UKPOL.CO.UK

Tag: 2022

  • Ruth Jones – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    Ruth Jones – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    The speech made by Ruth Jones, the Labour MP for Newport West, in the House of Commons on 14 June 2022.

    I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, because Newport West is proudly home to one of the largest passport offices in the United Kingdom, with nearly 300 essential workers staffing the application process, many of whom are my constituents. They perform a vital public service. Many colleagues across the House have rightly pointed out that the backlog has caused immense distress and difficulty for their constituents. That has been described eloquently by many Opposition colleagues. Many of my constituents have also experienced these difficulties. It is worth noting where the root of the problem lies, and it is not with the workers of the Newport passport office, or indeed any of the passport offices up and down the country.

    Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)

    My hon. Friend talks about the staff at Newport passport office. I would like to pay tribute not only to the many constituents who have patiently queued outside the passport office, but to the staff, who have been very kind and co-operative. They deserve recognition for the hard work that they are having to do because of the Government’s failures.

    Ruth Jones

    My hon. Friend makes an important point perfectly, and I will of course take that message back to the Newport passport office.

    Interestingly, until now, like my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), I have been unable to meet the staff of the Newport passport office, and I am still not sure why management are blocking that meeting.

    It was clear from the moment the country began to reopen that passport applications would not only return to pre-pandemic levels but exceed them, as many people understandably had not renewed their passport while international travel was difficult or impossible—it did not take Mystic Meg to see that backlog coming down the tracks. The pandemic presented novel issues, but the problems it revealed were not new. The Government were given ample warning, and opportunities to recruit and train staff and improve systems. However, as during previous periods of application surges, such as 2014, the Government yet again dropped the ball.

    Over the past six years, civil service staffing levels in HMPO have been consistently cut, including by over 5% in some years, so the staffing increase trumpeted by the Minister today does not cut it, because we are not yet back to 2016 levels. The Home Office was warned as early as November 2021 about the impact that a likely surge in passport applications would have. PCS—the union for Passport Office workers—stated that the Home Office’s own original estimate for dealing with the backlog was that 1,700 additional staff would be required. Alas, we know that fewer than 1,000 staff have been brought in—with many of them not receiving adequate training to process passports in a timely manner—and at least a quarter of them are agency staff.

    My inbox is full of emails from anxious constituents who followed the rules but still do not have their passports. There is a human cost to this for those people who desperately need their passports after two years of enduring immense hardship away from family members and friends abroad, or even just those seeking the brief respite of a long weekend in the sun. People right across the country have been failed yet again by this Government and their inability to plan properly. More than that, in my constituency office we have been dealing with cases where people have been unable to visit dying relatives, and where the backlog has meant people are unable to mourn with family abroad.

    One case that came into my constituency office was that of Sandie. Sandie contacted us because her father had passed away overseas. My staff had to go back to the Passport Office twice to ensure that Sandie could get her passport in order to get over to Canada to sort out her father’s funeral arrangements. In Sandie’s own words, she

    “cannot imagine the stress that other people who have sick relatives overseas and who’ve been trying to get to see them have been going through”.

    Fortunately, we were able to intervene and get the Passport Office to expedite this case and others, as have many other Members across the House, but far too many people have not been so fortunate.

    There is another human element to this backlog that we need to remember. The staff in passport offices across the country, including in Newport West, are bearing the brunt of this Government’s incompetence. Hard-working staff who worked through the pandemic, many of them now on insecure, poorly paid contracts, face abuse in the media as a result of this Government’s shirking their responsibilities and laying the blame at the door of the staff. Reports now state that as a result of dilapidated IT systems, rock-bottom wages and a lack of proper support from the Government, morale among the workforce is at an all-time low. We are told that in the Newport passport office there is a particularly high rate of staff attrition as a result of conditions that the Government have impressed on it.

    I completely agree with the motion before the House today. I call on the Minister to apologise for his handling of the passport crisis and to work with all those in relevant areas and Departments to get things back on track, so that constituents in Newport West and across the UK can resume their travel plans and get on with their lives.

  • Gerald Jones – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    Gerald Jones – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    The speech made by Gerald Jones, the Labour MP for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, in the House of Commons on 14 June 2022.

    I rise to support today’s motion on the Order Paper. As we have heard, the delays at the Passport Office have caused huge anxiety and stress for many of my constituents and many others around the country. There is no doubt that the Home Office under this Government is, or at least it should be, in special measures. The shambolic way in which the Government have handled the situation is symbolic of their messy approach and sums up what my hon. Friend the shadow Minister rightly calls “backlog Britain”.

