Examination of Witnesses (Questions 62-123)
Damian Green MP. Sarah Rapson.
10 November 2010
Q62 Chair: Good
morning. Thank you for coming this morning. I understand you want
to make a very short three-minute statement, which is absolutely
fine, but we are very short of time, so I suggest we go ahead
right away and then start the questions.
Damian Green: Fine.
Thank you very much for allowing me the chance to make the statement
about the proposed closure of the Newport Passport Application
Processing Centre. Since these proposals were revealed on 8 October,
there have been a number of inaccuracies and misconceptions that
I think it is important to correct. The passport service is paid
for through the passport fee, which covers the cost of a domestic
passport service and consular services overseas for British citizens.
Passports have to be delivered within this fee structure and be
available to the public at an economic rate. When efficiencies
can be made through better working, they should be. Indeed, they
must be. A combination of falling demand for passports and significant
improvements in productivity mean that the Identity and Passport
Service has excess capacity in terms of both its staff and its
office estate. IPS has already taken steps to reduce this overcapacity.
In 2008, the application processing centre in Glasgow was closed,
and this was followed in 2009 by the closure of two interview
offices, with a further 10 interview offices closed earlier this
year. More recently, the voluntary early release scheme run across
the Home Office resulted in 234 staff leaving IPS, around 120
from passport operations. Unfortunately, these reductions are
not enough. By 2012, IPS is forecasting the need to reduce staff
by a further 250 posts and remove around 25% of its office space.
There is no way to remove this amount of capacity and space without
closing the application processing centre. IPS currently has five
processing centres, in Belfast, Durham, Liverpool, Newport and
Peterborough. A thorough and objective assessment undertaken earlier
this year resulted in the proposal to close the Newport processing
centre. This assessment was based on a range of criteria, but
the primary consideration lay in the ability of the agency to
achieve the right level of efficiencies while retaining sufficient
operational capacity to maintain the current high level of service.
Contrary to some media reports, the proposal will not result in
the closure of Wales's only passport office. The proposed restructuring
would remove back office processing of postal applications from
the Newport office and merge the public counter service with the
local interview office to form a new customer service centre.
This is similar to the situation in Glasgow in 2008. There will
be no impact on customers in Wales or south-west England. The
new office in Newport will provide all face-to-face services required
by IPS customers, including urgent same-day applications, assistance
with queries and interviews. All these services will continue
to be provided in Welsh and to the same standard as those available
in the rest of the UK. Now, I recognise this will be small comfort
to the staff in the Newport office who might lose their jobs.
IPS is committed to supporting them throughout the process and
will do everything possible to avoid compulsory redundancies.
Chair: Thank you very,
very much indeed, Minister. Perhaps I can ask Jessica Morden to
start the questions.
Q63 Jessica Morden:
I suppose I should declare an interest in that, obviously, I am
a constituency MP and therefore I have an interest in that way.
Can I start with how the decision was made? The PCS and the council
have told us this morning that this decision came as a bolt out
of the blue for them and that it was yourself as the chief executive
who delivered the news, which I find quite extraordinary given
the scale of the job losses, rather than a politician giving this
announcement. Also, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Secretary
of State for Wales did not seem to be aware of the decision before
it was made. Do you accept that this is an announcement that has
been handled extremely badly?
Damian Green: No,
I don't. If you like, I will go through the chronology of what
happened so that the Committee can be aware of the full facts.
I have given some of the history and the reasoning for it in my
introductory statement. In July, I was notified of an intent to
bring forward restructuring proposals with no detail about that.
On 13 September, I received a submission from the IPS recommending
restructuring of the network and at the same time, over that period,
negotiations were going on with the unions. So I cannot understand
why they describe it as a bolt from the blue because they had
been talking to the IPS about this for some time. I informed the
Secretary of State for Wales on 5 October and then it was revealed
on 8 October. It was leaked. These things happen. We
had clearly intended—
Q64 Chair: Are
you therefore saying that you discussed this with the unions and
that there had been discussions with the unions before this leak?
