Are attempts to boost vaccine takeup genuine policies or PR stunts? Something strange seems to be going on in government

Published

4 years ago

July 31, 2021

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Something strange seems to be going on in the Conservative government.

Recent weeks have seen ministers announce mandatory vaccination to enter nightclubs, speak supportively of businesses that demand workers are jabbed and moot the idea of barring students from university who’ve not been inoculated.

Novel developments for members of the self-professed “freedom-loving” party.

The question being asked in Westminster is whether this is genuine policy – or just a PR stunt.

“There’s a lot of attempts to drive vaccine uptake and lots of concepts being mooted subtly or not so subtly with no real intent behind them,” said one Whitehall official.

Conservative MPs agree, with several telling Sky News earlier this week they didn’t think plans to restrict access to nightclubs and other events would ever materialise.

One of the proposals has already been shelved, with the government announcing this weekend there are now no plans to use the COVID pass for access to learning.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson is understood to have made clear there would have been legal implications and potentially little benefit, given polling shows a vast majority of students say they will have the jab.

But the fact these ideas are even being suggested is enough to drive some backbenchers potty.

Several MPs have already said they won’t be attending this year’s party conference if they are forced to show their vaccination status.

Others worry about sailing too close to compulsory vaccination and the ethical implications of a heavy-handed approach.

“It was wrong-headed and should have been done by carrots,” says one senior backbencher of the plan for universities.

Those carrots now appear to be sprouting, with companies like Uber and Deliveroo offering discounts to customers who get vaccinated.

Scientists say these approaches are not without risk, but still avoid many of the problems of the negative incentive “stick” strategy.

“They are less likely to lead to perceptions of compulsion and generate a process of ‘reactance’ where people resist in order to reassert their autonomy,” said Professor Stephen Reicher, an advisor to the government on public behaviour.

But as well as the societal impact, there’s also a business impact.

Those in hospitality say Health Secretary Sajid Javid’s initially bullish tone on reopening led to share price boosts and funds flowing in.

Speculative stories about COVID passports disrupt that, with a single front page story potentially undoing weeks of growing confidence.

The calculation in government may be that the longer-term benefit of high vaccine uptake to the economy and society is worth any short-term bumpiness.

But some, like Professor Reicher, worry that neither the carrot nor the stick will be sufficient on their own.

“What is critical is to show people that the authorities are of the community and acting for the community,” he said.

“That is why processes of engagement are generally much more effective than processes of incentivisation.”

Politics

UK central bank still ‘disproportionately cautious’ about stablecoins

Published

4 hours ago

November 14, 2025

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UK central bank still ‘disproportionately cautious’ about stablecoins

The UK’s central bank, the Bank of England (BOE), has released a proposed regulatory regime for stablecoins. The consultation paper took into account the perspectives of the crypto industry, but some observers say it remains restrictive.

BOE released the document on Nov. 10 — some two years after it announced the initial discussion paper. The original offered a vision for crypto that many in the industry claimed would doom the UK’s digital asset space.

The BOE said that it received comments and feedback from a broad range of 46 different stakeholders, including “banks, non-bank payment service providers, payment system operators, trade associations, academia, and individuals.”

The UK’s central bank may have scrapped some more hardline requirements, but some in the industry believe that it isn’t enough. Tom Rhodes, chief legal officer at UK-based stablecoin issuer Agant, said the bank remains “disproportionately cautious and restrictive.”

*The bank also released a roadmap for further rulemaking. Source:* *Bank of England*

Bank of England still cautious on stablecoins

The new iteration presents a number of improvements on the 2023 version, Rhodes told Cointelegraph.

“The latest proposals do include some innovative features, such as direct BOE liquidity lines and the ability to repo reserves for liquidity purposes.”

He said that, as it concerns the UK market, “these proposals can be further explored and potentially expanded to create a more competitive backing asset regime, without compromising on stability.”

But despite the “welcome progress in the BOE’s sentiment towards stablecoins,” it has been “unusually vocal about the perceived risks of stablecoins,” said Rhodes.

