Tag: 2022

The statement made by Kevin Foster, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, at the Delegated Legislation Committee held on 26 May 2022.

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Passport (Fees) Regulations 2022.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Cummins, as always.

Before I move on to the draft regulations themselves, I will touch briefly on the issue of passport applications to put the regulations into context. I hope that colleagues understand that I will not get into specific or individual cases in a public forum, but I remind Members that they may use the dedicated MPs’ hotline and, for the most urgent cases, the passport surgeries at Portcullis House, to which staff of Her Majesty’s Passport Office have been deployed to answer passport-related inquiries.

Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)

I am sure that every Member present has dozens and dozens of cases outstanding with HM Passport Office. I thank the staff—they are at home and doing a fantastic job—but it still is not working. Hundreds of people are without their passports. This draft delegated legislation is about premium and fast track, but none of it is working at this moment in time.

Kevin Foster

Perhaps I should go on to point out what HMPO staff are doing. At the moment, they are working hard to process approximately 250,000 applications per week, and have been doing so since the beginning of March this year. That is a large increase in the number of applications and in output since January, when latent demand started to return. They are focused on maintaining a high level of service and on ensuring that people receive their passports in good time for the summer holidays.

In the vast majority of cases, applications are being processed within the advertised 10 weeks. Nearly 2 million passport applications were dealt with in March and April alone. For the benefit of the Committee, HMPO usually deals with 7 million in a year—that is the scale of the numbers. Our advice, however, remains to allow up to 10 weeks when applying and, if planning travel this summer, to apply now if a new passport is needed.

The draft regulations will set the fees payable for products and services offered by HMPO, as well as providing for fee waivers in a number of circumstances. The regulations revoke and replace the Passport (Fees) Regulations 2018, making minor changes to the fees schedule and specifying priority services fees, including a booking fee, which will not be refunded in certain circumstances. At the outset, I want to make it clear that no fee levels are being changed. The cost of applying for a passport is not increasing under the draft regulations.

For customers requiring a passport more quickly than can be provided under the standard service, HMPO has for many years offered optional priority services that are available for an additional fee: the fast track service and the premium service. For background, given the intervention of the hon. Member for Wansbeck, between 6 February and 8 May 2022, on average, 9,000 fast track applications were submitted in person per week, and 4,000 digital premium appointments were booked online per week.

Frustratingly, given the demand for the services, over the past year about 5% of customers have not attended their priority service appointment. When a customer simply does not attend their appointment and fails to notify HMPO, the slot cannot be reused. That has a knock-on effect for others seeking to use the priority services, especially when there is high demand for slots. For that reason, the priority service fees will now include a booking fee, which will not be refunded where a customer cancels their appointment with less than 48 hours’ notice—that is, too late for us to be able to readvertise the appointment to those seeking to book one.

The booking fee will be £30, which reflects the costs incurred by HMPO up to the point of the appointment and as a result of not being able to reuse the appointment. As I said, that will not result in an increase in the total fee; it forms part of the existing priority service fee and will not lead to customers being charged more for their appointment, provided that they keep it and use the service.

If a customer misses their appointment and fails to notify HMPO altogether, HMPO will retain the whole fee. That incentivises customers to ensure that they notify HMPO when they are not able to attend, and helps to provide a service that is more cost-effective for the taxpayer while ensuring much wanted slots are not wasted. To clarify, if the customer does not attend their appointment but meets the compassionate criteria—for example, there is a medical or family emergency that means they cannot attend their appointment—HMPO will refund the full fee.

We are also making minor drafting changes to the descriptions of our priority services. The changes will not impact on the services provided to customers, nor the cost to them. We have also made several amendments to the regulations to make them simpler, more concise and transparent for customers. The regulations set out clearly what actions are taken as part of the administration of an application, when an application is deemed to have been made, and when a fee will be retained by the Passport Office.

The schedule of fees has been reduced in length, and we have made the cost of priority services clearer by setting the fees separately. Previously, the fees set in the regulations included the cost of administering a passport and a priority service. Again, we now want to make it much clearer what people are paying for when they pay for the priority service that they book through that system. I hope the Committee will accept the regulations.

The statement made by Kevin Foster, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, in the House of Commons on 26 May 2022.

Today I am laying before the House an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018, which includes changes in respect of applications made by children seeking to register as British citizens.

Since 2018, the Home Office has charged a fee of £1,012 to those under the age of 18 who are seeking to register as British citizens under the provisions of the British Nationality Act 1981 (BNA). This fee has been set in line with Section 68(9) of the Immigration Act 2014, which details the factors the Home Secretary may take into account when setting fees. These include the costs of processing an application, the benefits that are likely to accrue to any person in connection with the application, and the costs of exercising wider immigration and nationality functions.

In keeping with the requirements of this legislative framework, the Department has pursued an approach over the last decade of progressively increasing the role fees play in funding the borders and migration system. This self-funding model serves to ensure those who benefit from the system contribute to its effective operation and maintenance, while reducing reliance on taxpayer funding. This in turn helps to ensure the system is able to support the Home Office’s priority outcomes, including enabling the legitimate movement of people and goods to support economic prosperity, and tackling illegal migration, removing those with no right to be here and protecting the vulnerable.

However, as Section 71 of the Immigration Act 2014 makes clear, this does not limit the Secretary of State’s duty under Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act (BCIA) 2009 to make arrangements to ensure immigration and nationality functions are discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in the UK. On 18 February 2021, the Court of Appeal, following a case brought by the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens (PRCBC), found that the Secretary of State had breached that duty in setting the fee in Regulations in 2017 and 2018. The Home Secretary accepted the court’s findings and committed to reviewing the fee in line with her duties under Section 55 of the BCIA 2009.

On 2 February 22 the Supreme Court handed down its judgment on an appeal made by PRCBC in relation to the status of the 2017 and 2018 Regulations that set the fee charged to children to register as British citizens, which held that the regulations were not “ultra vires” and the principles that underpin our fees system had been lawfully applied. Following the Supreme Court’s judgment, the Home Secretary was able to conclude her review of the fee and has decided, as a result, to introduce changes in relation to child citizenship fees in order to better facilitate access to citizenship for children who may face difficulties in paying the fee. The changes are the introduction of a fee waiver for child citizenship applications on the basis of affordability, and a fee exception for children who are looked after by a local authority. In parallel, the Home Secretary has also decided to maintain the £1,012 fee at its current level, reflecting the substantial number of applications that the Department does receive under the current fees regime and the critical role income from these applications plays in supporting the sustainable funding of a borders and migration system that is critical to delivery of the Home Office’s key objectives.

By introducing the affordability based waiver, our aim is to ensure the fee does not serve as a significant practical barrier to the acquisition of British citizenship for children who are eligible to apply, where the unaffordability of that fee can be demonstrated. This recognises the particular value British citizenship can have for children who have been born in or spent a substantial part of their lives in the UK, particularly those intangible benefits in terms of the sense of identity and belonging which develop during an individual’s formative years, and the impact this can have on their wider wellbeing. At the same time, it reflects our belief that a waiver offers the most effective means of facilitating applications from children for whom affordability of the fee does represent a practical barrier, while balancing against the wider financial impact on the Department, relative to other options. In addition, the specific fee exception that is being introduced will serve to relieve an administrative and financial burden from local authorities, while enabling the Department to work more proactively with them to register children who are eligible and where it is in their best interests.

Further details on how to apply for the waiver and exception will be set out in published guidance, with applications open from 16 June. I hope colleagues will join me in welcoming these changes, which I believe represent a positive step in responding to the concerns raised by members of this House as well as other stakeholders in relation to children’s access to British citizenship.