Passport Applications

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Lady is wrong on that, which is why I suggested that it is perhaps better if I set out the figures to her in writing so that she is absolutely clear about them, rather than trying to make back of the envelope calculations in the Chamber.

It is important to remember that the vast majority of people are still receiving their passports within the expected three weeks, but the Government are putting in place measures to make sure that HMPO can process passport applications without the delays we have seen. HMPO staff are working tirelessly. The pinch points are being addressed, more staff are being trained and brought on board, and the measures I announced to the House last week are being implemented. More passports are being issued, and people who need to travel urgently can have their application fast-tracked without charge if their application has been with the Passport Office for longer than three weeks.

We are not going to be able to wish this problem away or fix everything overnight, but the measures that the Government are taking mean that HMPO can get to grips with its work load, meet the demand that it is facing and make sure that the public get the service they deserve. That is why the House should vote against the Opposition’s motion and vote with the Government today.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is a strictly time-limited debate. The speeches of the two Front-Bench spokesmen have taken between them an hour and 26 minutes, and one reason for that is the acceptance of intervention after intervention after intervention from Members, many of whom have left the Chamber without bothering to listen to the rest of the debate. The consequence of that is that the rest of us have only six minutes, in which it is impossible to develop any kind of coherent or articulate argument. When will this be put right?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Sir Gerald, that point of order has just taken more time from the debate. As you will know, how long Front-Bench spokesmen take to open the debate is not a matter for the Chair. This is a time-limited debate, and we now do not have enough time for every speaker who wishes to contribute.

I agree, Sir Gerald, with your point with regard to interventions being made by Members who then leave the Chamber. The convention is quite clear. Those Members should have stayed, at least until the Home Secretary sat down. I have drawn this to the attention of the Whips, and I hope that those Members will be told that interventions take other speakers’ time.

We have a six-minute time limit. We will start with six minutes. Not every Member will get in if it remains at six minutes, so I will have to review it. Some Members may decide to withdraw their names; let us wait and see.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary is shuffling out, as she always does when anything sensible is being said—the worst Home Secretary of my 44 years in the House of Commons, as we have seen today. There she goes, useless and arrogant. This week, she announced a new priority visitor visa system for tourists from China—a country that carries out executions and torture, imprisons without trial and gags free speech, while British citizens are harassed, delayed and fended off by an unresponsive lack of a system bizarrely called a “responder hub”.

I get an incessant flow of passport cases; the pile I have here has arrived since Thursday. Time and again constituents tell me what they are going through. Here is one example:

“I am making myself ill with worry…I continue to be fobbed off by the 0300 helpline. I am so frustrated as I cannot even discuss this with anyone as they will not even give me a direct number for the Liverpool office!”

Here is another:

“We have been wasting time and money running after solicitors and the British embassy, who are not helping us or guiding us about the process.”

Here is another:

“I will now need to take 2 days off work and also pay the last-minute travel costs to get from Manchester to London and back (twice) in order to apply for a visa”.

Another:

“The main advice line for the passport office constantly gives incorrect information, which leads to a phone call every day as we are now panicking and worried sick… I suffer with anxiety and panic disorder and this is causing me so much stress each and every day.”

Yet another:

“I applied for a renewal passport on May the seventh 2014 and today still have received nothing. If I do not go on 20th, I will have to lose a lot of money.”

I could read many more.

The situation is a scandal caused by a lack of concern and interest not lower down the organisation—those people do as they are told—but at the very top. It was typical of the Home Secretary to scoot out of here after listening to only two Back-Bench speeches; she goes off to do a job that she is incapable of doing anyhow. I have been a Member of this House for 44 years, and in that time there have been 18 Home Secretaries—10 Tory and eight Labour. They have varied in quality, but every single one of them, Tory and Labour, made themselves accessible to me as a Labour Back Bencher. Douglas Hurd would invite me to his office to discuss immigration and deportation cases, and William Whitelaw was a serious Home Secretary.

I do not know what elevated ideas this Home Secretary has about her quality and personality. All I can say is that this coming Saturday—my birthday, since I am talking about anniversaries—she will become the longest serving Home Secretary of all the 18 I have known in this House, yet she has done less than any other because, unlike them, she will not touch an individual case. Douglas Hurd, William Whitelaw, David Waddington and all the rest did, but she does not. I simply cannot understand why she thinks that she is too good for the rest of us. That is the attitude she is taking in this situation. She is not accessible in any way.

If the Home Secretary dealt with cases, she would know the problems of administration and understand what is going on, but she is at a distance. We have to drag her here, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) did last week, to get anything out of her. She has done nothing to sort this out. She can babble on as much as she likes about identity cards, but four years and one month later that has nothing whatever to do with it. This mess is the Home Secretary’s personal responsibility, and our constituents will remember that.