The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Passport (Fees) Regulations 2022.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Cummins, as always.
Before I move on to the draft regulations themselves, I will touch briefly on the issue of passport applications to put the regulations into context. I hope that colleagues understand that I will not get into specific or individual cases in a public forum, but I remind Members that they may use the dedicated MPs’ hotline and, for the most urgent cases, the passport surgeries at Portcullis House, to which staff of Her Majesty’s Passport Office have been deployed to answer passport-related inquiries.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
I am sure that every Member present has dozens and dozens of cases outstanding with HM Passport Office. I thank the staff—they are at home and doing a fantastic job—but it still is not working. Hundreds of people are without their passports. This draft delegated legislation is about premium and fast track, but none of it is working at this moment in time.
Kevin Foster
Perhaps I should go on to point out what HMPO staff are doing. At the moment, they are working hard to process approximately 250,000 applications per week, and have been doing so since the beginning of March this year. That is a large increase in the number of applications and in output since January, when latent demand started to return. They are focused on maintaining a high level of service and on ensuring that people receive their passports in good time for the summer holidays.
In the vast majority of cases, applications are being processed within the advertised 10 weeks. Nearly 2 million passport applications were dealt with in March and April alone. For the benefit of the Committee, HMPO usually deals with 7 million in a year—that is the scale of the numbers. Our advice, however, remains to allow up to 10 weeks when applying and, if planning travel this summer, to apply now if a new passport is needed.
The draft regulations will set the fees payable for products and services offered by HMPO, as well as providing for fee waivers in a number of circumstances. The regulations revoke and replace the Passport (Fees) Regulations 2018, making minor changes to the fees schedule and specifying priority services fees, including a booking fee, which will not be refunded in certain circumstances. At the outset, I want to make it clear that no fee levels are being changed. The cost of applying for a passport is not increasing under the draft regulations.
For customers requiring a passport more quickly than can be provided under the standard service, HMPO has for many years offered optional priority services that are available for an additional fee: the fast track service and the premium service. For background, given the intervention of the hon. Member for Wansbeck, between 6 February and 8 May 2022, on average, 9,000 fast track applications were submitted in person per week, and 4,000 digital premium appointments were booked online per week.
Frustratingly, given the demand for the services, over the past year about 5% of customers have not attended their priority service appointment. When a customer simply does not attend their appointment and fails to notify HMPO, the slot cannot be reused. That has a knock-on effect for others seeking to use the priority services, especially when there is high demand for slots. For that reason, the priority service fees will now include a booking fee, which will not be refunded where a customer cancels their appointment with less than 48 hours’ notice—that is, too late for us to be able to readvertise the appointment to those seeking to book one.
The booking fee will be £30, which reflects the costs incurred by HMPO up to the point of the appointment and as a result of not being able to reuse the appointment. As I said, that will not result in an increase in the total fee; it forms part of the existing priority service fee and will not lead to customers being charged more for their appointment, provided that they keep it and use the service.
If a customer misses their appointment and fails to notify HMPO altogether, HMPO will retain the whole fee. That incentivises customers to ensure that they notify HMPO when they are not able to attend, and helps to provide a service that is more cost-effective for the taxpayer while ensuring much wanted slots are not wasted. To clarify, if the customer does not attend their appointment but meets the compassionate criteria—for example, there is a medical or family emergency that means they cannot attend their appointment—HMPO will refund the full fee.
We are also making minor drafting changes to the descriptions of our priority services. The changes will not impact on the services provided to customers, nor the cost to them. We have also made several amendments to the regulations to make them simpler, more concise and transparent for customers. The regulations set out clearly what actions are taken as part of the administration of an application, when an application is deemed to have been made, and when a fee will be retained by the Passport Office.
The schedule of fees has been reduced in length, and we have made the cost of priority services clearer by setting the fees separately. Previously, the fees set in the regulations included the cost of administering a passport and a priority service. Again, we now want to make it much clearer what people are paying for when they pay for the priority service that they book through that system. I hope the Committee will accept the regulations.
Kevin Foster
I thank my two shadows, the hon. Members for Croydon Central and for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, for the overall constructive nature of their remarks. Perhaps I can start on the question whether we are slowing the fast track through these regulations. What we are actually doing is providing clarification. This partly reflects a longer-term policy for customers of the service whose appointment is after the local cut-off time. The fast track performance is measured as the passport being printed within 144 hours —to be exact—of the application being received, which also allows the 24-hour delivery service level. There was a query about what this says about the target and whether we are meeting it. Between January and April, 94% of fast track application passports were printed within these times. Again, it is perhaps more of a clarification than an actual change in the time within which people will receive their passports.
In a fair challenge directly related to the draft regulations, I was asked why keep the whole application fee, rather than just the priority fee. Fundamentally, if someone does not turn up, it is not just the appointment slot that is wasted; it is a slot in which we would have considered a passport. Literally, a decision maker might have to sit there when they could have been processing and dealing with a passport for someone. That is why we believe the measure to be proportionate if someone simply does not turn up and does not tell us in advance that they will not be there, even within 48 hours. So, before 48 hours, free cancellation and, within 48 hours, 30 quid booking fee. If someone just does not show up, it is not unreasonable—as with many other services many of us use—for them still to pay the fee for the service, because in effect that service has been wasted.
