THREE Tory MPs from the Daily Echo area have signed a pledge to oppose the use of vaccine passports.

More than 70 MPs have launched the cross-party campaign opposing their "divisive and discriminatory" use.

These include Poole MP Robert Syms, South Dorset MP Richard Drax and New Forest West MP Desmond Swayne.

Other signatories include former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and former director of Liberty, Baroness Shami Chakrabarti.

The pledge states: "We oppose the divisive and discriminatory use of Covid status certification to deny individuals access to general services, businesses or jobs."

Campaign groups including Big Brother Watch, Liberty, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) and Private International are also backing the pledge.

The launch comes after Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there will "definitely" be a role for vaccine passports for international travel.

The government is reviewing the issues around Covid-status certification and Mr Johnson said it was important to give “maximum confidence” to firms and customers.

Mr Johnson said: "On the issue of vaccine certification, there’s definitely going to be a world in which international travel will use vaccine passports."

Any scheme is likely to go beyond just showing whether someone has had a vaccine – as jabs are not mandatory – but would also cover whether they have had Covid-19, and so are likely to have antibodies, or if they have a negative recent test.

The Prime Minister’s comments came after the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, indicated that the British instinct could be against a form of vaccine passport showing if someone had received a jab.

Meanwhile, Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch said:"Our common goal is to emerge from lockdown - healthy, safe and free. But we won’t arrive at freedom through exclusion.

"Covid passes would be the first attempt at segregation in Britain for many decades, dividing communities without reducing the risks.

"We are in real danger of becoming a check-point society where anyone from bouncers to bosses could demand to see our papers.

"We cannot let this government create a two-tier nation of division, discrimination and injustice."

Meanwhile, Sam Grant, head of policy and campaigns at Liberty, said: “We all want to get out of the pandemic as quickly as possible, but we need to do so in a way that ensures we don’t enter a ‘new normal’ which diminishes the rights and liberties we took for granted before the Covid crisis.

"Any passport system has the potential to create a two-tier society, and risk further marginalising people who are already discriminated against and cut off from vital services.

"Vaccine passports would allow ID systems by stealth, entrenching inequality and division.

“We need strategies that support and enable people to follow public health guidance, including vaccination, alongside more support for the most marginalised who have suffered the sharp edge of the government’s focus on criminal justice over public health.

"We won’t get out of this pandemic by entrenching inequality, but only by protecting everyone."