    It is appalling that at a time when the cost of living crisis is hitting the country hard, Home Office incompetence is forcing British families to pay for fast-track passport services or face losing hundreds of pounds due to cancelled holidays. The Home Office was warned that a surge in passport applications was likely as early as November last year, but it completely failed to do the forward planning needed to prevent the chaos that we have seen over the past few months. Now the Home Office is paying millions of pounds for failing outsourced contracts across the Passport Office, including a courier service that loses hundreds of passports every year. The Government also estimated that 1,700 staff would be needed, but is it not the case that only 1,000 new recruits have been confirmed?

    The Home Office’s incompetence is preventing families from going on long-awaited holidays and hard-earned breaks, preventing loved ones from being reunited, and preventing people from attending weddings and funerals. British families deserve so much better.

    Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)

    My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Over the past six weeks 26 families have contacted my office, in various states of stress and utter frustration with the Home Office. One family have been waiting 14 weeks for a passport for a family member to visit a terminally ill relative. To me, that sums up the problem. As my hon. Friend is explaining so perfectly, it is the result of a lack of planning and strategy at the Home Office. They really need to apply themselves.

    Gerald Jones

    I completely agree, and I will shortly illustrate my hon. Friend’s point with cases from my own constituency.

    As we know, the target for passport processing has been increased to 10 weeks, up from three weeks pre-pandemic. However, even this increased target has repeatedly been missed. In the first three months of this year alone, over 35,000 people had to wait longer than 10 weeks for their passport to be issued, despite the Prime Minister’s claim that everybody is getting their passport within six weeks.

    The number of monthly fast-track applications has more than doubled since December 2021. In April 2022, British families spent at least £5.4 million on fast-track services. The Passport Office’s own forecasts show that it expects to receive over 240,000 fast-track applications between May and October this year, amounting to up to £34 million. Is this a cash cow for the Home Office?

    My constituency team are currently dealing with around 70 cases, and the chaos is causing them undue anxiety. Many applications are outstanding for more than the 10-week period. My constituents are unable to speak to a decision maker, and when they contact the helpline the information is often wrong or out of date. There is a general lack of communication regarding applications, and often the online tracker is not updated. Hard copies of documents routinely go missing from passport offices and constituents are asked to send documents to various passport centres. Applications have been cancelled, supposedly for lack of documents, despite evidence that documents have been lost at passport offices.

    There are reports that applicants are being asked to pay for an upgrade, despite now being eligible for one after their application has been logged for six weeks. MP account managers are unable to make decisions on cases; they can only view information on a screen. Requests for call-backs from decision makers are hardly ever followed up. Constituents have been told to collect their passport at offices many hundreds of miles away from south Wales—I know of similar situations elsewhere across the country. Passports could be printed at any passport office, regardless of where the application was initially dealt with, so that needs to be followed up by Ministers.

    All of this is having an impact on constituents and creating huge anxiety and stress. I will give a few local examples. A family were forced to cancel their holiday to Disneyland Paris, losing several hundred pounds and devastating their seven-year-old daughter. It is not just holidays that are affected, important as they are for wellbeing after the difficult past two years. Another constituent is travelling for work at the end of the month but also requires a passport as proof of identity. They do not hold any other photo ID and need the document in order to pay a tax bill to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Every day’s delay adds interest to their bill.

    Another constituent wanted to update her passport after marriage. She posted her old passport and marriage certificate to the Passport Office. The passport was scanned but the certificate was lost. She has proof of postage and receipt of delivery. The Passport Office has now cancelled her application but wants to charge her a further £75 application fee.

    As part of one constituent’s first passport application, a copy of her mother’s birth certificate was requested. This was posted but not matched to her application in time, so the application was cancelled. My constituent has been told to make a new application, with another fee. We have written to UKVI to complain and ask for the original application to be reinstated.

    I know that these examples are repeated across the country, which is why the Government must accept full responsibility for this shambles and commit to come to the House as soon as possible to provide answers on what exactly they are going to do to end the misery that many of my constituents, and thousands more across the country, are experiencing. If they cannot sort it out, they should get out of the way and let a Labour Government work to sort out not just this mess, but the many others that they have created.

  • Mohammad Yasin – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    Mohammad Yasin – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    The speech made by Mohammad Yasin, the Labour MP for Bedford, in the House of Commons on 14 June 2022.

    Passport delays are causing immense stress to my constituents. This problem was predictable, but the Government completely failed to plan properly for the surge in applications when borders reopened. The Prime Minister will not admit that there is a problem and cannot even say how long it is taking for passports to be processed. It seems to be an unlucky dip of four, six or 10 weeks, but far too many of my constituents are waiting even longer than that.

    A mother wrote to me a month ago to ask for my help on her son’s passport after receiving no response from the Passport Office. After weeks of chasing the new passport, she was advised that HMPO had lost her documents and that they would need to apply and pay for a lost passport and start the process again. After more weeks of waiting, my constituent chased the Passport Office again only to discover that it had entered the wrong details on the system. My constituent was exasperated when the call handler thought it was funny—the date of birth that they had entered would have made my constituent 600 years old. The HMPO advised that it would fast-track the application, but that did not happen.

