Passport Applications

Geoffrey Robinson Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why those applications take more time and why it is important to have first-time interviews. Some people may have applied thinking that they had a straightforward case, but because documents are missing, the form has not been completed properly, or the Passport Office has a query about the information provided, their case ceases to be straightforward and becomes more complex, thus taking longer to deal with.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman recently had an Adjournment debate on this subject, but I will give way to him.

[Mr Robinson]

If I catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope to say further things later. The Home Secretary is evading a simple question. Many people have incurred extra costs because of the incompetence and bungling that, as the Select Committee evidence made clear, sadly exists within HMPO. They are now writing to their MPs asking us to press the case on the Government, particularly in respect of the extra £73 they have had to pay through no fault of their own. Any private sector company would have to make allowance for that and reimburse people. That is what we look to the Government to do. Irrespective of whether the Home Secretary has an answer now or later, the question will not go away.

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman characterised the Passport Office in a particular way, which I think was unfortunate in respect of the staff. [Interruption.] No, the hon. Gentleman referred to what was happening in the Passport Office in a particular way, and I am simply saying that the staff—my hon. Friend the Immigration Minister and I have met and spoken to them—are working very hard to try to ensure that they turn round passports. As I indicated here last week, we have set in place arrangements—they have been in operation over the last weekend—to help those who find themselves unable to travel within seven days. Those are the free-of-charge arrangements that we have put in place—it is not a refund, as people are able to upgrade free of charge within those time scales.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate you on your honour.

The Government are evading two fundamental questions, and if we do not get answers to them today, we shall go on pressing for them, because we are rightly being relentlessly pursued for answers by our constituents. The first question is: why are we in this crisis, and why is there such a shambles in the Department? We have not had an answer from the Government that makes any sense. They have tried to blame the massive increase on new people applying for passports, but their figures do not show that to be the case.

I have written a letter to the Minister for Security and Immigration, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), but he has not yet replied to it. I have not even had an acknowledgement, let alone an invitation to meet him. I have been received by many of his predecessors, as has my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), who has referred to Mr Waddington in particular. Those Ministers met constituents when there was a problem. That course of action worked well, and I would recommend it to the Minister who is now in charge, even though he does not seem to be terribly interested in what I am saying.

The Government have increased the manpower. The crisis blew up during the January to May period and the Home Secretary has stood at the Dispatch Box and announced crisis measures to deal with it. What remains unclear is whether holidays for which flights and hotels have been booked will qualify as urgent business. I have not heard a clear answer from the Government on that yet.

This takes me to the main question. The Government have said that they are sorry, but if they say sorry, they have to mean it. Saying sorry means making amends; otherwise, it does not mean anything. It is just a word without a meaning. The Home Secretary has evaded the question three times when we have put it to her, but the Government must tell us what they are going to do in the cases where our constituents had done everything correctly and HMPO was at fault, resulting in them not getting their passports in time. Many of those people have lost money just trying to get their passports, never mind losing money on holiday bookings. The Government have to give us an answer to that question.

We need to know who took the decision to bring all the overseas passport work into the Department at the very time we were having a seasonal surge. I think it must have been the Home Secretary because she went out of her way to defend it today. However, she could not give us the basic statistics. If the relevant figure is 6% of 3.3 million, that equates to about 175,000, which is a good half of the 350,000 extra cases that came in this year. So it was clearly a bad—indeed, almost idiotic—management decision to take in the overseas passport work at that time.

I want to mention the case of Mrs Joanna Hughes. She applied online on 23 April to renew her daughter Ella’s passport, which she would need for a trip to Belgium for the world war one centenary celebrations on 19 June. The Passport Office advised her that the application would take up to three weeks to complete. About three weeks later, on 10 May, she received a letter from HMPO to tell her that the passport and photos had been lost within the passport department. It advised her to forward a new application form and photographs, which she did on 12 May. There was no delay there; she got on to it straight away. She sent the documents to the Glasgow priority handling office via Royal Mail special delivery. She told me:

“I finally received a call back on 29 May to be told that my application was with an examiner in Belfast, not Glasgow as previously advised.”