Damian Green: Sarah,
would you like to answer that?
Sarah Rapson: We
started talking informally with the PCS through June and July.
We shared with them the thinking that we had been doing and the
analysis that we were undertaking all the way through that process
in advance of the formal consultation. For them to say that they
had no prior knowledge is actually not true.
Q65 Chair: You
have written evidence perhaps of that?
Sarah Rapson: Pardon?
Chair: I absolutely believe
you, but you would have written evidence to be able to produce
to that effect? Notes of meetings, that sort of thing?
Sarah Rapson: I
am sure we can find something. I know that these meetings took
place.[2]
Q66 Jessica Morden:
That is specifically about the future of the Newport office?
Sarah Rapson: To
start off with, the fact that we had overcapacity and that we
were actually going to have to do something, so two things. Firstly,
that, and, secondly then, how we came to the conclusion that the
proposal ought to be the Newport office. It was those two things.
The PCS were informally talking with us throughout that period.
We have always worked very well with the trade union. It was important
to us that they had early sight of that. In fact, you know that
we have the 23 criteria as part of our analysis. It was the unions'
feedback to reduce it to 20 to take out the staff survey points,
and that is what we got through those informal conversations with
them. That actually did happen.
Q67 Jessica Morden:
Obviously, you have elaborated a bit about the rationale behind
the decision. It seems to me to be a lot to do with office space,
basically, and not a lot to do with location and economic impact
in a particular area. Do you appreciate that it is important for
people in Wales to have a major passport office—I know we
will come back later to the services provided by the counter service—and
also in terms of a Welsh language service? It is extremely important
in terms of Newport, which is a regenerating city dependent on
these jobs in the city centre, that we keep this office locally.
Do you not feel that, in terms of the idea about location, the
economic impact study should have come at the start of the process?
I hear that we are still waiting for that information to come
through.
Damian Green: We
are doing the economic impact study as part of the consultation,
which is the proper time to do that. But, absolutely, I recognise
that the existence of a counter service in Newport is not just
important because it will preserve those jobs but it is important
to the local economy as well. Indeed, it is reasonably well known
now that the original thought was that we were always going to
keep a counter service in Wales, and there was a possibility of
looking elsewhere in Wales. After strong representations from
the Secretary of State and indeed from the leader of Newport Council
as well as from you and your colleague, the other MP for Newport,
I decided that clearly it was so important for the centre of Newport,
the footfall and so on that we preserve the counter service there,
that that is what we have decided to do. I am conscious that will
get something like 50,000 people a year coming to Newport specifically
for that purpose. It seems to me therefore right and proper that
we should keep that service in Newport.
Q68 Jessica Morden:
I think we are going to come back to the counter service in a
later question, so I will come back to that one later on. The
other thing I would ask is that this proposal seems remarkably
similar to one that was made two years ago when the then Minister
looked at a proposal to close the Newport office and said, no,
we had to have a major passport office in the devolved nations.
It just seems a little bit like that decision was turned down
politically and yet this has been rubber stamped. Is that fair
to say?
Damian Green: No.
The first thing I should say is that, of course, on policy advice
given to previous Governments, it would be improper for that to
be shared with me as the new Minister and so I do not know. I
cannot see what policy advice was given to previous Governments.
I think we would all recognise the propriety of that. From the
outside therefore, I can imagine that what happened two years
ago was that the then six processing application centres were
considered, and the then Minister decided that Glasgow was the
best one to close. I don't know what rank order the others were
in, but I assume—I would guess—that the previous Government
went through the same objective process that we have gone through
and that Glasgow came out as the one that fitted the bill best.
But, as I say, I do not know that. I am not allowed to be told
that for perfectly good reasons.
Q69 Jessica Morden:
Is it not true to say that Glasgow lost some of its work but the
office was not closed, but then that work was reinstated? Does
that not indicate that there is a history of short-term decisions
which then end up being reversed?