    My team had to travel to Parliament to raise a number of cases with action teams in Portcullis House, but the flaw in that system—other than the inconvenience and expense of my caseworkers having to travel to Parliament to escalate cases—is that the MP engagement team do not appear to have a full overview of all actions that have been taken on a case, including any notes added by the Portcullis House team. That means that caseworkers are unable to follow up on any action that the Portcullis House team has committed to without travelling to London again. I hope the Minister will look at fixing that. Despite the best efforts of my team, my constituent had to cancel the flights that she had booked to pick up a family member’s ashes and was absolutely devastated to miss the memorial service. She finally received her son’s passport on 7 June—nearly 13 weeks after the application. My constituents should not have to deal with the stress and incompetence of a service for which they pay the Government a lot of money.

    Missing significant family occasions during the pandemic was tragic but understandable. It really is disgraceful that it is still happening because of a failed passport system. The Government are desperate to point the finger at civil servants. The Passport Office has not covered itself in glory, but there is much more going on here. The Government want us to believe that a hitherto hard-working group of individuals have suddenly and for no apparent reason decided to stop doing their jobs properly. Nothing seems to be working under this Government, whether it is getting a GP appointment, a visa, access to courts, a dental appointment, or a driving licence. Nothing is working properly. If the public are sick of the appalling delays and errors with HMPO, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is now just waiting for the Prime Minister to cut its staff by a reported 90,000.

    The common denominator in all these failings is this Government’s mismanagement, underachievement and incompetence. I have no confidence that any of this will be sorted out before the summer holiday rush starts. This is where the impact of this Government’s policies will be revealed for all to see, as there will be chaotic delays, queues and frustrations at passport control and customs. The Government should sort it out now.

  • Alison Thewliss – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    Alison Thewliss – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    The speech made by Alison Thewliss, the SNP MP for Glasgow Central, in the House of Commons on 14 June 2022.

    Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

    This passport chaos is, to borrow the phrase used recently by one Minister, “absolutely godawful”. The scale of the delay really is quite worrying. Ministers may not know the extent of the problem, or perhaps they just want to keep it to themselves rather than admit to the scale of the crisis. I have a lot of sympathy for Passport Office staff, many of whom are based at Milton Street in my constituency. I know they are doing the best they can in the circumstances; it is Ministers and lack of investment in the service that are letting them down.

    Nothing the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), said gives any comfort to the people who are queuing in a panic outside the Passport Office in my constituency, or waiting by their letterbox day after day for passports that have yet to arrive. One constituent, Scott, experienced significant delays: he made his application on 25 January and his passport was finally delivered on 9 April—to the wrong address. He has yet to receive a response to his complaint about this. It is a serious data breach if passports are indeed being delivered to the wrong person, as other Members have highlighted.

    These delays and lack of response are not uncommon. Even I, as a constituency MP, am still waiting for responses to cases that I or my office raised in April, so I do not have an awful lot of confidence in the system. As I mentioned in an intervention, my constituent, Henry, has some issues with TNT, which failed to deliver his passport on three occasions; it got sent back to Peterborough. As of Sunday, he was still waiting for his passport. It is hugely frustrating to know that he could have had his passport had TNT not messed up the delivery.

    My constituent Jennifer contacted me on 28 May and said:

    “I am writing to you as I have a real dilemma trying to get my daughter her first adult passport. I have been trying for days to get a fast-track appointment, but no chance. I have literally sat for days refreshing the website on the off chance that I will get an appointment, even setting my alarm for midnight to try—no chance. I have a flight to Poland on 4 July. My daughter is going to see her dad whom she has not seen in three years. This is devastating for her.”

    I contacted Jennifer today and she emailed me to say that the passport application has been approved, but that there is still no sign of the actual passport. She says that she has called several times. She has been put on hold, been passed about and been cut off. It is an absolute shambles. I have yet to have a response to the complaints that my office has put in on this case and on many others. Those complaints are still coming in.

    I spoke to taxi driver Martin on Monday morning on my way to the Chamber. He will lose thousands of pounds if the passport for his child does not arrive within the next week or so. I urge the Minister to consider the fact that Scottish schools break up for the summer holidays next week, so there is a real and pressing case to prioritise passport applications for people in Scotland and in other parts of the UK who may go off on holiday a little earlier. Many of those families have already rebooked because of covid. They have had lots of delays, and any further delay could mean families losing thousands and thousands of pounds.

