Liverpool Passport Office

Debate between Luciana Berger and Louise Ellman

Thursday 30th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to bring to the attention of the House a matter of great importance: the dismissal of 14 staff at the Liverpool passport office because of a major error made by their employer, the Identity and Passport Service, an executive agency of the Home Office.

I thank the Minister for meeting Liverpool MPs and arranging for us to discuss the situation with him and key staff. I also thank him for forwarding us a copy of the internal review into the issue, although it came complete with many redactions. The key facts are not disputed. On 21 March 2011, 14 permanent staff at Liverpool passport office were called to a hastily convened meeting to be told that what they thought was their permanent employment had abruptly ended. Four were dismissed immediately and 10 were switched to temporary employment, which has now finished for most of them.

The reason given was that the IPS had made a major error in awarding those staff permanent employment status from September 2008 when they were recruited under a friends and family scheme. The rules under which they were recruited meant they should only have been given temporary employment status for a maximum of two years. The employees were unaware of that fact and they had been given permanent status by their employer. The sudden dismissals without warning shocked and angered the staff, some of whom had left their previous employment to take up what they thought was a new career. Others had taken out loans or mortgages on the basis of their permanent employment. Indeed, the whole office remains upset.

I want to raise serious, still unresolved, issues about the conduct of the IPS in this sorry saga and the current status of the dismissed staff. There is considerable confusion about what happened. I have in my possession a very interesting letter dated 4 January 2011, written by Paul Luffman, head of employee relations at IPS, and addressed to Barry Forrester at the office of the Civil Service Commission. According to the letter, the IPS’s error was discovered in its recruitment audit at the end of March 2009. The Minister’s reply to my parliamentary question on 31 March 2011 contradicts that, stating that the error was discovered in March 2010.

Why did it take one or perhaps even two years to inform the staff that there was a question mark against their employment? According to a reply I received from the Minister for the Cabinet Office on 27 April 2011, the IPS told the Civil Service Commission on 27 April 2010 that it was dealing with the situation, replacing the permanent contracts with temporary ones. In reality, they were doing no such thing. Who signed off that incorrect information? Who gave the wrong information to Ministers? When did the Minister discover that the information was wrong?

It also appears that the recruitment audit file was not returned to the Liverpool office as it should have been; it was sent to the Peterborough office and destroyed. Paul Luffman’s letter asks the civil service commissioners if there were any alternatives to terminating the 14 permanent employment contracts, and that indeed is the key question. I understand that the letter was never dispatched. Why?

It is alleged that the letter was never dispatched because of concerns that it would embarrass David Normington, then permanent secretary at the Home Office and now first civil service commissioner and commissioner for public appointments. Is that correct? It is worth noting that David Normington would be in a difficult position to adjudicate the current situation.

Instead of the 14 Liverpool staff being informed of their problem at a time when more alternative jobs were available, they became unemployed two years later, when job opportunities were decreasing and educational and training courses were being curtailed.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituent, Denise Wheatcroft, who is 58 years old and the oldest of the group of 14 people, took the post with the Identity and Passport Service because she thought that it would guarantee her employment until her retirement. She now finds herself without a job aged 58. Does my hon. Friend agree that, if Denise had been informed of the situation when it was discovered, and in advance of the current situation, given the cuts that are impacting on Liverpool in particular, she would have been in a much better situation than she is today?

[Mrs Ellman]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments and certainly agree. Indeed, she provides an example of the human cost of what has happened in Liverpool.

It has been said that the decision to dismiss the 14 employees was taken on the basis of “legal advice”, and it has even been claimed that to maintain their employment would have been “illegal”. I challenge that. I have seen no evidence that any formal legal advice was sought or obtained, and Paul Luffman’s letter seeking such advice was never sent.

Telephone conversations and personal discussions, which I am told took place, do not constitute formal legal advice; nor is there any record of the questions to which any verbal advice responded. The suggestion of “illegality” in allowing those employees to continue with the permanent status that they were awarded is grossly misleading and an attempt to divert attention from what has happened and from the culpability of those who are responsible.