Damian Green: Sarah
was there and while I am here you cannot reveal what the detail
was.
Sarah Rapson: On
the point about the actions we took at Glasgow and then putting
work back, just for completeness, we took out the application
process into the back office and we left the public counter, for
the same reasons as we are talking about leaving the public counter
in Newport, because it is important for Scotland also to be able
to have a passport office. We do, though, from time to time, at
peak, use the people that we have there to process postal applications
because there is capacity to do so at certain times of the year.
Our demand is very seasonable. The peak demand at the public counter
is in a different time of year to the peak demand on postal, so
we share the work between those two peaks. That does mean for
part of the year we may use the Glasgow staff to process back
office work too.
Q70 Chair: Thank
you very much indeed for that. Lots of people now want to come
in. Just very quickly, we have been told in earlier evidence that
a civil servant called Louise Horton suggested to members of staff
and to the unions that there would not actually be any savings
made as a result of this decision. Is that something you could
look into for us?
Sarah Rapson: That
there would not be any savings made as a result of the decision?
Chair: Yes.
Sarah Rapson: There
will be savings made as a result of this decision.
Q71 Chair: Apparently,
the lady concerned was named here, a Louise Horton, who works
for the Identity and Passport Service, and she suggested that
there would not be savings made, or so we were told, to the unions.
Sarah Rapson: I
will take immediate action and try to talk to Louise.
Q72 Chair: Perhaps
you will have a look at the transcript of evidence afterwards
and write back to us on that point?
Sarah Rapson: Okay,
but that is plainly wrong.[3]
Damian Green: I
am trying to be as transparent as possible. We have sent you the
evidence on which this is based and you can see what the savings
are.
Q73 Chair: Could
you tell us why therefore—apparently, again, I can only
go by what we have been told today—a document called Direction
of Travel, which was published on 16 August, has been withheld?
Is that a document the Committee could look at?
Sarah Rapson: I
don't have it with me.
Q74 Chair: No,
but you would be happy for the Committee to look at that document
and perhaps to send it to us sometime later today because we have
been told that it is quite an important document and that the
unions were not given full sight of it?
Sarah Rapson: Okay.
We try to be as transparent as possible. That is our intention.
So, then, I guess we should show it.
Chair: Absolutely. Great.
We look forward to that in the interests of transparency. Excellent.
Thank you very much.
Q75 Jonathan Edwards:
Good morning. When exactly did the Home Office instruct the IPS
to start working on these proposals, and when did the IPS come
to the decision that the Newport office would be targeted? Wasn't
the simplest thing for you to do just to dust off that report
from two years ago and give that to the Minister?
Damian Green: I
have done some of the chronology. It is a continuous process of
looking at how efficiently we can run the whole passport service,
and the IPS first came to me with the specific proposals, as I
say, in July. Again, we are into this point of propriety. I am
not allowed to see what policy advice was given to the previous
Government, but we can all know as a fact that whatever that policy
advice was, it led to the closure of the Glasgow application processing
centre and that centre is now closed. The fact is that there is
overcapacity within the system. So the decisions that have to
be taken now have to be taken on the basis of the system that
is there at the moment. The idea of dusting down an old report
would be completely irrelevant because the situation has changed.
I do not know if there is anything you want to add to that.
Sarah Rapson: The
information that is populating the model is up-to-date information,
so this reflects where we are today. It is not the case that we
have just dusted off a previous report. This is new analysis to
get us to reflect the situation that we are in today.
Q76 Jonathan Edwards:
I think what I am trying to get to is who is leading the agenda?
Is it the Home Office or the IPS?
Sarah Rapson: IPS
is an executive agency of the Home Office. We are also the Home
Office. The fact that you are describing us as two separate entities
is not quite right. The agenda, if you like, comes from the facts,
which are, that we have overcapacity both in terms of the numbers
of people for the amount of demand that we have to do, plus too
much estate. As I look at my organisation, and I look to make
sure that we deliver the right level of customer service and the
right level of integrity around a passport at the lowest cost,
I can see that there is something to be done. The analysis came
from me and from my team, but we have spoken with colleagues within
the wider Home Office and with the Minister to make sure that
this is the right thing to be doing.
