated citizens “cannot be entirely ruled out.”
In comments to LifeSiteNews, Heritage Party leader David Kurten suggested that calling the proposal “Plan B” is dishonest and that many people believe that implementing vaccine passports is part of the larger “Great Reset programme which wants to enslave every person in the world into a Chinese Communist Party style digital identity and social credit control system.”
“The Johnson regime has continually moved the goalposts on its response to SARS-CoV-2 since it first hit the headlines at the beginning of 2020,” Kurten explained. “They have shied away from implementing ‘vaccine passports’ directly due to public pressure but are trying to bring them in by stealth and deception using their idea of a ‘Plan B’ of introducing an ‘NHS COVID pass’ over the winter.”
The government has defined “full vaccination” against COVID-19 as a full regimen (usually two shots) of a COVID jab with a period of 14 days following the final shot. Exemptions will only apply to those under the age of 18, those participating in vaccine clinical trials, and to “the small proportion of people who should not be vaccinated for medical reasons, whose exemption has been clinically reviewed.”
In addition to available exemptions for certain groups of people, the guidance outlined exemptions to the proposed ruling for specific venues. Church services including communal worship, weddings (and civil ceremonies), funerals, “and commemorative events,” are all to be immune from the vaccine-only entry restriction.
Employees of workplaces other than those restricted by the above measures will not be subject to mandatory vaccination requirements, although private businesses are to be given the freedom to choose whether to enforce the need for vaccine papers from their employees.
Maggie Throup, who took over from Nadhim Zahawi as Britain’s Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Vaccines and Public Health during Johnson’s recent cabinet reshuffle, attempted to allay fears that the so-called “Plan B” will be triggered.
“Our autumn and winter plan puts us on a sure footing and gives the whole country the best possible chance of living with COVID-19 in the months ahead, without the need for unwanted social and economic restrictions,” Throup announced Monday.
She claimed that the vaccine rollout has “tilted the odds in our favour,” but that even with the U.K.’s high rate of vaccine uptake, “we need to be prepared for all scenarios.”
As the proposal is pending public consultation, the minister requested businesses to “have their say” before the plan comes into action, giving scope for further settings and venues to become restricted.
For those businesses which will be bound by the new rules to fully enforce the requirement for vaccination, failure to do so will become an offence. Violations include failing to ensure the workforce is either tested or has been jabbed, failing to ensure all visitors to the premises are jabbed, and failing to maintain records of events up to three months prior.
According to the new proposal, “[a] Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) would be issued of £1,000 for the first offence, £2,000 for the second and £4,000 for the third offence. This would increase to a maximum of £10,000 if a person is in receipt of 4 or more penalty notices under these or other COVID regulations.”
Further offenses are to be made for those who would attempt to create, distribute, or simply “offer to supply” fake vaccine certificates. Penalties for these new crimes will carry a hefty £10,000 tag.
Britain’s proposed introduction of vaccine passports follows suit with many nations within Europe, including Scotland, Wales, Italy, and more.
Kurten explained to LifeSiteNews that “the lives of citizens in nations which already have ‘COVID passes’ are miserable. In Lithuania and Cyprus citizens cannot go to the shops without a ‘COVID pass’. In Italy, the country is up in arms as the regime there requires an injection of experimental mRNA and a ‘vaccine passport’ to go to work. New South Wales, Australia, announced a similar measure is to come in on the 11th of October.”
He noted that “there has already been significant push back in the U.K. on the possibility of COVID passes/mandatory digital identity.”
Continuing, Kurten said that “even people who have taken two shots of experimental mRNA or chimp virus are now questioning the regime as the goalposts continue to move and the promise of getting back to normal is given and removed again and again.”
He therefore predicted that, should the government press ahead with implementing the passport scheme, “there is likely to be mass civil disobedience on a scale unseen in recent times.”