Draft Passport (Fees) Regulations 2018

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 General Committees

[Caroline Nokes]

I am delighted to hear that feedback from my hon. Friend, the former Immigration Minister.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

As a counterpoint to that excellent experience, I know of a case in which a passport that had been correctly applied for was delivered by courier to the wrong house. How often does that happen?

[Caroline Nokes]

There are two points that I would like to address. My hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby makes the valid point that the proportion of passports issued within seven days has surpassed 95%; the vast majority are issued very quickly and with huge customer satisfaction. However, I am always concerned to hear about instances of the process going wrong. If the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood raises the case with me outside the Committee, I will raise it personally with the head of the Passport Office.

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[Maria Eagle]

I raised it at the time with the then Home Secretary, who is now our Prime Minister. The situation has been ameliorated, but the problem has not been solved. A new, full and correct British passport was delivered to what was obviously the wrong address and never, to my knowledge, has it been recovered.

[Caroline Nokes]

By her own admission, the hon. Lady refers to a case that must now be several years out of date. [Interruption.] Well, at least 18 months. I reassure the hon. Lady—

[Maria Eagle]

It is not out of date. It has not been resolved.

[Caroline Nokes]

As I have said, the customer satisfaction with Her Majesty’s Passport Office has increased significantly. We have made excellent improvements with the digitisation of the service, which my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby referred to, but I am absolutely prepared to take up the issue of the missing passport, find out where it has got to and, of course, ensure that it is cancelled, so that no one can use it fraudulently.

We now score alongside organisations such as Amazon and John Lewis on customer satisfaction. We are the only public sector body on the list, and we scored higher than Prudential, Debenhams and Hilton. I welcome those accolades as testament to our hard-working officials across the UK.

The 2016 Act includes powers that allow Home Office fees to reflect the costs not only of considering an application and issuing a passport, but of any other function of the Secretary of State in connection with UK passports, including costs associated with British citizens leaving and entering the UK. The full costs associated with processing applications and issuing passports are funded by income from fees charged for passport services, but the number of passengers arriving at the UK border continues to rise: approximately 130 million passengers arrive each year, of whom approximately 70 million are UK passport holders. This leads to a significant cost for the Home Office that is largely funded by the Exchequer. Allowing passport fees to reflect the costs to the Home Office associated with UK passengers leaving and entering the UK means that we can reduce the burden on the Exchequer and move towards a “user pays” basis for our overall service to UK passport holders.

[Maria Eagle]

The impact assessment suggests that if the draft regulations are implemented, £50 million of additional income in the next financial year from these increases will come into the Exchequer. If that happens, will the Minister tell us what percentage of the costs that she describes will be met by income from passports?

[Caroline Nokes]

I will move on to explain how the income received is only part of the £100 million investment that the Home Office will make in our borders in the coming 12 months. It is important that we recover any additional costs in a balanced way that incentivises the use of the more efficient online application process, which we intend to become the standard passport application channel. Although we are proposing to increase most fees, people who submit their application online will be charged a lower fee than if they submit their application by post.

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[Caroline Nokes]

I would like to reassure the hon. Gentleman that, as part of our plans for Border Force, we have already recruited 300 additional staff, and we are launching a recruitment campaign for a further 1,000 staff. Of course, he will be as conscious as I am that as we move towards Brexit, it is imperative that our Border Force has the necessary number of staff.

[Maria Eagle]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. I wonder whether she has had time to gather her thoughts about my earlier question, which was: if these regulations are implemented, what percentage of the full costs will be recovered by the fees for issuing passports?

[Caroline Nokes]

As I have said repeatedly to the hon. Lady, we acknowledge that this change will increase the amount of revenue by about £50 million, but we are investing £100 million in our borders and our passport control system over the coming year. I think that is a very straightforward answer: 100% of the fees recovered will be reinvested in our borders, immigration and citizenship service, as I very clearly stated.

I have nothing more to say, other than that I commend these fee regulations to the Committee.

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[Alison Thewliss]

I want to move on, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. I am concerned: the Government talk about more modern processes and things becoming cheaper and more efficient, but that is not reflected in the fees, which are going up. If the service is becoming more efficient and cheaper to run, because things are going online, members of the public should see a decrease in their passport fees. It is ridiculous that they are actually seeing an increase; whether for an online application or not, the price continues to go up.

I asked the Library to prepare figures on this for me. It had some difficulty in finding the range of figures over time, but I have the passport application fees for 32-page passports for adults and children. In 2001, the fee was £30 for an adult and £16 for a child. That will go up to £75.50 for an adult and £49 for a child if the application is made online, or £85 for an adult and £58.50 per child by post.

The online change since 2001 is a 151.7% increase for an adult and a 206.3% increase for a child. That is absolutely unacceptable, particularly when we consider that child passports last for only five years. By the time a child reaches the age of 16, they could have had three different passports. That is an unacceptable burden on families, particularly at a time when all other prices are also going up and household incomes are being squeezed by Tory austerity every single day.

Could the Minister tell us about her full cost recovery plan for paper applications? That indicates to me that there will be a further increase next year. It is a significant cost for people, particularly if they do not drive and so do not have a driving licence, because the passport will be the only way of having validated and accessible identification. The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton, mentioned that that is becoming a requirement for many more people, to get a rental agreement or financial agreement, and in life. It will also be a requirement should Tory plans to ask for ID at voting stations go ahead. People will find themselves disenfranchised if they do not have the £85, £75.5 and £49.50 to pay those exorbitant fees. If the Government want to propose ID cards, they can do so, but doing this by the back door and charging people an absolute fortune for it is utterly unacceptable.

