Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Written Evidence


Letter to the Chairman of the Committee from Lord Triesman of Tottenham, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 11 October 2006

Dear Mike,

  In the Committee's report on the FCO's 2004-05 Departmental report, you recommended that we set out the goals, work programme and achievements to date of the Passports Best Practice Unit (BPU). In doing so in our White Paper response, we referred to an impending review of the impact of the effectiveness of the Unit. This would be informed by feedback from the first three posts reviewed by the Unit (Amsterdam, Beirut and Damascus), six months after their reviews.

The review of BPU has now been completed and I thought you might be interested to receive a copy. I believe this specialised review team, which operates in co-ordination with our wider Consular Review Team, is making a positive impact in improving the working practices of our posts to enable them to meet their PSA targets. Posts are given recommendations on how to improve their procedures and are given six months to implement the recommendations. Feedback from the posts themselves has been overwhelmingly positive, and the review team has also provided a valuable insight into the challenges faced by post, which helps to develop and inform passport issuance policy and procedures.

  I have also enclosed a copy of the 2006 Consular Strategy Update: In Partnership, which sets out what we have achieved over the past year and the challenges we face in the year ahead.

I hope you will find this helpful.

David Triesman

The Lord Triesman of Tottenham




 
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