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5.15 pm
Mr. Bill O'Brien (Normanton): First, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on the way in which he has dealt with the issue and explained to the House and the country the reasons for the problems that the UK Passport Agency has encountered. I also congratulate him on offering a reasonable apology to everyone concerned for what happened at the agency.
Like many other hon. Members, I have received representations from constituents who have had difficulties in obtaining their passports. With the exception of one, all the representations that I made have been accepted and my constituents have received their passports in time to meet dates for holidays or business trips. Therefore, I must also offer my congratulations, as my right hon. Friend and others have done, to the staff of the UK Passport Agency for their work in the past four or five weeks to deal with the problems that they have encountered. I know for a fact that the chief executive and other senior members of staff have been working long hours to try to resolve the problems that have faced the agency recently.
I visited the passport office in London a few months ago. I was concerned about the number of fraudulent applications for passports--I understand that about 1,400 instances of people applying for passports illegally have been discovered by the agency in the past year. We should never lose sight of that problem. We must have tight control over applications for passports to ensure that only bona fide applicants receive them. There must be tremendous pressure on that section of the UK Passport Agency that ensures that passports are vetted to such a degree that people do not obtain them fraudulently or illegally. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will insist that that issue is a prime concern of the agency.
I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary who, I understand, has been involved with the agency ever since the problem emerged and has updated Members of Parliament on the way in which the issue has been handled. My hon. Friend and members of his Department did not relax their efforts to ensure that people who had applied for passports received them in time to depart on holiday or on business.
The queues have been mentioned this afternoon and we should clear up that problem. I was disappointed in the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald(Miss Widdecombe), who was reluctant to give way to Labour Members. She intervened on my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan), the spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, no fewer than six times. The right hon. Lady made a full contribution--40 minutes at the Dispatch Box--and intervened on other speeches, but was reluctant to give way when Labour Members tried to intervene. That was most unreasonable. Although the right hon. Lady has said that she is a reasonable person, she did not demonstrate that this afternoon.
The hon. Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) is no longer in his place, but he said that he has seen queues only on a Tuesday. That is because he only passes the
office on a Tuesday. If he had been there on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, he would have witnessed the queues. In my experience, there have been queues for the past 16 years; queueing has always been with us. We are concerned that the queues have lengthened, but people have always gone to the passport office to pick up a passport for the same day, or within 24 or 48 hours. Queueing has always been an accepted way to obtain a passport. However, we should now try to ensure that there should be no reason whatever for queueing. As a result of our debate on this important matter, I hope that we can find a way to prevent queueing at the passport office.
Mr. Maclean:
A few years ago, I used to live in that area. There were short queues during the summer months, but nothing on the scale that we have seen recently. Is it not true that people queued at Petty France because, in the past, one could obtain a passport quickly? It was a convenient way to get a passport on the same day. People now have to queue because they cannot get a passport by any other means--the normal, conventional means of writing to the passport office.
Mr. O'Brien:
I challenge that point. People who are queueing today, and who queued yesterday and the day before, did so because they wanted their passports urgently. People present their case early in the morning and are allowed to return in the afternoon to collect their passports; indeed, some people collect their passports there and then.
Although I accept that there is a problem and that that is unsatisfactory, we should remember that there has always been a problem. People have always presented themselves at the office to get a passport urgently. We should have a system in which, if people need a passport urgently, they can obtain one urgently, without having to queue outside the passport offices. The inclement weather gives rise to a further concern; no one wants people to queue in the rain to obtain a passport--or for any other purpose. When my right hon. Friend considers the future of the Passport Agency and the distribution of passports, I hope that he will try to ensure that people do not have to queue outside the offices at all.
There must be new information technology to develop the service, but that technology must be secure, as well as ensuring that the service is speeded up. It is rather sad that the new IT equipment provided by Siemens failed, and has not yet been put right. One of the problems that we face at present is that we relied too much on that new technology at two offices. It has not delivered the service that the Passport Agency wanted.
The Government's amendment notes that we must maintain security at all times. I prefaced my contribution to the debate by pointing out that I was concerned about security a few months ago. I visited the passport office and witnessed some of the illegal and fraudulent means that people use to obtain passports. The staff are to be congratulated on finding out about those frauds. The Government's amendment makes the only reference to security in our agenda for the debate.
Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere):
My right hon. and hon. Friends deserve many congratulations for raising in an Opposition day debate the subject of delays in the issue of passports, because such delays are a cause of inconvenience, hardship and anxiety to many hundreds of thousands of our constituents. The importance to many people of their annual holiday should not be overlooked; our constituents will want answers to the questions that have been asked today and assurances that lessons have been learned from this sorry episode.
I give credit to the Home Secretary for endeavouring, in the latter part of his speech, to answer some of those questions. It is kinder to draw a veil over his earlier remarks, especially his references to the previous Government. The right hon. Gentleman adverted to agencies, but he appears to have changed his mind about agencies and their responsibilities.
Mr. Clappison:
Well, agencies might be one of the matters on which the right hon. Gentleman has not changed his mind, but there is a long list of subjects on which he has changed his mind since entering government. That long list includes privatisation of prisons--he looks quizzical, but I remember many criticisms of private prisons uttered by the then Labour Opposition. The list also covers subjects such as the right of silence; freedom of information, on which he has recently made a decision; carriers' liability; and employers' liability for checks on illegal immigrants, on which point he has reversed a promise made by the previous Government. As for today's explanation of the Passport Agency's difficulties, the jury is still out--which is another matter on which he has changed his mind.
Mr. Straw:
It is of great interest that the Conservatives are having to draft in junior Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen to speak from the Back Benches in this debate--that says something. I have not changed my mind about the relationship between agencies and central Government. My position is the same today as it was in opposition: agencies have a role to play, but my concern was and is about the nature of the relationship and about whether Ministers should take responsibility for what went on within agencies in difficult circumstances.
Mr. Clappison:
I entirely accept the Home Secretary's statement, but he has to accept that his assertion about agencies stands in stark contrast to the large number of serious constitutional matters on which he has changed his mind and which I have just listed.
The right hon. Gentleman asks why I take an interest in this subject. I have a personal interest, because my wife and children are among those queueing for a passport. Furthermore, a number of my constituents are in the same position. As the right hon. Gentleman knows well, I have
always taken a great interest in the activities of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate and I have asked a large number of questions about that organisation in the past; at the most recent session of Home Office questions, I took up that issue with him.
I listened carefully to the Home Secretary's explanation today, but at the end of his speech several questions asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) remained unanswered. My right hon. Friend asked the important question: why was a decision taken last year to introduce new technology at the same time as a requirement for children to have their own passport?
The Home Secretary has given his reasons for that decision, and it will be for others to judge the weight and the importance of those reasons in the light of subsequent events. In fairness, he must concede at least that, having taken the decision, it was incumbent upon Ministers to be on their guard, to monitor how the new system was bearing up and to take every precaution against the appearance of the familiar glitches that affect new technology.
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