Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
FOREIGN AND
COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
12 JANUARY 2006
Q20 Mr Mitchell: Before he does, will
you be issuing identity cards at the same time? The operations
are now going to run together, are they not?
Sir Michael Jay: That is taking
things one stage further. If we move to a stage where we also
have, let us say, identity cards and it becomes the rule for British
citizens to travel within the European Union on an identity card
rather than a passport, that would clearly affect the way in which
we fund our entire consular operation. We would then have to discuss
with the Treasury other means of ensuring that we could fund our
operation, but we are not there yet.
Mr Sizeland: May I just say something
on the football side as well? We put in place some quite elaborate
arrangements for Euro 2004, including working very closely with
the Football Supporters' Federation. We try to get as close as
possible to the fans to offer advice and so on and we shall be
putting in place similar plans in Germany later this year, working
very closely not only with ministries here, Home Office, police
and so on, but also the German authorities, the Football Association
and the Football Supporters' Federation and other groups. That
campaign will ratchet up as we get closer to the event, offering
advice to fans, what to do if they do not have tickets and so
on and so forth. On biometrics, we shall be rolling out the phase
one with the chip which has the photo on it from March to June
this year overseas. I have some copies here if Members of the
Committee would like to see them. This is relatively straightforward.
When we get on to the issue of finger scans and iris scans, there
are issues over how you enrol those. We are working through those
technical solutions now with others who are also working in that
area, for example, UK Visas and the identity cards' programme.
Sir Michael Jay: At one point
I said that the £69 which is the cost of the passports we
issue overseas is designed to cover the passport issuing operation.
It also includes the £9.65 consular premium that is the element
in the cost of each passport which is then paid for our consular
work overseas. I should have made that clear.
Q21 Mr Mitchell: Just one last question
on the Know Before You Go campaign and the kind of information
you provide for travellers. The comment is that the take-up is
disappointing. Having looked at it on some occasions before going
abroad, is that because it is too stilted and dry as dust and
too cautious?
Sir Michael Jay: I hope not.
Q22 Mr Mitchell: But it is all those
things.
Sir Michael Jay: If it is all
those things, we need to look at it again because it is hugely
important that we do raise the awareness among the travelling
public of some of the dangers and difficulties they face and the
real importance, for example, of knowing where they are going,
of understanding the risks and of taking out travel insurance.
This is a marketing operation and if we are not getting through
to the people who are our customers, we need to think more about
how we do that. Now there are things like TheRough Guide to
Safer Travel.
Q23 Mr Mitchell: That was a success,
was it not?
Sir Michael Jay: That is good.
We have also, for example, a Tesco's travel insurance leaflet
which has on the back of it a plug for our travel advice. We are
trying to market ourselves in maybe a more effective way than
we have done in the past because of the need to get our services
across. Do you want to talk about student ambassadors?
Mr Sizeland: Yes. We are conscious
that we have to get the messages out to all travellers' groups
and we have recently appointed student ambassadors in 15 universities
who promote the travel safety messages such as in The Rough
Guide to Safer Travel. Because they are talking to fellow
students, they are having much more impact. We also have quite
an exciting TV filler on the perils of not having the right insurance,
which is being shown around university TV networks, probably targeting
1.6 million students in this country at various times.
Q24 Chairman: The reference to biometrics
is in figure 16 on page 27. We see at the bottom it is going to
cost us £22 more for each passport than we pay at the moment.
However, we know all about technical glitches in this Committee
and failed IT projects. Can you assure me that none of our citizens
are going to be denied entry because of a technical glitch on
a biometric passport? It is down to you.
Mr Sizeland: It certainly is.
We have tried to learn the lessons from other experiences; the
GenIE passport programme is mentioned in the Report. We have involved
users at post much more in the development of the system. We have
also piloted the passport so far in Paris and Washington; we shall
be doing that again in Washington later this month. In terms of
managing the risks, we believe we have done as much as we possibly
can in terms of testing the product. We are also, and it is also
a value-for-money measure, upgrading our current passport arrangements
rather than bringing in totally new kit. In other words, the cost
in terms of the new equipment they are going to be working on
is minimised and therefore the training needs can be much more
specific.
Q25 Mr Williams: That is a long way
of saying no.
Mr Sizeland: I was rather hoping
it would be offering some reassurance.