Q77 Owen Smith:
Minister, you have just said that the IPS came to you with these
proposals, I presume to close the Newport office, in July. Do
you think it reasonable therefore that it was in October that
this emerged as a leak from the Home Office to the staff? Equally,
can you tell us why on earth it was that the Secretary of State
for Wales was told about this decision, which had apparently been
reached by the IPS—which, as you say, is the Home Office—in
July, only on 5 October?
Damian Green: I
think there are several misconceptions in that question. What
we are doing is consulting. Once you launch a consultation, of
course the proposal is public. The second thing you said was that
this was a leak from the Home Office. There is not a shred of
evidence for that assertion.
Q78 Owen Smith:
That is what the BBC has stated.
Damian Green: I
have seen no evidence at all that a Home Office official leaked
this information. We all know that leak inquiries are pointless
so there is no point going down there. But, as I say, there is
no evidence for the assertion that the Home Office leaked this.
Indeed, the point made by the hon. Lady earlier on seemed to me
to suggest, what is the truth? Of course, we would have preferred
this to happen in an orderly way so that we could have finished
the consultation. We could have talked to the Welsh Assembly Government.
We could have talked to people more widely than just the Secretary
of State for Wales. Indeed, the local MPs had asked for a meeting
which was going to happen before the announcement was meant to
be made. As I say, I do not recognise the preconceptions behind
the question.
Q79 Owen Smith:
Leaving aside the leak in that case, you do not deny, I presume,
because you said it a moment ago, that the IPS proposed to you
in July that these closures take place? I go back to my question:
why was it, however it emerged, that it took until October for
that to be made public, albeit through a leak, and you had not
informed the Secretary of State for Wales until 5 October that
that was what was proposed?
Damian Green: I
think you are misrepresenting what I said. I said that in July
the IPS came to me and said, "We've got too many staff and
too much real estate. We need to do something about it."
In September, they came to me and said, having done the analysis,
"It looks like we should go out to proposals to close the
Newport office", and I assume at that stage you were having
informal talks with the unions about that. It obviously takes
some time within the Home Office to come to the decision to go
ahead with a proposal. When we had reached a settled view on that,
I correctly informed the Secretary of State for Wales that these
would be the proposals.
Q80 Owen Smith:
One more, if I may, because I think the timing of this is important,
Minister. The rationale behind my question is that I think it
feels to lots of people that this is a fait accompli. This was
decided long since and subsequently rationales have been developing
in order to justify the decision. We have another leaked document
here from the IPS which says that on 31 August 2010 the IPS Management
Board agreed to recommend to Ministers that Newport would close,
which fits loosely with your chronology. I ask again why on earth
it then took a further month—a month and a half almost—before
the staff were made aware, and they only became aware of it through
a leak?
Damian Green: I
don't know when the board meeting was, but it is certainly consistent
with the fact that a submission came up to me in mid-September.
This is an important, sensitive decision. It is why we are having
hearings like this.
Owen Smith: Absolutely.
Damian Green: These
are people's jobs. I thought about it hard and that takes some
time, and when I had come to what I thought was the right decision
I then communicated that to the Secretary of State for Wales.
This is a perfectly normal part of governmental process.
Q81 Owen Smith:
Given how important it is, don't you feel that you should have
conducted the impact assessment in respect of the economic impact
of this on Newport—500 jobs, we have been told by the council,
are going to be gone—before you made the announcement?
Damian Green: I
am not sure where the 500 jobs come from.
Q82 Owen Smith:
Newport council's estimate of how many jobs would be lost in the
wider economy.
Damian Green: Okay,
that will clearly be part of the economic impact assessment. The
truth is you can only do an impact assessment by going round asking
people, what would be the effect if we did this? We are already
spending a huge amount of time discussing the effects of a leak.