We can already see that there was a muddle in the department. There were a lot of people working on the application, but if there is criticism to be made, it is not of the people working on the process but of the organisation, of the ministerial decisions and of Mr Pugh himself. The problem lies with the organisation of the department itself.

Mrs Hughes continued:

“I was advised to send a Lost and Stolen form with a covering letter to Priority Handling Belfast which I had to download online to advise the very department who had lost the passport! Another special delivery was posted that day.”

I agree with her conclusion:

“I would like to receive a full apology and investigation into why my daughter’s old passport and photos were lost in a Government office and I want to receive full compensation for all the further expenditure I have had to make”.

She gives details of the expenditure, which comes to the best part of £153. The Government are responsible for that. What are they going to do—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman’s time is up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

I know that my right hon. Friend’s Committee looked at these issues yesterday. I understand the reasons behind that decision—Ministers are concerned about consistency and security—but we need to review whether those are concerns in all cases. We also need to review the procedures that have been used to repatriate the process, because they have not worked, in my view. There were discussions yesterday and today about the issue, and I would welcome the Minister’s comments.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) said, the passport website still has a three-week web promise for passport delivery. I would like to know from the Minister whether that is still the norm for delivery of passports. Will the Minister commit today to maintaining the three-week delivery time? The Passport Office chief executive has said that we had a 16% under-forecast of demand. We initially thought that the extra demand was 350,000 applications, but the chief executive confirmed yesterday—in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz)—that it is 400,000. The Passport Office has now ordered an independent review of forecasting. Yesterday, the chief executive said that 493,289 passport applications were “in progress”. The Home Office does not use the words “delay” or “backlog”: everything is “work in progress”.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) tested the Home Secretary on the figures before the House today. The Home Secretary said that applications this year are 3.3 million, up from 2.95 million last year—an increase of 350,000. She also said that 6% of the 3.3 million applications were from overseas, and that is 200,000 applications. Last year, those 200,000 applications were dealt with by the Foreign Office, so—as my right hon. Friend said—200,000 of the 350,000 increase came from overseas. I hope that the Minister will tell us what has caused the increase in demand.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) asked that question. Is it because of the repatriation of dealing with overseas residents’ passports—about which my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) asked pertinent questions at the Foreign Affairs Committee hearing—or is it because of the closure of offices at home, a point raised my hon. Friends the Members for Newport West (Paul Flynn), for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark)? Is it because, even today, there are not sufficient staff to deal with current needs, or is it because, in some twilight world—as the hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) said—the bright economic future has led people to book their holidays early? Only yesterday, the annual figures showed that inflation outstripped wages yet again. People’s earnings are not keeping pace with inflation.

[Mr Robinson]

I agree with every word my right hon. Friend says. We have had no explanation from the Government on what has caused this crisis. It can only be incompetence at the top, lack of ministerial direction and attention, and the organisation of the HMPO, which the Select Committee earlier this week exposed as being very inadequate.

[Mr Hanson]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. I also welcome the Home Secretary’s apology, but an apology is not enough. We need a clear exposition on what has caused this problem. A range of points have been put forward today, but we have had no clarity from the Government.

The human cost of this crisis was exposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman). May I just note in passing that he celebrates 44 years in the House today? The human cost was also mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Airdrie and Shotts and for Cardiff South and Penarth. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) looked at problems relating particularly to India, and the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) accepted that there are challenges in the system.

I put the problem down to a failure to plan. The HMPO annual report last year stated that there would be approximately 350,000 additional customers worldwide annually, so why did the Minister not act? We knew the Foreign Office changes were being introduced. My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran said that overtime has increased. We heard about the January rise. We heard that on 23 May extra staff were deployed. In an Adjournment debate secured in June by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West, the Minister said:

“HMPO will have deployed 250 additional passport examination staff”—[Official Report, 10 June 2014; Vol. 582, c. 524.]

by the end of June. If this was a problem in January, why is that the case? The issues of training and recruitment could all have been anticipated by the Government. What has been the impact of moving fraud staff and others on to passports? Confidence in the measures announced by the Home Secretary has not been clear from Members here today.