    My constituent, Lisa, has documented in great detail the lack of response that she has had from the Home Office and the stress that it has caused. Her son’s first passport arrived on 10 June, but she had applied for passports for her whole family on 1 March. The other members of the family got their passports, but there was nothing for her son. The family could hardly go on holiday, leaving one member of the family behind. That is just not practical—I am sure that Ministers would not want them to so in any event.

    It is incredibly distressing for families to go through this stress, not knowing whether a passport will arrive, not knowing whether they should cancel their holiday on the off chance that it does not arrive or whether they should wait in the hope that it arrives just in time. There is really no reassurance for the waiting families.

    My constituent Wafa was in touch with me. A glitch in the system at the Home Office meant that his application was not processed. My constituent, despite many attempts to get in touch to resolve this issue, has only just got an appointment with the Home Office to get his passport application under way. There is no recognition from the Passport Office that this delay was its fault. It was the fault not of my constituent but of a glitch in the system that my constituent attempted on many occasions to resolve. They do not yet know whether they will get their passport in time to travel. That is just not fair.

    All of this backlog is not exclusive to the Passport Office part of the Home Office. I see significant delays in other areas of the Home Office, week in, week out. I have the case of a husband who is not able to be here for the birth of his first child, because his paperwork has been delayed by the Home Office. It is a relatively simple visa case, but my constituent may not be able to be present for the birth of their first child. If the Home Office does not get its finger out, the mother will give birth on her own without the support of her husband.

    There is a lot of talk from the Government about the cost of the immigration system and the cost of keeping people in inexpensive hotels and temporary accommodation. That is entirely due to the Home Office’s own incompetence and delays. The costs are significant and people are left waiting indefinitely with only an impersonal standard response from Ministers, if, indeed, they get a response at all.

    What is the response to all of this? It is a yet more expensive plan—a white elephant—of sending people to Rwanda through state-sponsored deportations and state-sponsored trafficking.

    This is nothing that my constituents in Scotland have voted for. When we have a passport system of our own—I hope that that day will come very soon—we will look at Westminster and say, “Good grief, we cannot do any worse than this mob.”

  • Tahir Ali – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    Tahir Ali – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    The speech made by Tahir Ali, the Labour MP for Birmingham Hall Green, in the House of Commons on 14 June 2022.

    I will start with the quote from our hon. Friend the shadow Minister that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) closed with:

    “A Government who fail to plan are a Government who plan to fail”.

    The response of Ministers on the Treasury Bench was to laugh. Government Members might find it funny, but Opposition Members do not because of the hundreds or thousands of constituents who come through our doors week after week. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), opening for the Government, said that the motion was tabled to have a pop at him. If we wanted to have a pop at someone, he would not be No. 1 on our list. The reason we tabled the motion is the suffering of the hundreds and thousands of our constituents who cannot get a passport.

    As we have heard, the current situation in the Passport Office is causing serious problems for millions of people who are seeking to apply for or renew their passport. I have been inundated with complaints from my constituents in Hall Green, many of whom are not only experiencing delays, but being left in the dark about the status of their application. The delays are only the tip of the iceberg, though; constituents have come to me with a variety of worrying complaints about the Passport Office. I have constituents whose application has been withdrawn because the Passport Office says the documentation was not received on time, when in fact it was the Passport Office itself that misplaced the documentation. That has resulted in my constituents having to restart their application and pay the fees yet again. Even worse, applications have been withdrawn due to the time limit even when the Passport Office signed for the delivery of documents but failed to log them on to the system correctly. Documentation is simply being lost in the system, or in some cases even assigned to the wrong applicant.

    When constituents rightly seek to lodge complaints about this malpractice, they are met with atrocious customer service. The complaints department is failing to log individual complaints on the system, with the result that people must constantly reiterate their case to the Passport Office; and when complaints are received, there is little or no follow-up on the part of the Passport Office.

    My team of caseworkers spend hours of their time dealing with the Passport Office backlog—chasing applications and complaints on behalf of constituents whose travel plans now lie in tatters, due solely to the malpractice of this Government. I have listened to people in tears who can no longer travel to see loved ones who are sick, or to attend funerals of those they have lost. After years of travel restrictions rightly imposed due to the pandemic, we are now experiencing restrictions due purely to the delays at the Passport Office—because of the incompetence of this Tory Government. After 12 years in government, they cannot say they could not see this coming.

    Given the severity of the problems, it is evident that more staff are needed—even more than have already been recruited. It would be useful to know whether the Passport Office has succeeded in recruiting the extra staff pledged in April this year. But the problem goes deeper than staffing issues and demand. It seems that, much like the Government as a whole, the entire Passport Office is in a state of chaos and dysfunction, due in no small part to the rudderless and confused leadership of the Home Secretary. While millions of people wait eagerly for their passports to be renewed, she is spending her energy devising ever more absurd and inhumane methods of making the UK an unwelcoming place for those fleeing persecution around the world. If the Home Secretary spent less time trying to deport people to Rwanda and more time managing her office, we might see progress—but for the sake of my health, I will not hold my breath. It is time that the Home Secretary and this Government get a grip.