The Minister mentioned that, to deal with vulnerable groups who cannot use online resources, the Government will work to improve the accessibility of systems and support arrangements to help people to access services online and minimise the impact on protected groups. I would be very interested to know what consultation they have done with groups that are considered vulnerable. What have they done to engage with all those groups? Will they publish any of that consultation process? I have not seen any of that information out there. The draft regulations are coming through a Delegated Legislation Committee and will come into force at the end of March, and there is very little time for people to have any kind of say on this matter before then. I would be very concerned if vulnerable groups had not been consulted formally.

[Maria Eagle]

Paragraph 8 of the explanatory memorandum states that there has been

“no public consultation on the fees set out in this instrument.”

It is therefore very likely that there has been no consultation with the groups that the hon. Lady mentions.

[Alison Thewliss]

Clearly, there has been no public consultation, as this instrument has come through in the way that it has, but I was curious about whether the Government could tell us anything about private consultations that they may have had with these groups, and about exactly what improving the accessibility of our systems would mean in practice. For many people, the systems are not easily accessible, which is why people like to do the application on paper—to take their time, to go through things properly and to ask for help and support in a way that is appropriate to them. We need to do an awful lot more to ensure that these services are accessible. I ask for a good deal more clarity.

The impact assessment says that there is no impact on businesses, charities or voluntary bodies, but I dispute that to some degree. Some charities require their staff to travel or to have a second passport for various purposes. It would be useful to know what consultation there has been with charity groups and those types of organisations that may require their staff to travel and be passport holders. Organisations may have an interest in absorbing those costs in their business, or they may ask their employees to take up that extra cost in particular sectors and industries.

Finally, we are being asked to pay more for passports, but we do not know yet what will happen with Brexit, and what the value of this new passport will be, because we will be able to do less with it than we can with our passports at present. [Interruption.]

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[Maria Eagle]

Thank you, Ms McDonagh.

The impact assessment and accompanying notes state on page 3, under the paragraph on “Problem under consideration”, that in the Immigration Act 2016,

“provision was made for the passport fee to cover the cost of British citizens crossing the UK border”.

From the papers we have received we know that if implemented, these provisions are expected to raise an additional £50 million for the Home Office in the first year. If the proposals are implemented and there is that additional £50 million, what percentage of the cost of British citizens crossing the UK border will be covered by passport fees? It is a simple question. The provision in primary legislation under which the regulations are being made was intended to lead to full cost recovery. If these provisions are implemented, will full cost recovery be achieved? A Minister implementing proposals under legislation that has the express intention of meeting that goal should be able to answer that. Perhaps she will try again and come back with an answer in her response.

I wish to make a few other minor points arising from casework experience. I am sure we all get cases where things go wrong with passports at the last minute. I do not have the figures, but with newer passports there seems to have been an increase in the number of chips that stop working. I do not know whether they are in a more vulnerable place, but they seem to stop working more regularly than those in the previous design of passport. When a passport’s chip stops working, it effectively invalidates the passport, because although technically it can still be used, people get stopped at borders because the passport shows up as not having the biometric information that the chip imports to the document.

People who have a dud passport—even if it is only six weeks old, never mind 10 years old—have to buy another, because it is not replaced if the chip stops working. Does the Minister think it is right to propose that, in circumstances where a chip stops working through no fault of the passport holder—the passport has not been put in a washing machine or anything like that—the higher fees ought to be waived? Why should that person have to pay again? I know of instances of that happening, and with the higher fees there will be an additional problem for people.

People also lose passports suddenly, sometimes—unfortunately for them—just before they are due to go on holiday, or use the passport in another way. For example, there was an enormous fire in a Liverpool car park at Christmas that destroyed every car in the car park. Some people will have had their passports in their cars, and nobody has been able to return to their vehicles, most of which are mere cinders. Many people might therefore have had to apply for another passport. Will there be any ways in which people who lose their passport through no fault of their own—an act of God like that—can get a discount, given how passport fees are going up?

A sudden loss of a passport just ahead of a planned trip can necessitate using the premium collect service, and there are circumstances—I know they are rare—in which entire families could lose their passports just before they are due to go on holidays. For premium collect, even an online application for a family of four—two children under 16 and two adults—would cost £656. That is an enormous sum of money; sometimes more than the cost of the holiday a family expects to go on. We have all come across extremely unfortunate circumstances when families have suddenly needed to acquire passports swiftly. While it is welcome that there is such a service, can the Minister tell us whether in any circumstances those very high fees might be lowered?

The regulations have provision for waivers, where there is a reference to crises abroad. The regulations define a crisis as

“an incident in which at least five British citizens have been killed or injured, or are in danger of being killed.”

During my time in the House, I have dealt with casework where there has been a crisis abroad but not as many as five people have been killed. I am sure many colleagues have, too. Can the Minister explain why at least five UK citizens have to be killed, injured or in danger of being killed or injured for something to count as a crisis and for the waiver in the draft regulations to be implemented? Members often go to the Home Office and say, “I’ve got this crisis with a family of constituents.” Will the Minister have any discretion over that definition? It does not seem to me that she will. Why has five been identified as the appropriate number? I could bring up other cases—as I say, we have all had them—but the ones I have mentioned illustrate some of my concerns about the draft regulations.