Letters: Immunity passports are nothing to fear

Nothing to fear

Sir: Many of us await the day when we can travel abroad for much-anticipated holidays — but surely there is a distinction between immunisation passports and Tony Blair-type IDs (‘Papers, please’, 13 February)? If a country requires you to be immunised to travel there in order to protect its citizens against Covid, then I would be happy to have that ‘passport’ requirement. It is quite different from carrying ID with you in your own country.

Let’s face it, the danger from Covid will fade in time, and the ‘passport’ requirement along with it. After all we happily travel with a passport in our pockets to show who we are when we go abroad. Didn’t people have the same worries when passports were introduced? Why would one requirement necessarily lead to another? Passports didn’t lead to IDs here in the UK, after all.
Dy Davison
Rothbury

Open to worshippers

Sir: We are glad to hear that Charles Moore recently attended St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield to deliver his lecture (The Spectator’s Notes, 20 February). But we cannot let his assertion that St Bartholomew’s is one of only two of the City of London’s 45 churches to be currently open go unchallenged.

We are the Incumbents (or equivalent) of five Anglo-Catholic churches in the City, all of which have remained open for public worship and private prayer during this lockdown. We know of many more churches in the City of London which have also remained open. We rejoice that, alongside the provision of worship online for those unable to attend church as usual, these glorious and sacred buildings have continued to offer safe space for prayer, worship and the celebration of the sacraments. We look forward to welcoming Charles Moore to our churches whenever he would like to visit.
The Rt Revd Jonathan Baker
St Andrew, Holborn Circus

The Revd Tim Handley
St James, Garlickhythe
The Ven Luke Miller
St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe
The Revd Philip Warner
St Magnus the Martyr
The Revd James Wilkinson
St Dunstan-in-the-West