HM Passport Office Backlog

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

In the city of Durham, Her Majesty’s Passport Office sits on the banks of the Wear. Its glass frame houses civil servants doing their jobs under immense pressure as a result of this Government’s failure to prepare for the increase in passport applications post covid. I would like to tell you what it looks like inside, Madam Deputy Speaker, but HMPO has refused to allow me to visit to speak to workers in my constituency about their working conditions and the backlogs.

I will not stand by while a workforce in my constituency become increasingly demoralised by media and politicians pointing their fingers unfairly at the workers, so I put a call out on my social media channels, inviting Passport Office workers to email me concerns to raise anonymously. Their response made stark reading. There appear to be widespread mismanagement and structural issues slowing the attempts to clear the backlog, including delays in the full roll-out of the digital application programme system; incorrect advice being given by the helpline, which has been outsourced to Teleperformance; inefficiencies and errors from private contractors such as Sopra Steria; and the double handling of applications.

There has also been an influx of agency staff, resulting in the current staff being pulled from their roles to train these temporary workers. Staff morale is understandably at an all-time low. Covid outbreaks have led to staff shortages, yet staff are under pressure to return to office working, including through alleged bullying tactics from senior officials and poor communication from management. Disturbingly, staff have told me that they are too afraid to speak out about their working conditions for fear of disciplinary action. Staff are subject to verbal abuse from the public, and have shockingly witnessed an attempt to self-harm by an applicant desperate to receive their passport. Tragically, one member of staff’s mental wellbeing was impacted so severely that they told me they had contemplated suicide. After reading those emails, I am starting to think I know why HMPO did not want me to visit. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes) asked for facts. These are the hard, cold facts from brave whistleblowers inside HMPO.

The simple fact is that this Government have turned our country into backlog Britain, with waiting lists increasing, holidays disrupted and public anger growing. I fear that if the Government keep opening help desks in Portcullis House to deal with the backlog, they will soon have Home Office staff working from behind the Dispatch Box. Sadly, there does not appear to be any urgency from the Government to fix these problems. Despite PCS being promised that 1,700 new staff would be recruited to deal with the predicted increase in passport applications, only around 600 have been recruited so far, most of whom are agency staff.

The Government need to get a grip and come up with proper solutions. Passport offices across the country need to be turned back into positive working environments where staff feel appreciated and can excel in their role. There needs to be a reduction in the use of agency staff and a commitment to work with PCS on workforce planning to properly staff HMPO to cope with the applications without the need for regular overtime. The Government must also work to improve remuneration levels across HMPO and provide a clear timeline for the full implementation of the digital application programme system.

I am confident that once the toxic working cultures that have emerged are resolved, pressures will ease and we will once again have a service to be proud of. Until then, backlogs will continue to define this Government’s time in office. They sleepwalk from crisis to crisis and ordinary people are left to pick up the pieces. My constituents who work for the Passport Office deserve better, and so does everyone in Durham who anxiously awaits their passport. It is time this Government put an end to backlog Britain and treated staff with the respect they deserve.

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[The Minister for Security and Borders (Damian Hinds)]

While 98.5% of UK passport applications are being processed within 10 weeks, it is clear that some of our constituents have not received the level of service that they rightly expect. I assure colleagues that the efforts to improve delivery of passport services continue. The further 550 staff still to be added going into the summer will further increase the capacity for processing applications and build on the record numbers being processed now. HM Passport Office’s current projection suggests that by the end of this month more applications will have been processed in 2022 than throughout the whole of the previous year.

I am grateful to colleagues across the House for their contributions to this debate. We heard from the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson), my hon. Friend—and almost neighbour—the Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes), and the hon. Members for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), for Blackburn (Kate Hollern), for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali), for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin), for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones), and for Newport West (Ruth Jones). Many of them, including the hon. Member for Newport West, rightly paid tribute to staff working in HMPO offices. I echo what they said to hard-working staff working in difficult circumstances.