Q26 Kitty Ussher: I wanted just to
pick up on the point of passports, then talk generally about value
for money and then, if the Chairman will indulge me, I have a
local piece of casework which I should like to raise with you.
First of all on passports. It is true, is it not, that if you
live in the UK and apply for a passport in the UK through the
UK passport service, the fee that you pay includes a small fee
for consular service? Is that correct?
Sir Michael Jay: It includes £9.65
which in itself includes a small element for emergency work overseas.
Yes, it does.
Q27 Kitty Ussher: However, if you
are a UK citizen with exactly the same residency rights and happen
to be living abroad and you use those consular services by applying
for your passport through a British embassy abroad, the Report
in paragraph 2.10 says you pay a 64% higher fee.
Sir Michael Jay: If you apply
for and get your passport from an embassy or a high commission
overseas, you pay more than if you apply through the UK passport
service here. That is because the fees are designed to meet the
costs of the passport issuing overseas.
Q28 Kitty Ussher: Even though we
are all paying already for the cost of consular services, regardless
of where we live?
Sir Michael Jay: Every passport,
wherever it is issued, includes the premium for consular work.
So, if you buy a passport here you are paying an extra £9.65
to help fund those of us who travel overseas and need help, or
our relatives do. That is true wherever you get the passport.
The difference in the price of the passport is because the passports
issued overseas are priced, the consular premium apart, in order
to cover the costs of the overseas issuing network in our embassies
and high commissions and that is the agreement that we reached
with the Treasury as to how our passport issuing should be funded.
Q29 Kitty Ussher: Would you not agree
though, that those who apply abroad are therefore paying for consular
services twice, once in the £9.65 and once in the additional
fee they have to pay because they happen to live abroad and apply
for their passport through a high commission or embassy?
Mr Stagg: There may be a misunderstanding.
There is a distinction between the passport work and the consular
work. The passport work is self-funding and the consular work
is funded from the premium people pay whether they buy passports
in the UK or overseas. So the bit of extra that people pay overseas
for a passport is to cover purely passport activities, not consular,
as we would define them.
Q30 Kitty Ussher: So passports are
not included in your definition of consular for these purposes.
Mr Stagg: No.
Q31 Kitty Ussher: Thank you for that
clarification. Obviously none of us represents overseas British
nationals by definition, but do you not think it is slightly unfair
that they should have to pay more than a British citizen living
in the UK?
Sir Michael Jay: You could argue
that: you could also argue that there are 13 million Britons who
live overseas permanently. There is a very interesting question
as to how far they do or should rely on consular services, for
example let us take people who are in Spain, have been living
there a long time, as they get older. You can argue that people
living overseas may, during the course of 20 or 30 years living
overseas, make more use of our consular services because they
are living overseas, than those who are visiting. You can argue
that both ways.
Q32 Kitty Ussher: But you have just
said the definition of the passport services and the consular
services are separate. The passport price is not included in your
definition of consular services, so surely that answer contradicts
your previous answer.
Sir Michael Jay: I do not think
so.
Q33 Kitty Ussher: You just said that
you pay £9.65 for consular services wherever you are, you
pay more for your passport abroad because it costs more to produce
a passport abroad. However in your last answer, you just said
that people living abroad require consular services more and that
is why the passport price is greater.
Sir Michael Jay: May do. I did
not say why. You are asking whether it is unfair. The question
I was trying to address was whether I think that you would use
our consular services more if you were living overseas or if you
were visiting.
Q34 Kitty Ussher: That was not my
question. My question was: is it unfair that the price of a passport
is greater if you happen to be a British national living abroad
than if you live in Britain? Should they not have the choice of
where they can apply for their passport from? Do you not have
diplomatic bags which are able to courier passports effectively?
Sir Michael Jay: I am not sure
about that, but there is a recommendation in the NAO Report that
we should be more flexible about this and we shall look into that
point. It is partly a question which we need to talk to the Treasury
about because it relates to funding; if for example you are living
in Calais paying £69 as opposed to living in Dover and paying
less, it obviously makes sense for people to be able to pay less.
We shall look into that.
Q35 Kitty Ussher: Thank you very
much indeed. Separately, the Report highlights the increasing
use of honorary consuls and sharing consular arrangements with
other countries. In this Committee we are obviously primarily
concerned with value for money for the UK taxpayer. Have you done
a cost benefit analysis of the effect to the UK taxpayer of a
greater use of such arrangements?
