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Mr. Lidington: The Minister will have ample opportunity to reply.
The agency's corporate plan said that forecasts of demand for passports would be subject to monthly review, taking account of the actual demand experienced by the agency. It is not a matter of Ministers being overtaken by an unexpected surge in applications. Mechanisms are supposed to exist for them to be informed of, and to initiate action on the basis of, the pattern of demand experienced during the year. Having listened to Home Office Ministers, I wonder whether they bothered to read the reports coming from the agency, until the one in March this year that finally alerted them.
I hope that the Minister will address a number of long-term issues that have been raised in the debate. Security matters were addressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), and the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) asked whether it remained the Government's plan that the criminal records agency should be administered by the Passport Agency. In view of the problems, can the Minister say whether the Government still plan to move the London passport office away from Clive house during the current financial year, since, whatever the gains to be won from that move, some short-term disruption of services must be expected?
Above all, the House requires an explanation, and a plan of action with the sort of detail that has not yet been forthcoming from Ministers. Bland assurances that they are trying their best and that it will all be over by September will not be good enough for the House or for our constituents.
The agency's business plan for 1999-2000 has not yet been published. It is hardly any wonder that people lack confidence in the Minister's capacity to deal with the crisis to which the agency is now subject. We are now a quarter of the way through the financial year, yet the Minister says that he hopes to have the plan available to him in the next few weeks. In other words, he is pleading that the business plan is in the post.
If the Minister were holding a comparable position in the private sector, that sort of handling of management and business planning would have the regulators camping in his office, the shareholders baying for his blood and the board of directors examining the fine print of his contract of employment.
I had not realised that my analogy would be quite so accurate. In today's edition of the Evening Standard--under the headline,
Hundreds of thousands of decent, hard-working people in this country today are paying the cost of the idleness and complacency of Home Office Ministers. It was Ministers who introduced children's passports and who, at the same time, pressed ahead with computerisation without adequate preparation or back-up. It was Ministers who then sat on their hands while the queues lengthened, the backlog of post piled up and public frustration and anxiety grew.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Mike O'Brien):
I begin by extending a welcome to the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) on his first sojourn on the Opposition Front Bench. I wish to chide him gently for not being able to justify an allegation that he made, but it was his first time and he put in a confident performance.
Let us deal with what is a very serious issue for our constituents. I am concerned about the backlogs in the Passport Agency. They are unacceptable, and I am sorry that this has happened. The Government told the Passport Agency to sort this out and to get people off on their holidays. Intake is now falling, and, in due course, that will reduce delays, together with the package of measures that we have announced, including the recruitment of 400 more staff. We are mounting a high-profile media campaign to inform people of how to get their passports and what action to take.
Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot):
The Minister has made great play of his reassurances to the public that the recruitment of another 100 employees will make the difference. Will those 100 employees go straight to work tomorrow, or will they require to be trained, as there are security implications in terms of granting passports? If they are to be trained, will not the very people who, at the moment, are dealing with the backlog have to train them?
Mr. O'Brien:
That is a sensible and reasonable question. The staff at the moment are working enormously long hours to try to ensure that people get on holiday. We have brought in 300 new full-time staff, who are in place. Some are in the process of being trained, while some have been trained.
We became aware that the situation was developing in late March, and I asked for a recovery plan from the chief executive of the Passport Agency, who provided one,
together with his view that 300 extra staff were needed. With the Home Secretary's permission, I promptly authorised the recruitment of those staff. They have been recruited in recent months, and most are now in place. I have had a further meeting with the chief executive, and agreed the recruitment of a further 100 members of staff. Some of those will be able to work immediately because they will be doing tasks that do not require training. Others will require training, and it will take some time before they are entirely productive, in the sense of turning out passports.
The staff at the Passport Agency, including the 300 extra staff recruited recently, deserve a lot of praise. I join the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe), my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) and others who have said that when the staff of the Passport Agency have been contacted, they have sought to do their best for any constituent with an urgent travel date. The staff are working their socks off to try to get people off on holiday, and they are now hitting their 99.99 per cent. target. I hope that they can continue to do that for the next few weeks.
We know that demand is starting to come down and we believe that the situation will come under full control, and that we will be able to ensure that people get off on their holidays. It is not the fault of ordinary workers that computer problems have arisen, and they do not deserve criticism. I wish to join the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald and others in praising those who have worked so hard.
Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire):
Did not the Minister realise earlier this year that the figures were mounting and that there was bound to be a crisis in the summer? Whose fault is it?
Mr. O'Brien:
The hon. Gentleman cannot have been here for the whole debate. It has already been made clear that in the early part of the year the figures were not mounting as he suggests. They started to increase substantially in March, and at that point I called in the chief executive and said that we should take prompt action and recruit staff. We are taking other steps, including strengthening the management team to help David Gatenby, the chief executive, to ensure that we deliver in the current difficult circumstances.
We are deferring part of the roll-out of the computer programme until we can be sure that it will not cause further delays. We are extending passports free of charge for another two years, because that is quicker and gets people off on their holidays. The new chief executive will review the future of the agency in October, as his first task, to ensure that the problems never arise again.
I will visit the various parts of the agency to ensure that everything is being done that should be done to ensure that our constituents get the passports that they deserve. We aim to get the wait down to 10 days by the end of September.
Mr. Tyrie:
The Minister has kindly sent us secret fax numbers to allow us to accelerate the process of getting passports for our constituents. But is not that creating two
Mr. O'Brien:
The hon. Gentleman is close to denigrating the role that he plays as a representative of his constituents. Does he hold them so cheap that he believes that when they come to him he should be able to do nothing? [Interruption.] When my constituents come to me, they expect me to be able to do something to try to resolve their problems. The hon. Gentleman may want to be impotent in the face of problems; I do not. [Interruption.]
"Passport Crisis: It's Your Fault",
I found the Minister quoted as saying,
"The difficulty is that millions of people are literally phoning up because of the panic that is going on, partly as a result, I have to say, of the reporting of this."
29 Jun 1999 : Column 188
The Minister may not have realised--the Whips may not have told him--that a spokesman for the Prime Minister was quoted in the same article as saying:
"I do not agree that there is a panic. People are understandably concerned."
The half-smiles on the face of Government Whips indicate that the tumbrel is being rolled out even as we speak.
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