    The problems with the Passport Office are but one example of the boundless issues to be found across the Home Office’s remit. We see delays in visa applications, delays in the Homes for Ukraine scheme and delays for asylum seekers awaiting a decision on their case, with many waiting for more than a decade. To put it bluntly, the Home Office under its current leadership is not fit for purpose, and people will remember this when the general election rolls around.

    Under this Government—12 years of Tory Government —passport waiting times are up; NHS waiting times, up; ambulance waiting times, up; GP waiting times, up; police response times, up; immigration biometrics waiting times, up; dentist waiting times, up; driving licence waiting times, up; cost of living, up. After 12 years of this Government, welcome to backlog Britain.

  • Janet Daby – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    Janet Daby – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    The speech made by Janet Daby, the Labour MP for Lewisham East, in the House of Commons on 14 June 2022.

    I am convinced that every Member has received letters, emails and telephone calls from their constituents reaching out to them about these delays and their frustrations with the Passport Office. We are hearing constantly about situations people are experiencing and our constituents’ frustrations. We were expecting a spike in passport applications post-covid. We knew that was going to come, as did the Government. Obviously, they had not fully prepared for it and the proof is in the pudding. They need to review that, but I suggest they do not do so now, because we need their focus on the Passport Office and getting this right for our constituents.

    The Government are catching up, but they are doing so far too slowly. As we know, the Home Office is in crisis; the wildfire has gone out of control, and the Government really need to get a grip on this and gain control. Like many Members from across this Chamber, I do not hold the civil servants accountable for this in any way, shape or form; this is clearly about the Government, and they need to get ahead of the game. They need to work to ensure that these backlogs are brought under control.

    As we heard from the Minister, we have no idea how many passport applications are being delayed and how vast the backlog is. We can only assume that it is vast and terrifying. I do not say that to alarm people in our country—our constituents. I do so to say to the Government, “You really need to address this, to make sure that this backlog is reduced.” We are hearing things about how it will be addressed, but we need to get a sense from the Government that they understand, that they apologise for the backlog and that they are seeking to reassure people that it will be addressed and that they will get on top of it.

    People need to see their family members. The pandemic has lasted an extremely long time—more than two years—and people need to see their grandparents and parents, and visit their sons, daughters and friends. People need to travel for work and they need to go on holiday. There are so many reasons why people, including families, need their passports.

    Many constituents have contacted me about this and I am going to share some of the examples of the situations they have been experiencing. One constituent has said that they have phoned several times and not been able to get an answer. They are frustrated by that and so have turned to my office, to me, to address this for them. My staff have told me that they have been on the line for 45 minutes trying to get through to the Home Office. They have even been on the phone for more than two hours and still not got through. The Government need to think, “Is this the best use of people’s time?” Is it the best use of our staff’s time if they are on hold, waiting to get through? Is it the best use of time, economically? Time is being wasted.

    Constituents have told me that they have waited for an hour and a half and then someone has hung up on them. They have been distressed by this situation and have felt grossly let down. Last Friday, the Home Office phones were even down for a period, which is also unacceptable. Just yesterday, a constituent told me that they arrived at the Passport Office at 6 am, queued until 3 pm and when they were eventually seen by someone, they were told that their application was in Newcastle and that they needed to go there to advance it. That is simply outrageous. It is simply wrong. That is one of so many examples where our residents are feeling and being let down.

    The Home Office has a pattern of failure, with inadequate systems for Afghan refugees, the inability to run the Windrush compensation scheme properly, and the shameful Rwanda offshoring policy, as well as the Department’s staffing shortages. The Government need a new, coherent strategy to reform the running of the Home Office, because our constituents are losing out and this is unacceptable.

    As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) said in his opening speech, “A Government fail when they fail to plan”. This Government’s plans are failing.

  • Kate Hollern – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    Kate Hollern – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    The speech made by Kate Hollern, the Labour MP for Blackburn, in the House of Commons on 14 June 2022.

    The Prime Minister said last week that passports would be delivered within six weeks. When the Home Secretary heard Opposition Members say it is taking longer, she regularly mouthed, “Not true.” Today the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, who is not in his place, could not or would not tell us the size of the backlog. If they cannot quantify the extent of the problem, they cannot be equipped to deal with it.

    I will highlight a few examples from my constituency, although I could highlight dozens. I have families who are at risk of losing thousands of pounds due to cancelled holidays, and I have families who cannot visit loved ones or attend family reunions. Many of these events were planned months in advance, and a growing number of my constituents, despite what the Minister said, are having to wait much longer than 10 weeks. The Home Office has been chronically underperforming for years. Its private contractors are not fit to deliver for the British people, and this Government are incapable of planning ahead and making decisions quickly.