Will we draw up a full list of all the circumstances? No. As with our exchanges about the EU settlement scheme and late applications, in particular with the SNP spokesperson, we could probably all sit here and draw up a reasonable list of good reasons why someone did not attend a passport appointment—an unwell child, an emergency care reason or an urgent work thing that day—only for someone to walk in the door and give another example that could also be a fair reason. The classic example is someone, or their close relative, being taken into hospital, which is a compelling circumstance. But if we draw up an exhaustive list, we might end up being harsher than if we have a clear set of principles for when we will refund the fee.
Andrew Bridgen
Will the Minister explain to the Committee what happens when someone does not show up without notice for their appointment? How is their application dealt with following that? Are there instances of people making another appointment and again not showing up? How is that dealt with?
Kevin Foster
People have not made the application, if they do not show up—we have no application to consider, but they have just wasted a slot. In particular for showing up in person to make an application, it is not as if we can sit there and progress something that has already been received; in most cases, we will have literally nothing to process. Have there been examples in the past? Going back some years to before we changed our booking system, there were examples of people repeatedly not attending appointments. Fundamentally, time gets wasted, so the measure is proportionate, subject to being clear that if someone has good reason why they could not attend their appointment, it is fair to give them a refund. It is not unreasonable to ask people to do the simple job, one or two days before, of ringing us up to say, “Actually, I can’t make that day. May I make another appointment?”
Stuart C. McDonald
I want a little clarity. At one point, there was reference to compassionate circumstances, which to me sounds rather more limited than “good reason”, such as a broken-down train or whatever.
Kevin Foster
For example, someone might have glued themselves to the road outside or to the door, or witnessed a crime on the way. Again, we could get a very long list of reasons why people, through no fault of their own, were unable to get to an appointment. However, we will not draw up an exhaustive list, because we could be here all day doing that, only for someone to say, “Have you thought of this?”—so no. We intend to be generally flexible, but if someone just forgets, does not bother or whatever, that is the point at which we have to say, “Well, I’m sorry, but public resource was wasted. A slot that could have been used to process a passport for someone else was wasted.”
Furthermore, the issue formed part of our planning to deal with the surge: we felt that it was appropriate to be clear and proportionate. If someone rings us up beforehand, it is £30, and if someone rings us up more than 48 hours before, completely free of charge, because someone cancelling with 48 hours’ notice allows us to readvertise the slot and, at the moment certainly, we know that other people will be only too happy to take up the slot. We felt that that was proportionate, because most people will ring up and cancel. We feel that £30 is not a huge cost barrier, but is enough to be an incentive to ring up and cancel at a point when we can readvertise the slots to someone else.
I reassure my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire that all appropriate security checks continue to be done on all passport applications. A number of checks are in place. Colleagues will appreciate why, for example, child passports might take slightly longer—certain checks apply for travel by under-18s.
James Sunderland
I have two quick questions. First, when will the policy take effect, and will customers be given sufficient notice of the change in policy? Secondly, if an appointment is cancelled with sufficient notice, is the Minister completely confident that that appointment will be reallocated to somebody else in the queue?
Kevin Foster
The regulations will come into force 20 days after they are made. It is only fair that we make that clear so that people can book appointments. At the moment, we can say that slots will definitely be readvertised, and if there is high demand it is very likely that people will book them. In more normal circumstances, will every slot that is freed up be booked? Possibly not, but if there is less demand on the day for fast-track or priority, people can be reallocated to do other work in the Passport Office, rather than work on the counters and potentially spend all morning wondering where people are. We cannot say that absolutely every slot will be used, but the Passport Office will at the very least be able to plan the day more effectively rather than have people sitting and waiting for applicants who do not turn up.
Are we confident about the wider system? I have been asked about getting through 9.5 million applications this year. We have got through 2 million in two months, and I am sure that most of us can calculate what 1 million a month equates to. On staffing numbers and preparation, we have already increased staffing in the Passport Office by more than 500 since last April, and a further 700 are on the way and will have joined by the summer.
Kevin Foster
What “summer” means? Well, it is a time of year when it is nice and warm. In terms of the backlog, we are getting more applications every day, and the sheer volume of passports we are getting through is such that demand in March was almost unprecedented and more than 1 million were dealt with. The vast majority —98%—are dealt with within the service level agreement. I have heard media reports, but they are not descriptions that we recognise, given the scale of the Passport Office’s output.
I think that everyone recognises that these regulations are a small part of our service. They release some capacity—potentially hundreds of appointments a week—against the backdrop of hundreds of thousands being dealt with overall. We disagree with some of the points that have been made, but we welcome the broad support for the regulations.
Question put and agreed to.