HM Passport Office Backlog

Debate between Margaret Greenwood and Paul Holmes

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

I rise to oppose the motion and speak in defence of the excellent Minister, with whom I have had the privilege of working over the last 18 months. I wish him well and congratulate him on all that he has been doing to ensure that Her Majesty’s Passport Office continues as efficiently as possible to clear the backlog. I thank staff, his private office and all HMPO staff for their work to keep Members informed and to work for Members by ensuring that our constituents get their passports replaced as quickly as possible.

It is disappointing that yet again the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), has decided to stand at the Dispatch Box and castigate and criticise, but offered no alternative solution outlining what a Labour Government would do. He did it throughout my time as Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Home Office: he did it about immigration; he did it about policing; and he has done it about passports. All we hear is constant criticism with no plan as to what is best for the country. During the time in which I was privileged to have that job, I would sit behind the Minister and the Home Secretary, and one of the most frustrating things was having to be quiet and listen without being able to come back at the shadow Minister. I am glad that I can do so today—and may I just also congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), for Bosworth (Dr Evans) and for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) on being appointed PPSs at the Home Office?

I perfectly accept that there has been a backlog, but the Minister and the Government have made a consistent effort to sort it. I saw that during my time at the Department and we can see it in the facts. Although the Labour party refuses to acknowledge it, we have just come out of an unprecedented pandemic, during which travel was banned. At that time, there were 5 million applications a year on average. The number of applications this year is at 9.5 million. It is absurd for the hon. Member for Aberavon to say that this Government have not been doing anything—[Interruption.] He can chunter from a sedentary position, but his speech did not deal in facts, so I will be pleased to outline some in my speech.

In April 2021, the Passport Office advised that people should allow 10 weeks for their passports to arrive. The hon. Member for Aberavon kept going on about “six weeks”. I suggest to him, as I did in my intervention, that he simply checks the HMPO website; for the last year and a bit the consistent guidance of the Government has been 10 weeks, but his motion refers to “six weeks”. Already—at the beginning of the debate—the motion is not worth the paper it is written on, because it is factually wrong and flawed.

What the shadow Minister did not outline in his attack on the Minister is that already—and still—90% of passports are completed in six weeks and 98.5% are completed within 10 weeks. He also knows, as I know as a constituency MP, that if there are special reasons why a passport needs to be expedited, that can happen; it has happened in my case, and it happened to many colleagues in the House who emailed me while I was PPS and we got their cases sorted. He is simply not giving credit where credit is due.

Plenty of Labour MPs have made criticisms this afternoon, saying that they have lots of cases that have not been completed within the guidelines. The shadow Minister outlined his view that we are in backlog Britain and that the Home Office is the most bureaucratic Department. That is a very good soundbite, but it is not accurate. Opposition Members should be looking into backlog Labour. [Interruption.] Would the shadow Minister like to listen? He made an accusation about backlog Britain. I say “backlog Labour”.

We have heard from Opposition Members about passports not being completed on time, and the shadow Minister has outlined how many Opposition Members have contacted him about how long they have been waiting, but I can tell the House that when I was PPS at the Department I did not get a single email from him. I have looked through my records, and he did not email me once; he has not spoken to the Minister either. Opposition Members should all be angry at the shadow Minister for being the backlog and the bureaucratic bottleneck in the Department. He has not once spoken to the Minister to get his constituents sorted out, and he never emailed me.

We will take no lectures from Opposition Members. The Minister is one of the most decent Ministers in the Government and will talk to any hon. Member on either side of the House, so I will give Opposition Members some advice: perhaps they should email the Minister and leave the shadow Minister out of it, because clearly he cannot deliver either for his constituents or for theirs.

The motion requests a censure of the Minister’s handling of the passport backlog, but we should look at the facts and give him credit for his work. The action has been clear, although we did not hear about it from the shadow Minister. Passport Office staffing has increased: there are 500 more members of staff since April of last year, and another 700 are being hired, as the Minister outlined. We now have over 4,000 staff working in Her Majesty’s Passport Office to clear the backlog; I would call that action. More delivery companies are now working on behalf of the Home Office to deliver passports where possible; I would call that action. Telephone lines now have 500 more staff; I would call that action. [Interruption.] I hear “Give him a job!” from a sedentary position. I had one, but I gave it up, so I do not need another. I am here working on behalf of my constituents. I do not need a job to speak the facts. In what we have heard from the Opposition, there has been a consistent absence of facts, so I am very happy to correct the record today.

There have never been so many channels open to Members of Parliament to address the backlog. We have the Portcullis hub, which is for Ukrainian issues as well as passport issues. We have the telephone lines, which have had added investment. We have the Minister and three excellent PPSs—they have a very tough act to follow, but I think they are excellent. The Home Office has consistently had the most open channels for sorting out the issues.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

The provision that the hon. Gentleman has just listed is testament to the Government’s failure to sort out the issue. As I am sure every Member in this Chamber does, I have constituents who have missed out on holidays, weddings overseas and so forth because of the Government’s failure to run a decent Passport Office. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government’s obsession with the small state and their threat of 91,000 job losses in the civil service do not really inspire confidence that they are capable of running public services?

[Paul Holmes]

I say politely to the hon. Lady that, whatever her briefing document tells her to say about the Government being obsessed with reducing the state, what the Minister and I have just outlined is that instead of reducing the size of the state, we have put unprecedented staffing into Her Majesty’s Passport Office. Her argument does not stack up.

[Margaret Greenwood]

I am curious about the hon. Member’s response. The Government have announced that they intend to cut 91,000 civil service posts and have made the explicit comment that they intend to cut the size of the state. That is this Government’s agenda. I do not quite understand why the hon. Member is unaware of that fact.

[Paul Holmes]

I am perfectly aware of the facts. Nowhere does it say that we want to reduce the civil service payroll in Her Majesty’s Passport Office. All the hon. Lady has to look at is the fact that we have put more staff into that office, with more staff on the telephone lines and more staff in HMPO at the level of processing passports. The hon. Lady’s argument and her accusation towards me and the Government are not substantiated and have no basis in fact whatever.

A record number of passports have been allocated and processed under this Government in the past year. I have just spoken about the actions that we have taken; now let us see the results. In March 2022, 1 million passports were issued, which is 13% more than in any month last year. Usually, 7 million passports are issued in a whole year. We are on track to more than match that figure: more passports have already been processed this year than in the whole of last year. That is because of the action that the Minister and this Government have taken.

Rather than censuring the Minister, the Opposition need to understand the context and the reason for the backlog: the covid-19 pandemic. They somehow live in a utopian world. Instead of acknowledging that all parts of local and national Government and business struggled in the pandemic, they say that it should not have had an effect. They offer no alternative either.

Yet again, the shadow Minister has carped instead of taking a constructive view of how we can help the backlog to clear even faster. He spoke for more than 15 minutes, but not once did he come up with a solution or an alternative from the Labour party. If he really believes that he can show the people of this country he has a better solution that could help us to clear the backlog, he should stand at the Dispatch Box and say so. Once again, he has not done so.