Frankly, if you went round towns asking those sorts of questions,
you would spread fear and uncertainty for months, potentially
for no purpose at all.
Q83 Geraint Davies:
My question, Minister, is whether the decision stacks up in terms
of the impact on the economy, the impact on the service and the
impact on the customer. Do you now accept that the 500 job losses
by an independent report commissioned by Newport is a reasonable
consideration for you in coming to your final decision on this?
Damian Green: That
will be part of the economic impact assessment.
Q84 Geraint Davies:
So the ball is still in play in terms of your review of this decision
in those terms, just so that we are clear on that?
Damian Green: This
is a genuine consultation. We have got the objective evidence
so far, which points to Newport as the way to reduce the overcapacity.
Q85 Geraint Davies:
In terms of the job losses in the service directly, those are,
how many? Three hundred, is it?
Damian Green: Two
hundred and fifty.
Q86 Geraint Davies:
I think you did say earlier that on the reduction from 250 jobs
to leave something like 45, apart from the extra job losses, there
would be no impact for Wales on the same-day service, or language
or anything. You are saying to us now today that that massive
job reduction will have no impact at all?
Damian Green: The
job reduction is in application processing in which we have overcapacity.
On customer service, I am saying there is no effect on customers
in Wales or indeed the south-west of England who tend to use Newport
as well. That customer service will remain with everything you
would expect in a customer service in Wales, like the capacity
to process applications in Welsh as well. That will remain.
Q87 Geraint Davies:
My understanding was that the same-day service was under risk,
that people would be travelling and that they would not get the
four-hour turnaround. If you are going to take 250 jobs out and
leave 45 and have precisely the same services, it seems to me
very unlikely, but that is what you are saying. No change at all?
Damian Green: You
are confusing the two services. Sarah, do you want to explain
the difference between them?
Sarah Rapson: In
our Newport regional office, we have two things. One is the public
counter which services the same-day services and the second is
the back office processing, which is the applications that come
in through the post—from anywhere, frankly. We are not touching
the service that we provide from the same-day service perspective
at all. That will continue to be delivered by the same number
of people. The changes that we are making are on the back office
process, so the postal applications. If you have just booked your
holiday, you are about to go and you find your passport is out
of date and you need an emergency passport, you will be able to
go to Newport the same day and have a passport issued to you directly.
You will also be able to continue to have, if we call you in,
the interview conducted in Newport because at the moment we have
the two offices there. There is a misconception actually in the
media that Wales will end up without a passport office. We will
still offer a same-day service.
Q88 Geraint Davies:
There will be no reduction in the capacity for a same-day service
at all?
Sarah Rapson: None.
Q89 Geraint Davies:
What about the issue of deterrence and detection? We have heard
about how the interview process currently deployed in Newport
acts in terms of deterrence and detection of fraud and there are
fears that that will be reduced. Is that true?
Sarah Rapson: No.
We will continue to interview all first-time adult applicants,
which is what we currently do today. What we know is that it is
likely that the Newport office will need to conduct 7,000 interviews
per year and the capacity—the 45 jobs in the combined customer
service centre—will continue to do that level of interviews.
There is no change to the group that we interview with and therefore
no change to the security of the process.
Q90 Geraint Davies:
The previous people we talked to deploy the service. There is
a view there that, obviously, the service will be reduced. Are
you aware of the sensitivity across Wales that people basically
think Wales is being picked on again? The people who are living
in Wales—it is a sparse population—want to be able
to get down there, sort out their passports without the having
to go to England to go abroad type of thing.
Sarah Rapson: Yes.
Q91 Geraint Davies:
There is enormous sensitivity. They were treated in a discriminatory
and second-class way in this decision.
Damian Green: Absolutely,
there is sensitivity and it is based on a misapprehension—the
apprehension that you will not be able to get a passport or be
interviewed for a passport in Wales, and that is simply not true.