In the one minute I have left I will turn to compensation. Will the Minister tell me, either today or at a future date, how many extra payments have been made by people to ensure they receive their passports on time? Why is the offer applicable only from Thursday to a limited section of people? Will the Minister commit himself to looking at the number of people who have been hit by the extra charge for fast-tracking and say whether he will repay them? Will he look at the issue of the date, rather than the date of travel, for the reasons set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts?

It is clear that the problem was known. It is clear that inadequate action was taken. It is clear that there is still a problem now. It is clear that Ministers were not on top of the job and not on top of their work. It is clear that they failed the public who pay for this service. The Minister probably needs to take a holiday. Will he take it after he has sorted out everybody else’s passport? Will he ensure that the Home Office does what our constituents are paying it to do: to deliver a quality service on time and on budget to ensure that people are able to take their business trips and enjoy their hard-earned holidays?

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

May I say at the outset that I understand entirely why so many right hon. and hon. Members across the House have sought to bring to Ministers’ attention a number of individual cases? That is precisely what Members of Parliament are for—to represent their constituents. I understand why they have sought to use this debate to do that. This debate has underlined the work of the Passport Office in seeking to respond to and address the concerns that have been flagged. Like other right hon. and hon. Members, I pay tribute to the hard work, dedication and professionalism of HMPO staff who are working to process applications and respond to individual customer and MP inquiries. We recognise the need to service MPs’ individual requests. That is why, from the start of this week, the MP team was strengthened to ensure that a service is provided to deal with those individual cases.

I note the number of individual cases and circumstances that have been flagged. Sadly, in the time available, I will not be able to respond to each of them, but a careful note is being taken of a number of them. A note is also being taken of some of the points that have been made, for example on the courier services. I have heard that DX is working late evenings, but we will look at each case. We will also look at each point that has been flagged on individual countries.

I underline our commitment to focus on those individual circumstances that have been flagged, but I also underline the Home Secretary’s message. We apologise to anyone who has been affected by their passport not being delivered when expected through no fault of their own. I understand the concerns that have been flagged and the individual cases that have been raised. I understand the concerns of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) and his desire to raise individual cases, but I say to him in careful terms that the tone and nature of his contribution did not fit the debate.

I should like to underline some of the individual actions we have taken to address the current high volume of passport applications. Her Majesty’s Passport Office issued 3.3 million passports in the first five months of the year, compared with 2.95 million in the same period last year.[Official Report, 7 July 2014, Vol. 584, c. 2MC.] We have had an additional 350,000 applications compared with last year, and the highest demand for passports in 12 years.

I stress to the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) that our actions have not just happened in recent weeks. Since January, HMPO has put in place measures to deal with the increase, and the vast majority of customers have received their passports on time and straightforward renewals of passports within the three-week period. I stress to him that the website advises:

“It should take 3 weeks to get the passport - use a different service if you need the passport urgently…It can take longer if more information is needed or your application hasn’t been filled out correctly.”

[Mr Robinson]

The Minister is correct that applications are roughly 10% up on last year—this is in my letter to him, as he will see when he gets round to replying—and that manpower was increased from January to May by 10%. Is not the point that, if we had all that planning, why has the crisis arisen? Is it not because of the decision to incorporate into that planning system the different volume of requirements for overseas applications?

[James Brokenshire]

We have had sustained demand and the demand has come earlier in the year than would normally be the case. Therefore, that increase and the period in which demand was sustained is an important factor. That is why HMPO has been operating seven days a week since March and why passports are delivered within 24 hours by couriers.

Some 250 staff were moved from back-office roles to the front line, and an additional 200 people will soon be supporting front-line operation. The focus has been given to getting passport applications turned round. I also stress that 650 extra staff are working on the customer helpline—an increase to 1,000. We understand people’s anxieties and action has been taken.

As the Home Secretary has said, we are ensuring that those who need to travel in the next seven days whose applications have been outstanding for more than three weeks through no—[Interruption.]