Many colleagues across the House rightly asked what we have done and what we are doing on resourcing to make sure that the operation is commensurate with the task at hand. I can tell them that 650 additional staff have been added since April 2021 and 550 more are being recruited. The hon. Member for City of Durham helpfully outlined the use of agency staff and overtime in order to increase the capacity. I think at one point she was suggesting that we should not be deploying extra agency staff and overtime, which would of course make matters worse. The telephone operator, Teleperformance, has also added hundreds of staff, and other suppliers have increased their capacity, too. We have opened an eighth service counter and run extensive proactive communications, including issuing 5 million reminder texts to people with passports expired or soon to expire.

A couple of colleagues asked whether staff working from home is causing delays, and it is not. Whether staff work from home or from the office does not impact on the capacity within the digital system, which is accessible from home. The hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) asked from the shadow Front Bench specifically about courier services. I can confirm that through constructive work with FedEx, which is the parent company of TNT, delivery delays have been resolved and TNT is currently delivering within the contractual service levels.

In anticipation of the surge in demand and to provide greater resilience to the delivery network, a percentage of domestically delivered passports are now also arriving via HMPO’s partner for international deliveries, which she will know is DHL, with supporting documents being returned by Royal Mail. More than one Opposition MP asked about the TNT contract. It would not be appropriate for me to comment on such commercial matters from the Dispatch Box, but I will say that the relationship between the Passport Office and FedEx is constructive and the current performance is as required.

The hon. Member for Halifax also asked about Sopra Steria and the back-office processing. I confirm that it has doubled its workforce supporting Her Majesty’s Passport Office since the start of 2022, alongside opening up a number of new processing centres. Its efforts have enabled the registration of applications and supporting documents on our system and the return of supporting documents to keep pace with the unprecedented demand.

The question of privatisation or otherwise has been raised multiple times in the debate. Again, to be clear, elements of the process, such as the printing and the delivery of the passports, are already contracted to private suppliers. We are committed, naturally, to ensuring that public services are run as efficiently and effectively as possible, and that gives me an opportunity to pay tribute to our hard-working staff.

We are living through the aftermath of a pandemic that has been at once an unprecedented medical and healthcare shock, an unprecedented peacetime economic shock and an unprecedented travel and movement of people shock. It is one with multiple uncertainties, adverse turns and false dawns. It has disrupted supply chains, interrupted business continuity and thwarted projections at every turn throughout this country and throughout the world. It has specifically thrown the travel trade off course and everyone’s planning of its usual pattern far off course.

In 2020, there were roughly 4 million passport applications in this country. In 2021, it was about 5 million. This year—2022—we project it will be 9.5 million. In the face of this enormous change, everyone’s focus has been on trying to make sure that Britain—our constituents—can get back travelling, whether that is taking their hard-earned holidays or doing that business travel, which underpins our national prosperity, or those visits to be with loved ones, both in the happiest of times and in the saddest of times, when their personal in-person support is so important.

Amid the overwhelming volumes, it is true that sometimes things have not been fast enough and call waiting times have been too long, and I am sorry for that, but it is not for want of will, effort or commitment. I pay tribute to the dedicated staff of Her Majesty’s Passport Office working under this pressure.

I also want to say a word about the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster). I must say that I am rather disappointed by the wording of the motion. What is happening with passport applications is an entirely legitimate, worthwhile and relevant subject for debate, but it is quite wrong to channel that into a personal criticism of him. He is an extremely engaged and active Minister working with officials to deal with these unprecedented issues. I have heard many accounts, and we have heard more today, of his personal work to help to expedite some of the most difficult cases by doing casework out of hours and at weekends for hon. Members on both sides of the House.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

My constituent went to Durham passport office to collect his passport only to be told that there was an issue with the photo that had previously been approved. He has just been to deliver new photos, but staff told him that they have no record of his interview, despite the Home Office telling me two hours ago that it was on the system. He flies to America on Monday. What do I tell him?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. This is the Minister’s winding-up speech; it is not the place for a new speech. I let the hon. Lady finish because—[Interruption.] Do not argue with me. I let her finish because she was speaking on behalf of a constituent, and it matters, but that is not how we conduct debate.