Sir Michael Jay: There are two
separate issues there. One is the use of honorary consuls as opposed
to full-time diplomatic staff or full-time embassy or consular
staff, because we pay honorary consuls an honorarium and they
do, in my view, a fantastic service for us around the globe. That
is clearly very good value for money. What we do need to do is
to look a little bit more flexibly about how we do staff our consular
operations. What we are doing increasingly now, for example, is
having an honorary consul with a locally engaged member of consular
staff working with them, so we get more flexibility. There is
clear value for money in having honorary consuls and we need to
look more flexibly at how we use them. I think the other part
of your question was whether we should be working more closely
with other countries in order to share consular work. We do a
certain amount of that already and the trend in the longer term
will be moving towards something more of a kind of consular space
in which we share consular services with other countries. There
is quite an important issue here because my guess is that most
British citizens will still expect to be looked after if they
get into difficulty by a representative of the British Government.
That is a factor that we would need to take into account in deciding
on the pros and cons of working more closely with others, but
I do think we should be doing so, particularly within Europe.
In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand look after our interests.
We look after the interests of a number of other countries in
some parts of the world, so a certain amount of this goes on.
Q36 Kitty Ussher: What is the cost
per piece of casework for a sharing arrangement, compared with
when it is directly funded entirely through our structure?
Mr Sizeland: We are not charged
by Australians or EU Member States for consular services provided
to our citizens. There is no mechanism, as it were, for charging,
although in a case where UK citizens were not involved, there
was a claim by one EU member against another EU Member State for
the cost of chartering an aircraft or something like that. By
and large, these are done just on a reciprocal basis without charge.
Q37 Kitty Ussher: My time is coming
to an end, so I just want briefly to raise my constituency point.
I shall not mention any names for obvious reasons, but a family
of five children were abducted by their father away from their
mother and taken to Pakistan against several court injunctions
internationally and locally and the solicitor representing the
mother, who had her entire family removed illegally, advised me
that if a meeting could be arranged and facilitated by the British
embassy abroad in the appropriate conditions, she thought the
actions of the children in that environment would be such that
it would be quite clear that they needed to be with their mother.
The lawyer had significant experience of this type of arrangement.
It seemed reasonable to me. I asked whether it could be done.
I was told by the high commissioner in Pakistan that insufficient
resources were available. I would ask, please, whether you could
write to me again following on from the ministerial letter that
I have already received to say whether you would be prepared to
look at this again in the interests of my constituent.
Sir Michael Jay: I would certainly
be prepared to write again, but do you want to say anything more
at this stage about that Paul?
Mr Sizeland: Pakistan is one place
which accounts for quite a high percentage of our child abduction
cases and in fact we do have a protocol now with the Pakistani
judiciary on these issues which is starting to have some impact.
One reason for having the protocol was to reduce the administrative
burden on the mission of individual cases. We should be very happy
to have another look at the case and see whether it would work
under the protocol.
Kitty Ussher: Can we find a way? Thank
you.
Q38 Mr Bacon: Sir Michael, if you
had sat on this Committee for the last four or five years, the
phrase "case management system" would probably make
your blood run cold, because one of the worst cases we ever saw
of a computer management project was a case management system
for the magistrates' courts. Could you tell me about COMPASS?
It was purchased in 2001, despite a recommendation by the NAO
that you should be doing something more up to date in 1992. Was
it primarily due to lack of resources that you remained manual
for nine years? Why did you not adopt a computerised case management
system sooner after the recommendation 13 years ago?
Sir Michael Jay: I do not know
the answer to that question.
Mr Sizeland: I do not know the
answer to that. I do not know whether it—
Q39 Mr Bacon: Mr Stagg? By the way,
I should just like to check. From where I am sitting it looks
like Mr Stag GCMG, but actually it is Mr Stagg CMG, is that right?.
Mr Stagg: Sadly you are right
I am afraid. Part of the answer, but only part, is that we only
introduced our new global IT infrastructure in the very late 1990s
and until then, we did not have a system on which we would have
been confident to place complex new applications. Since we introduced
the new system which was in 1998-1999 effectively, we have had
a system, in which we have had reasonable confidence, working
effectively for us.
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