MPs reacted with incredulity when an HM Passport Workplace government mentioned that 55,000 purposes are delayed past the 10-week stretch that potential travellers are suggested to permit.
Thomas Greig, director of passports, citizenship and civil registration was answering questions from members of the Dwelling Affairs Choose Committee.
The committee chair, Labour’s Dame Diana Johnson, mentioned MPs’ workplaces had been “inundated with people who find themselves struggling to get their passports”.
HM Passport Workplace is processing report numbers of passports since worldwide journey restrictions had been lifted by the UK in March 2022.
Mr Greig mentioned that one in 10 of the 550,000 passport purposes at present pending had been with HM Passport Workplace for over the 10-week allowance for processing.
“I’ve to say I’m pretty shocked at these figures you’ve simply described,” mentioned Dame Diana.
“That’s utterly unacceptable.
“This isn’t rocket science, is it? I’ve seemed again on the expertise within the Passport Workplace during the last 10 years.
“There’s been criticism from the Nationwide Audit Workplace of your skill to mission and plan.
“Why have you ever failed so miserably?”
Mr Greig mentioned: “We’ve got achieved report output and we now have produced extra passports than we ever have.
“So a whole lot of our planning was directed in direction of that.
“We’ve introduced in elevated numbers of workers to cope with these purposes.
“There have been a smaller proportion of candidates for whom it has taken longer than we’d have preferred.
“We’ve got put measures in place so they might contact us and the place they do want their passport urgently we’re capable of present it.”
MPs have entry to a particular passport unit in Portcullis Home, the place the listening to came about, in addition to a particular Dwelling Workplace phone hyperlink.
However Tim Loughton, Conservative MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, mentioned: “We don’t see our workers very a lot today as a result of they’re sitting in queues within the passport unit right here or they’re completely on the phone.
“The productiveness of most MPs’ workplaces has gone down terribly, greater than anything I’ve ever identified in 25 years in parliament, as a result of we’re coping with constituents who’re determined to get their passports that they utilized for 10 weeks or extra earlier than.”
In February 2018 the then-immigration minister, Caroline Nokes, informed parliament: “We at present course of 99.9 per cent of easy purposes inside three weeks, and on common, clients making a non-priority software can count on their passport to be issued seven working days after the appliance is made.”
In April 2021, the conventional three-week processing time for a renewal or new passport was prolonged to 10 weeks.
Round half of the overdue passport purposes are “accessible to decision-makers” – ie ready to be issued, quite than awaiting additional info or documentation.
The chair additionally mentioned the committee was “extremely disenchanted” on the absence of a consultant of Teleperformance – the French service firm that operates the Passport Adviceline.
She mentioned: “We expect that is extraordinarily out of order that they haven’t discovered time to return and be scrutinised at this committee.
“They’ve a contract with the Dwelling Workplace, and I hope the Dwelling Workplace shall be making it very clear that not attending a choose committee is one thing that’s not proper and that they need to make themselves accessible when we now have requested to query them.
“I hope, Mr Greig, you’ll take that message again.”
Earlier, Simon Clark, chief secretary to the Treasury, informed the BBC At the moment programme: “In the event you look now on the state of affairs with, for instance, passports, there’s clear proof that the Dwelling Workplace is now completely on high of that state of affairs, and that the lengthy backlogs that had been seen with that explosion of demand as individuals returned to journey at the moment are abating.”
Kaynak: briturkish.com
