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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Keith Vaz on 2016-05-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many fraudulently-obtained genuine passports HM Passport Office has detected in each year from 2010 to date.

James Brokenshire

The number of detections over the last 6 years is provided in the table below. This data is drawn from management information and includes the detection of current and expired documents. We are continuing to invest in passport counter fraud techniques. For example, we are in the process on introducing new facial matching technology and new data analytics tools to enhance the security of our processes and support fraud investigations.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Keith Vaz on 2016-05-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people are currently on the HM Passport Office stop file.

James Brokenshire

Entries are retained on the Her Majesty’s Passport Office Stop File for reasons of public protection and the prevention of crime.

Given the nature of the data, it would be inappropriate to disclose the volume of entries.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Keith Vaz on 2016-05-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many staff are in the HM Passport Office team which acts as the single point of entry for law enforcement partners.

James Brokenshire

The team has a full time equivalent of 26 members of staff and amongst its responsibilities is to act as the single point of entry to Her Majesty’s Passport Office for law enforcement partners.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Keith Vaz on 2016-05-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she expects that the Government’s proposed improvements to subject access request IT infrastructure will be completed.

Mr John Hayes

The Home Office ran a Call for Information on the operation of the Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) regime between 25 February and 25 March 2015. We received more than 60 responses from a wide range of stakeholders, including law enforcement agencies, the financial sector, and the legal and accountancy sectors. Subsequently, further discussions were held with private and public sector bodies through a series of workshops.

The Government published the Action Plan for Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist finance on 21 April 2016. The Action Plan sets out the Government’s programme to deliver a significantly improved anti-money laundering regime for the UK. This includes the replacement of the SARs IT infrastructure. A summary of the submissions received following the Call for Information is set out in the Action Plan at Annex B.

In the Action Plan, we announced our commitment to develop a stronger public private partnership to tackle money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and as part of that we will engage with public and private stakeholders to develop the replacement.

The stakeholders will include law enforcement agencies, government departments, and businesses in the ‘regulated sector’ including banks, the legal and accountancy sectors, and estate agents. We will also include regulatory and supervisory bodies, and public bodies for whom SARs are of value.

This engagement will enable us to ensure that the replacement of the SARs IT architecture will deliver significant benefits for all of the sectors involved in the SARs regime. As we set out in the Action Plan, we will reform the SARs regime, making the necessary legislative, operational and technical changes, by October 2018.