Q92 Chair: Minister,
actually can I say at this point, having had a passport stolen
and having to deal with passport offices in Newport and Victoria,
Newport were absolutely first-rate and bent over backwards to
help. Victoria were a disgrace and a shambles and I won't even
tell you why.
Sarah Rapson: I
am sorry to hear that.
Q93 Chair: They
were absolutely disgraceful. Anyway, the unions made a very interesting
point and one which I found entirely believable, which is that
the interview process deters people from making fraudulent passport
claims. They have also suggested that people who are about to
be interviewed may well cancel their interview if they are making
a fraudulent claim, which, again, I find very credible. But, surprisingly,
the number of people who cancel interviews is not published. Apparently,
that information is not released. Can you tell us why that is
and perhaps arrange for it to be released? It is something I think
we would be very interested in seeing.
Damian Green: I
do not think that is true. I think I have asked parliamentary
questions in my previous role as shadow Immigration Minister—certainly
about the number of people who were turned down at interview,
which remained at one for some years, and also the number of people
who withdrew. I am sure that is in the public domain, because
I think I have asked parliamentary questions about it.
Q94 Chair: The
union representatives behind you—you cannot see this—are
shaking their heads. Protocol does not allow us to bring them
back, but perhaps on that basis we would all be very interested
to know what the figures are for the number of people cancelling
interviews, if that is all right.
Damian Green: Off
the top of my head—[4]
Chair: There is no need
to do it off the top of your head. A written response for the
Committee would be excellent. Could I bring in Susan Elan Jones,
please?
Q95 Susan Elan Jones:
I would like to ask the Minister whether he has made a proper
assessment of his Department's obligations under the Welsh Language
Act, as indeed that Department is obliged to do under the terms
of the 1993 Act.
Damian Green: Absolutely,
and one of the reasons why we are keeping the Newport customer-facing
office open is so that we retain the capacity that is already
there to deal with applications in Welsh. Straightforwardly, that
will not change.
Q96 Susan Elan Jones:
How does the Minister then feel that a Conservative-Lib Dem administration
in Newport actually fears that this is not the case and they make
this point: "The IPS would have needed to completely revise
the service's Welsh Language Plan under the Act as Welsh speaking
customers' interests could be endangered with the rapid downsizing
or closure of the Newport passport office, jeopardising the capacity
and the quality of the service they receive in their own language,
given also that the other interview offices in Wales are marked
for closure"? If we add this to the submission from the Welsh
Language Board, which makes the point that there is no Welsh language
capacity in Liverpool, how does the Minister square those two
points with what he has just said—that he is actually not
breaching the terms of the 1993 Act?
Damian Green: It
is simply not the case that the Welsh language service will disappear
from Newport. That is a misconception.
Q97 Susan Elan Jones:
Not disappear, but how does it actually fulfil the full terms
of the Act?
Damian Green: It
does not change. In fact, the capacity to be interviewed around
Wales will be enhanced by making the service more mobile. Maybe
you want to talk about that.
Sarah Rapson: We
currently have seven sites in Wales where we offer the interviews
through our video interview service, which is through using the
buildings of local authorities or what have you. There will be
changes made to Newport, obviously, because we will consolidate
the two—the interview office and the public counter—into
our new building. We will continue to offer services in Swansea,
Aberystwyth and in Wrexham, and they will become a mobile service.
We will release the actual buildings, but we will have a mobile
team in those areas to deliver interviews. It may well be the
case that we will be spending a day in Wrexham and two days somewhere
else in a local town, which would be more convenient for customers.
We will be able to provide those interviews in a place that is
actually closer to where people live and where they want to go.
Chair: Thank you very
much. There is a lot of interest in this.
Q98 Guto Bebb:
I have a follow-up on the issue. Could you confirm this? You have
said that the customer service elements of the service in Newport
will continue, but the back office processing will happen somewhere
else, I take it?
Damian Green: Yes.
Sarah Rapson: Yes.
