HM Passport Office Backlogs Debate

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Department: Home Office

HM Passport Office Backlogs

Emma Hardy Excerpts
Wednesday 27th April 2022

(2 years, 7 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Kevin Foster Portrait Kevin Foster
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There has been some significant engagement on performance and improvement with FedEx, the parent company of TNT, which does most of our delivery. Given the surge in demand, we have brought online DHL, which we use for our international deliveries, to increase the delivery capacity. Supporting documents are now also being returned via Royal Mail, because with the surge in demand, we have also had to surge our ability to deliver. Certainly there are issues there, although from our big bulk production sites it would actually take more time to fish passports out of a large pile than it would to allow them to be delivered to people directly, and there are obviously some security issues with ensuring that we give a passport to the person entitled to it.

Emma Hardy Portrait Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
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My constituent made a passport application for himself and his daughter in June 2021. He provided his original marriage deed and his daughter’s birth certificate. These are Syrian documents, and because of the situation in Syria they are irreplaceable. These documents have gone missing and despite formal complaints, representations from his own lawyer, a phone call from my office and an email from my office, we are yet to receive a reply on what has happened. Will the Minister urgently look into this case?

Kevin Foster Portrait Kevin Foster
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Very happy to. It sounds rather different from the issues of surge and the other areas we are talking about, if it has been going on since June 2021, but I am very happy to pick up the particular details of this case.