VACCINE passports could play a part in allowing Scots a faster return to normality as the country eases out of the lockdown, Nicola Sturgeon has said.

The First Minister admitted there were many still ethical, moral and practical difficulties to think through but, she added, it would be wrong not to consider the implications.

Green MSP Patrick Harvie warned that it could “set a dangerous precedent”, with people’s civil rights dependent on their medical history.

Earlier this week, the UK Government announced a review into possible Covid status

certificates – effectively the same thing as vaccine passports.

The idea is that venues or businesses could stop the virus spreading at events by only allowing entry to those who’ve either been vaccinated or recently tested negative.

The UK Government review – which is being led by Michael Gove – should report back before June 21.

It’s likely – regardless of what governments in the UK do – that some form of international vaccine passport will be advanced over the coming months.

Greece’s tourism minister yesterday pleaded with the EU to adopt a scheme to allow his country a “semi-normal” summer.

In Holyrood yesterday, Scottish LibDem leader Willie Rennie said he had concerns, and asked the First Minister to categorically rule out linking vaccine passports or status certificates to accessing public services.

While Sturgeon said she was able to give that assurance, she said the Government wasn’t closing its mind to passports or vaccine certificates.

The First Minister told MSPs: “Yellow fever certificates exist for travel to some countries, so there may well be scope for vaccination giving you the ability to do certain things that without vaccination you might not be able to do.

“I’m not sure that there’s a huge amount of disagreement certainly between the different governments in the UK on this, there’s a lot of things we need to think through.

“We need to firstly understand, as I’ve talked about in other contexts, exactly what vaccination gives you, in terms of protection against getting or passing on the virus.

“And then we do need to think about these ethical issues about what is it reasonable to say can be accessed with a vaccine certificate if you had that, and what couldn’t, because there are some people who, for reasons beyond their own control, can’t get vaccinated, and there are other ethical issues that arise from there.

She added: “It’s one of these things that there’s a real tendency to try to oversimplify and we should guard against that. I don’t close my mind to this, but I think, like everybody else, we want to think through this carefully.

“And if some kind of mechanism like this can give us some greater normality back at some stage that we wouldn’t otherwise get, then let’s think about that, but let’s think about it properly”.

Speaking after the session, Rennie said he still had some fears: “In the past the First Minister was sceptical about vaccine passports. Now she has left the door open for their use. I am concerned that vaccine passports are slowly gaining traction but we don’t want a two-tier society which would exacerbate inequalities.”

Sam Grant, the head of policy and campaigns at civil liberties group, Liberty, said they had concerns: “Renaming them ‘status certificates’ does nothing to address the fact that they would create a two-tier society where some people can access support and freedoms, while others are shut out – with the most marginalised among us hardest hit.”