Q99 Guto Bebb:
Obviously, I am a Conservative Member, and we passed the 1993
Welsh Language Act, so I am very proud of that fact. But on that
basis, my understanding is that there are some elements of the
passport application process which cannot be done online through
the medium of Welsh and therefore there has to be a paper application.
If the back office work is being done outside Wales, will the
Welsh language applications have to go outside Wales, and how
will you deal with that from a staff point of view?
Sarah Rapson: Where
we get applications completed in Wales, we will process them in
Welsh. If we get an application form in Welsh, we will process
them at the—
Q100 Guto Bebb: Some
of the paperwork—some of the back office work—will
be undertaken in Newport, therefore?
Sarah Rapson: The
applications that we get in Welsh, which is where we will have
the Welsh speakers, will be processed in the Newport office.
Chair: Jonathan Edwards?
Jonathan Edwards: That
was my exact question.
Chair: In that case, Jessica
Morden.
Q101 Jessica Morden:
In the equality impact assessment that I think you shared with
the union yesterday, was not to have a Welsh service at all one
of the options that you were considering?
Sarah Rapson: No.
We have a legal requirement, but actually we also believe that
in the spirit of that we ought to be offering Welsh services.
There is no intention to reduce the level.
Q102 Jessica Morden:
It was quoted to us in previous evidence that yesterday, in the
equality impact assessment, one of the options was not to have
a Welsh service at all.
Sarah Rapson: It
is probably just for completeness, Ms Morden. There is no intention
to do that.
Chair: We are grateful
for that.
Q103 Stuart Andrew:
We heard an earlier submission from the leader of the council
that the loss of these jobs will obviously be quite significant
in Newport, particularly as Marks & Spencer and Next are moving
out, and actually the prospects of finding new work might be quite
difficult. Can you tell us what plans you have in place to help
people who may be losing their job to find alternative employment?
Damian Green: I
mentioned a bit in my opening statement. Maybe you will want to
elaborate on it. It is about what we are doing for our own staff.
Sarah Rapson: The
support that we provide for our people going forward is really
important—really, really important. So we will, over the
next period of months, provide training and support in terms of
CV writing, in terms of job application completion and interview
practice—some practical support for people. We will also
provide a counselling service, so emotional support for people
who are going through the change. I have some HR professionals
who will work in the local area with other government departments
or local employers to see what opportunities there might be for
people to be redeployed into. We will work with the local council
also to do that.
Chair: I do appreciate
that, but we are a bit short of time.
Q104 Stuart Andrew:
Can I just quickly ask this as well? In terms of the 45 jobs that
are remaining, was there any lobbying from the Secretary State
for Wales and from the leader of the council to keep those jobs?
Damian Green: The
Secretary of State for Wales has been vociferous in Newport's
defence, as has the leader of the council, as you would expect.
As I said, there was a thought that perhaps the customer-facing
office could go elsewhere in Wales, but having heard those representations
I have decided no, let's keep that in Newport, because the point
was made to me that shops may be closing down. One of the things
that the passport service can continue to do for Newport is to
provide something that means that tens of thousands of people
a year come into the centre of Newport and, particularly if they
are waiting for their passport, will eat, drink, shop. whatever.
That will continue, as has happened in the past.
Q105 Guto Bebb:
Just on the service for the rest of Wales, obviously the interview
offices are being changed in Wrexham, Aberystwyth and Swansea.
What is the current usage of those offices roughly?
Sarah Rapson: I
can tell you. The level of interviewing in the Newport interview
office is 7,000. The next biggest office is Swansea with 3,500.
This is interviews per year. Wrexham is 2.9, so 2,900. Aberystwyth
is just under 600. Then we have three other video interview sites.
Q106 Guto Bebb:
How will the mobile service work? Because obviously as a north
Wales member as well I am delighted that 45 jobs are being retained
in Newport, but for a north Wales individual looking for a passport,
it is not a convenient four-hour drive, to say the least. How
will the mobile service now work? How do you envisage that working?
