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A HUGE vote is taking place at y Senedd today as members decide whether to support Labour’s Vaccine Passports plan.

Or to give it its full Orwellian title, dreampt up by First Minister Mark Drakeford, the ‘Freedom Pass’.

Under the scheme, people would need to show evidence of two jabs to be able to access nightclubs and large scale events in Wales; although a lateral flow alternative proviso has also been included in the plan.

Following its recent party conference at Llanhilleth, Blaenau Gwent, Gwlad voted decisively against mandatory vaccine passports.

Party Leader Gwyn Wigley Evans said the thought of Wales becoming a ‘show us your papers please’ land was truly horrifying.

‘This goes against our whole ethos as a nation which has fought so hard for individual rights and civil liberties for everyone over the centuries’ he said.

Mr. Evans said it would inevitably lead to a medical apartheid type situation, where people could be barred from partaking in public events based on their own individual health decisions.

‘Do we really want to go down that path of banning people from public life on the basis of their individual health decisions?’ he added.

The proposals from Welsh Labour seem to fly in the face of both logic and recent evidence.
With such a high take up of the vaccines in Wales, introducing such a policy would seem to undermine the efficacy of the vaccines.

After all, if they work, why should vaccinated people fear mixing with unvaccinated people in social events?

And with the UK Government quietly announcing last week that the actual IMR (Infection Mortality Rate) with covid was 0.0096% – comparable to flu – it seems indefensible to bring in such a draconian system of control.

There are reports that AMs are receiving an unprecedented amount of email correspondence ahead of today’s vote.

Welsh Labour have been riding their luck all through the Covid crisis, with minimal scrutiny and accountability.

They even won an election to all purposes thanks to the crisis.

But one senses that the public mood is changing and that there will be much more attention paid to this particular proposal.

Indeed a sizeable public demonstration is planned outside Y Senedd this afternoon ahead of the vote.

It will be particularly interesting to see how the left-leaning members of Labour and Plaid vote – especially in view of their traditional stance against authoritarianism.

Above all, tribal party affiliations and political triangulations should be set aside, with individual conscience allowed to be the main determinant of the vote.