Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of allowing (a) elected representatives from Ireland and (b) other Irish passport holders to verify UK passport applications using the HM Passport Office online verification system.

As part of the criteria for a person to act as a referee to a passport application, His Majesty’s Passport Office requires that the referee must hold a passport that it can validate to confirm that person’s identity. In addition to British passport holders, Irish passport holders can act as a passport referee.

For a British passport holder, an automated check is conducted through the interface with HM Passport Office systems. However, this system interface is not in place for the external checks against the Irish passport database, and these checks can currently only be conducted through the manual input of information. However, a range of technical options are being explored to enable Irish passport holders to verify UK passport applications using the online verification system in due course.