    As Members have made very clear, the Home Office was warned about this, so why has the UK Passport Office reportedly failed to get the promised 1,700 new recruits to deal with the surge in applications? It has delivered just over a third of those jobs. It is consistently over-promising and under-delivering. The Prime Minister promised to privatise the Passport Office. Well, we see the crisis we are in. Teleperformance, which manages the hotline, has been described as having “unacceptable” performance by the Minister. But what is he doing about it? He is doing nothing. TNT, the private courier service, reportedly loses hundreds of passports every year, even in 2020, when the number of applications dropped. Why have this Government waited for things to come to crisis point? How have they let things get so bad? This is yet another failure. It has been crisis after crisis and our constituents are paying the price for it. One family in my constituency had to pay more than £1,000 to change the date of their holiday, after having to wait three times, on three separate occasions, to confirm their daughter’s identity. How ridiculous is that? Other families are looking at similar costs and many are riddled with anxiety, having to wait until the last possible minute to know whether they will be able to travel.

    A family in my constituency cancelled a holiday to Florida because of covid and then rebooked for next week. They applied for their passports in March. The passports of the parents and two of the children have come back, but young Alfie’s passport is yet to appear. They have made a number of calls to the hotline, which I am sure Members know staff spend hours a day on. The family have been told to contact the office again 48 hours before departure. How ridiculous is that? We have been chasing for seven weeks and it is ridiculous that we cannot get an answer on why that child’s passport has not been produced.

    There is a growing number of bizarre instances where constituents are having to wait unreasonable amounts of time to receive passports. Documents have been submitted. Supporting documents are not being returned. Families have been asked time and again for evidence, but the evidence has actually been received. One constituent abroad is unable to extend his stay because he does not have an extended passport. So he cannot leave because his passport is now out of date and he cannot get a new passport. It is a ridiculous situation.

    The Minister said that, if MPs had cases they wanted him to look at, he would do so, but I can tell him that he will be tied up for months. It is ridiculous that people have to go through a Minister to get an answer to a problem. This is not a time for excuses. The Secretary of State needs to give our constituents answers—answers on why contractors are failing and why the systems put in place are not working. Interestingly, there are only three Conservative Members here. I suspect most Conservative Members are encountering similar problems but are too embarrassed to admit that the Government are failing. They are failing families and other people and it is an absolute disgrace.

    We did get a letter from the Minister this morning, which was interesting because of the different scenarios. He is telling people to contact the hotline. The Government are not listening; the hotline is not working. People spend hours and are promised a call-back, but it does not happen. Another Member, who is no longer in his place, was talking about 10 weeks, but the bottom of the letter says, “The 10-week advice has now been withdrawn.” What are people expected to do? The shadow Minister spoke about productivity. Businesses that supply holidays are relying on this being a smooth process, as are families who want to travel. My biggest concern is the constant denial from those on the Government Benches that there is even a problem, or they do not accept the extent of the problem.

  • Imran Hussain – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    Imran Hussain – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    The speech made by Imran Hussain, the Labour MP for Bradford East, in the House of Commons on 14 June 2022.

    I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) on securing such an important debate and making such an excellent contribution. I join him and my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), who sees this from a constituency angle, in paying tribute to the hard-working staff at our passport offices. None of the contributions from Opposition Members is designed in any way to attack the work of hard-working staff. This is about the direction of political leadership.

    Like many Opposition Members, I am inundated with cases of constituents who have waited weeks and months for their passport and now face missing holidays, funerals and weddings as a result of the Government’s failings. Hundreds of thousands of pounds have been lost because of the Government’s mistakes, and the human cost cannot be quantified in numbers.

    As has rightly been said time and again, and like many of the crises on this Government’s watch, the passport crisis was entirely foreseeable. I have heard Conservative Members make the case today that somehow, because of the covid pandemic, the crisis was not foreseeable. Anyone could have predicted that, following two years of lockdown in which foreign holidays were ill-advised if not banned outright, there would be a surge in passport applications. It was inevitable and clear for everyone to see, except for Ministers huddled around the Cabinet table who failed to prepare, to anticipate rising demand or to ensure sufficient staffing levels.

    Once more, it is not this Government but ordinary people up and down the country who are going to suffer. The Government have not learned lessons and have not realised that moving nearly all their staff from one crisis to the next—the Afghan refugee crisis, the Ukrainian refugee crisis and, now, the Passport Office crisis—is simply not sustainable.