One of the more controversial restrictions in the paper was limits on what the BOE called a “systemic retail stablecoin.” In the paper, this is defined as a stablecoin that is “widely used by individuals to make everyday payments such as for shopping and receiving salaries.”

The central bank wants to see limits of 20,000 pounds for individuals and 10 million pounds for businesses that accept it as a form of payment. This is an increase from the initial proposal, but the idea of limits on how much crypto you can hold didn’t sit well with some.

Crypto influencer Aleksandra Huk wrote, “Bank of England wants to cap stablecoin holdings at £20,000. Who gave them the right to tell us what to buy, where to store our money and how much we can have? […] Honestly, this is the best advert ever for privacy coins and for leaving the UK.”

There are a few caveats to the suggested rule. Geoff Richards, head of community at the Ontology Network, noted, “The proposal applies only to sterling-denominated stablecoins used in UK payment systems that could become ‘systemic.’ Not USDT, not USDC, not random DeFi tokens.”

Ian Taylor, board member of crypto industry advocacy group CryptoUK, told Cointelegraph that he understands the central bank’s more cautious approach, at least as it applies to the stablecoin limits:

“The Bank of England has a mandate to protect against financial stability. And that financial stability is connected to the banking system. So insofar as banks take deposits and they issue loans against those deposits […] creates credit, this is an economic benefit to any economy that we have.”

The BOE is rightfully worried that taking deposits out of banks would reduce their ability to lend, affecting financial stability. “So, that’s why they want to baby-step this.”

Rhodes said that the “vast majority” of UK stablecoins will not fall under the regime anyway, at least not as stated in the paper. He noted that Mastercard was only recognized as a systemically important payment system in 2021 and that non-systemic stablecoins will be regulated under the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) ruleset, “which is less restrictive.”

Still work to be done as UK opens up to crypto

Access to central bank liquidity and deposit accounts at the BOE was a welcome update for stablecoin issuers. But crypto industry representatives believe that there is still room for improvement in the central bank’s plan.

Regarding the stablecoin caps, “The systemic thresholds remain uncertain,” said Rhodes. He said it would be helpful to have clarification from His Majesty’s Treasury when an issuer has reached sufficient scale to “pose a risk to the UK economy as a whole, before they will recognize the issuer as systemic.”

Taylor also noted the difficulty of enforcing these stablecoin caps. If the government is licensing an issuer, then they’re the ones “responsible for monitoring each individual client or customer, whether wholesale, corporate or retail, as to how many stablecoins they’ve given them.”

The problem is that many people get their stablecoins on secondary markets or a “host of different sources.” People can receive stablecoins as compensation at work or on an exchange or peer-to-peer transaction. “So, the actual operational enforcement of that I question, and we’ve seen no detail in regards to that.”

Overall, “clarity and speed” will make the UK stablecoin ecosystem more competitive, said Arvin Abraham, partner at Goodwin Procter. He told Cointelegraph that regulators need to give issuers “a clean runway and predictable timelines” to navigate the approvals process.

Speed isn’t the government’s strong suit, however.

The British government has been working on crypto regulations since 2017, when it first adopted Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer requirements for crypto-related businesses like exchanges. Now, eight years later, the central bank is still developing its policies based on industry feedback.

The slow pace of progress presents a problem. According to Taylor, “We’ve been consulting on a wider framework to regulate stablecoins for almost five years, and we still haven’t gotten any actual license framework in place, which is problematic for a number of reasons,” he said.

“It doesn’t help businesses that want to launch stablecoins in the UK. They don’t have a clear roadmap of how to do that,” he said, “which in turn forces them to move offshore to jurisdictions where there are other regulatory frameworks already live.”

This is for a number of reasons, Taylor explained, including consecutive changes in government, as well as a lack of “real champions in any of our key stakeholders, be that the current government, be that Treasury, be that the FCA.”

Progress on crypto regulations may be slow in the UK — slower than many in the industry would like — but for Abraham, “The Bank is being pragmatic and fair. The overriding message is that innovation is welcome, but if you want your token to function like money, you need money-grade controls.”

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