Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether his Department has undertaken an equality impact assessment of the effect of introducing a covid-19 vaccine passport on people being able to enter outdoor sporting events.

The Government is reviewing COVID-status certification, which is being led by the Cabinet Office. The Government has consulted widely to understand the equalities impacts, speaking to ethicists and representatives of disabilities, ethnic minorities and faith groups. The Government will continue to invite views about possible equalities impacts as we continue to assess the potential role of certification.

The Government is looking at how we can allow venues to reopen as part of the Events Research Programme (ERP) led by my department. The ERP’s pilots will gather evidence associated with different settings and approaches to managing and mitigating transmission risk. The pilots will explore how different approaches to social distancing, ventilation and test-on-entry protocols could ease opening and maximise participation.

The department takes its responsibility under the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) seriously, and as such a separate PSED assessment will be completed ahead of each of the pilot events in the research programme, to ensure the equality impacts of the programme on groups with a protected characteristic are fully considered. This will include an equality assessment of the use of COVID-status certification where this is trialled as part of the specified pilot.

We will ensure that the results gathered from research programmes are fed into policy development swiftly to ensure data is used to inform decisions around further reopening, including of sporting events.