    The Government are now pressing ahead with more staff cuts that will see 20% to 40% of Home Office staff cut by 2025. Those are not my figures—my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon quoted them earlier, and Conservative Members disputed them—they are from the Government’s own documents. The Minister says the Government do not intend to make those cuts in the Passport Office. Where is the guarantee? Frankly, this Government say one thing one day and change their mind a week later. How can we trust a word that is spoken here unless it is written on paper? At the moment, all that document says is that there will be cuts of between 20% and 40% in the Home Office.

    Given what has happened in the Home Office over the last year alone, making cuts is absolutely mind-boggling. It seems that, after every crisis, Home Office Ministers suffer sudden collective amnesia: they are unable to remember what went wrong and incapable of putting it right as a result.

    This point has perhaps not been made as much here today, but we must not kid ourselves that this is the only crisis the Home Office has overseen, because backlogs, delays and excuses are nothing new in the Home Office. We all know this as constituency MPs. This debate weaves together many of the backlogs right across the Home Office. As I said, the performance of political leadership lacks compassion, humanity and decency.

    When I look at my constituency casework with regards to the Home Office, people are waiting not weeks or months, but years for a decision on their case as Home Office officials drag their feet, leaving my constituents in a state of uncertainty and near permanent limbo. How any Home Office Minister or official can justify or allow this near torturous experience is simply beyond me, yet it still continues.

    I could outline case after case but, time not permitting, I will highlight just two or three. A constituent of mine has been waiting more than a decade for a decision. For the last year, he and I have been making requests so he can see his elderly mother, who is in the last stages of her life, yet he is unable to do so. I have a case where the father is here with his disabled children and the mother has been separated from the children while she waits for her passport. The father has been left alone here looking after their disabled children. I have had cases where there have been refusals because of a 1p discrepancy between the wage slip and the actual salary paid. Again, the reality is that that points towards a lack of compassion, decency and humanity from the Home Office.

    Then there are the extortionate fees that people are made to pay. At a time when working families are struggling to put bread and butter on their table during a cost of living crisis that is a direct result of this Government’s incompetence, ideological austerity cuts over the last decade and mishandling, the Government want to charge working families tens of thousands of pounds for a simple application. That is the reality of where we are.

    It could not be clearer that, under this Tory Government, the Home Office is lurching from crisis to crisis and leaving nothing but carnage for ordinary people in its wake. This is a Home Office that cannot get through a week without another scandal, another failing and another human rights disaster. Frankly, this Home Office is simply not fit for purpose.

  • Jessica Morden – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    Jessica Morden – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    The speech made by Jessica Morden, the Labour MP for Newport East, in the House of Commons on 14 June 2022.

    I begin by paying tribute to all the staff at the passport office in Newport, which is located in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones). Many of my constituents work there, and I want to thank them for all their ongoing hard work in difficult circumstances—which, I would add, are no fault of their own. They are an extremely dedicated team, and I thank them for that dedication.

    We will never forget in Newport how the Conservative coalition Government tried in 2010 to close our Newport passport office. They were forced to change their mind by a very strong local campaign by the PCS Union, working with the South Wales Argus and the MP—the late, great Paul Flynn. The consequences of that would have been disastrous, and the current state of affairs shows just how important it is that we maintain and expand the workforce there and in other centres across the UK. The staff at the Passport Office are not to blame for the current problems we are seeing, but this Government are, and they are letting them down too.

    Like other hon. Members, I have been inundated with correspondence and with cases from constituents who are nervous and distressed while waiting to hear back on the status of their passport applications. In many cases, the 10-week application turnaround target for dealing with applications has been totally missed, and some constituents, particularly those who applied before April, were never informed about the 10-week target anyway.

    The growing backlog has also led to errors. One constituent had their personal documents sent to someone in Northern Ireland with the same name, and were very fortunate that that person reached out to them online. Their supporting documentation was sent back to the Passport Office, but has still not been returned to my constituent several weeks later. Another constituent has been bounced between appointments in Newport, Glasgow and London. It is a shambles, and a costly one. He tells me that he is now over £350 out of pocket on travel and passport fees.

    Other constituents feel the same: those who have spent five hours on the phone chasing up the status of their application; those who have been promised call backs that never happen; those who have taken time off work to try to resolve the logjam they find themselves in through no fault of their own; and those having to wait until as late as 48 hours before they travel to find out if their passport will arrive, and trying to console their children about whether their holiday is still happening.

    Constituents are desperate. There are plenty more examples I could give, and that others will give throughout the debate. At its root, the problem seems to be a lack of staffing resources, the loss of experienced staff to help upskill newcomers, systems struggling to process applications in the face of demand and a breakdown in communication between the in-house and outsourced elements of the Passport Office. Indeed, as has been referenced throughout this debate, the Home Office pays millions for failed outsourced contracts across the Passport Office, including courier services that lose hundreds of passports every year.

