Coronavirus certificates are being considered as a way of getting fans back to larger events "in significant numbers", the Tory Culture Secretary declared today.
Oliver Dowden said that ministers are looking at the possibility of a document - digital or otherwise - that will show someone has either had the vaccine or a negative test.
He revealed those will be combined with trials looking at packing tighter crowds into Wembley Stadium and the World Snooker Championship, starting in just a few weeks' time.
Boris Johnson's roadmap made clear there would be one study on "certification" and another study piloting larger events.
But the February 22 document had not spelt out how the two might be combined.
Today Mr Dowden told Sky News: "[Some]thing that we are considering is a Covid certification, and we will be testing whether we can use Covid certification to help facilitate the return of sports."
The study on sports matches - an Events Research Programme - will look at holding mass events with less social distancing than expected under the current roadmap.
The roadmap says Step 3, from May 17 at the earliest, will allow mass events but only at 50% capacity, 1,000 people indoors or 4,000 people outdoors, whichever is smallest. Stadiums like Wembley are allowed up to 10,000 people.
But next month the government will begin separate pilots of mass events to see if rules can be eased further.
These will include in the Crucible theatre for the snooker championship, which starts in mid-April, and at Wembley Stadium for the FA Cup final on May 15.
If that is successful ministers will stuff "as many people as we can" into Wembley again for a pencilled-in Euros final in July, Mr Dowden told The Sun.
Mr Dowden told LBC Radio: “We want to basically go beyond where we were last summer.
“So May 17 gets us back to last summer, that has socially-distanced performances.
“We want to look at getting ways of more people in.
“That’s why we’re piloting in different venues how we can do that safely.
“So one of the pilots will be at the FA Cup final, the other will be at the Crucible.
‘The important thing is less to do with the snooker, which happens to be the event that’s on there at the time, it’s testing in an indoor seated environment. So that will be the same as for theatres and elsewhere.
“We want to test how we can do that safely and get as many people in as we can.”
It is hoped that all remaining restrictions on larger events and performances could be lifted from June 21, which is the earliest date for all legal limits on social contact to be removed.
Mr Dowden told Sky News on Friday: "From June 21, if all goes to plan in the way that I described, we hope to get people back in significant numbers.
"We're piloting the different things that will enable that to happen - clearly it will have to be done in a Covid-secure way.
"You would expect, and we will be testing these things, things like one-way systems, things like masks, things like hand hygiene and everything else."
The Culture Secretary said final decisions had not yet been made and that he was working with Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove, who is leading a review on certificates.