    The mess was as preventable as it was predictable, and the buck stops with the Home Office, which was warned about increased demand for passports months ago, yet buried its head in the sand and allowed this huge backlog to grow. It is telling in this debate today that the Minister has repeatedly refused to answer the question of how big the backlog is. The PCS is quite right in highlighting the Home Secretary’s failure to plan, recruit and resource operations sufficiently to meet the upsurge in demand.

    What makes it worse is that the MP hotlines at UK Visas and Immigration cannot answer passport queries. Despite details being taken and passed on to the Passport Office for a response, to date my office has struggled to obtain any replies through this correspondence chain, and has done so only via the drop-in service in Portcullis House. While I appreciate the excellent work that the staff are doing there—and they are—it is clearly not a sustainable system. I am fortunate in that I have a member of staff in Westminster and my constituency is less than three hours away on the train, but for other MPs further away, accessing this hub every week is difficult, and it is not a sustainable outcome for us. It is a logistical nightmare. Why can we not have a dedicated MP hotline for the Passport Office? We used to have one that worked very well, but the Government took it away from us.

    Passport Office workers and the many thousands of people across the country waiting for news of their passport have been let down by an incompetent Home Secretary. She and the Prime Minister seem intent on cutting and outsourcing staff, and the Prime Minister has even talked up privatisation. Does the performance of TNT, Sopra Steria and Teleperformance suggest this is a good idea or a good use of taxpayers’ money? We think not. The Government seem more concerned with that than fixing problems in the here and now. As PCS has highlighted, a further loss of jobs at the Passport Office will only compound the present crisis. So, as many others have said, please get a grip.

  • Mike Amesbury – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    Mike Amesbury – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

    The speech made by Mike Amesbury, the Labour MP for Weaver Vale, in the House of Commons on 14 June 2022.

    It is an honour and a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), who spoke very powerfully.

    Like other hon. and right hon. Members in the Chamber this afternoon, I have been dealing with this surge in missing passports. Constituents are generally only contacting me—I am speaking facts here—after waiting 10 or 12 weeks, or more. That is double what the Prime Minister referred to at that very Dispatch Box at the end of May when he said “four to six weeks”. The fact is that that is just not the case.

    This week, I put one of many written questions on waiting times to Ministers, and yesterday I received only a holding response to one of my questions about the number of people waiting, in reference to what the Prime Minister said, six weeks or more. This was the second question answered, after my first one tabled last month, which asked how many people have been waiting longer than four, six, eight or 10 weeks. I have simply not been given a straight answer, and I fail to understand why the data requested was not provided at this time. What have Ministers got to hide? Where is the transparency? As hon. Members across the House have said, particularly Labour Members, what is the backlog? Give us an answer! It is very important to our constituents.

    My office has been inundated with calls and emails since well before March. I have a young constituent who has missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to represent his team abroad. Many have missed very important reunions after the covid pandemic, which indeed the Minister mentioned. Given that very covid pandemic—let us have some common sense here—we would have thought that resources would have been put in place to plan for what was coming down the line. These are basics—basics! Some constituents have travelled halfway across the country to pick up passports the day before flights. Indeed, the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), mentioned people travelling to Belfast from London. That is crazy—crazy!

    Another contractor, contracted by the Passport Office obviously, is TNT. There have been many cases of it losing passports, and I ask the Minister: will this incompetency be rewarded with TNT losing that contract? To me, that would be a solution and common sense. The Home Office was warned about the surge in passport applications that would be seen after many people cancelled holidays, including my own family. Forward planning was needed, yet here we have Captain Chaos at the helm of this Government—the dead political man walking, who does not even have the backing of 148 of his own Members.

    On the more serious and urgent cases that hon. Members have referred to, there are no means for MPs genuinely to escalate those. We are simply provided with an update and told that the case cannot be expedited any further. I have not had responses for the many cases I emailed about weeks and weeks ago, as again has been mentioned by Labour Members. Over the weekend, I received an email from one constituent who had tried to contact the Passport Office on 12 occasions through webchats, online forms, attempts to book appointments and phone calls. None of those methods resulted in updates or an escalation of their case, despite what has been said by some Conservative Members—and obviously at the moment the Minister is not listening to me or others at all.

    The additional recruitment of staff—they are undoubtedly working their socks off—is still resulting in calls not being answered and certainly in our advocacy not being responded to. We are not making this up. This is not whingeing from the Opposition Benches; this is reality. This was all predictable, as has been stated. In fact, the PCS has pointed out—the hard-working staff on the frontline—that the Government have only recruited about 60% of the staff needed, and many are agency staff who do not have sufficient training.

    I look forward to the Minister informing me and, very importantly, other Members across the House how the Government are finally going to get a grip of this situation—this crisis—and deal with backlog Britain.