Sarah Rapson: We
are going to spend the next few months working this up in a bit
more detail, but the intention is that we would release our own
fixed buildings—all the leases are up, by the way, in September
next year anyway—and we would make arrangements with other
local authorities or other Government Departments to rent office
space for parts of the week, and then our people would turn up
with the right equipment and the right sort of information to
be able to conduct the interview in that space. What it means
is that we do not have the costs of a fixed office on a full-time
basis. We are only paying for the time when we actually need it
and we can be in a physical place where people can easily get
to.
Q107 Chair: There
are costings we can see, are there, Minister, on this? It doesn't
sound very cheap to me, with all due respect—the public
sector renting a load of offices and turning up for a few days
at a time.
Damian Green: It
is better than the public sector leasing offices for years that
are not very well used. One of the points made to all Departments
at the moment is that the Government estate is vast, and a lot
of it is under-occupied. Part of the reason for this is to make
it easier, particularly in rural areas. You will know that every
second Tuesday the passport office will turn up, or something
like that, on the mobile library analogy. But, also, it means
that we can get out of expensive long-term leases for chunks of
buildings that may not be fully occupied.
Q108 Susan Elan Jones:
I want to ask about the implication for security. We have already
touched upon the fact that there will be a decision that will
actually reduce the number of staff by 80%. Do you accept concerns
that the closure of this office will have a detrimental effect
on the security of the British passport?
Damian Green: Absolutely
not. That clearly is one of our main drivers. The passport is
a hugely important and sensitive document and we have to keep
security as much as possible. It is a moving target, as Sarah
has already said. We will continue to interview every first-time
applicant, and the fraudsters and criminals who seek to exploit
the passport service don't stand still. They know that now, and
indeed we will provide the figures for how many are cancelling
interviews. They will move on to other parts of the passport service
and try to get into it that way. We are constantly changing our
defences because the criminals are constantly changing their attack
methods.
Q109 Owen Smith:
On the same theme, Minister, will these peripatetic staff be part
of the 35 in Newport?
Sarah Rapson: No.
Q110 Owen Smith:
These will be additional jobs?
Sarah Rapson: They
are not additional jobs because we have people working in Swansea,
Aberystwyth and Wrexham at the moment.
Q111 Owen Smith:
So those people are all going to keep their jobs but be peripatetic?
Sarah Rapson: It
is unlikely that we will keep all of those jobs. What we will
do over the next month is work out what the operating model needs
to be. Some of them may, but it is not going to be a big proportion
of that. It will be a handful.
Q112 Owen Smith:
A final question, if I may, to the Minister. There has obviously
been a long tradition, 40 years really, of jobs being moved from
London, and civil service jobs being effectively located in post-industrial
bits of Britain. In my constituency, there is the Mint, which
was put there in the '60s. Do you feel comfortable that you are
reversing that long tradition with this sort of decision?
Damian Green: I
am not, because I am not moving jobs anywhere. Unfortunately—
Q113 Owen Smith:
You are getting rid of the people.
Damian Green: Obviously,
desperately unfortunately for the people involved, jobs are just
going, but there are too many people employed in the passport
service. We are under a legal obligation to run the passport service
so that the fees cover the costs, so we cannot carry surplus staff
and surplus buildings.
Q114 Owen Smith:
I accept that you are not putting jobs there, but you are taking
jobs away. Did you not consider continuing that theme and moving
jobs from London to Newport?
Damian Green: The
exact equivalent of what is happening, what we propose to happen
in Newport, happened in London in 1988. There used to be a back
office—a processing office—in London as well and that
was closed down by the Government in 1988, just as the Glasgow
back office was closed down in 2008. As the passport service gets
more efficient and more can be done online, all the things that
efficient entities do, and the passport service is efficient and
well run, then over time you actually need fewer of these back
office processing centres.
Q115 Guto Bebb:
In terms of the financial implications of this decision, obviously,
we have been told that the passport office or the service has
to pay its way, but we have also been given evidence which indicates
that the service would be paying its way if it was not for the
fact that over the past few years something like £57 million
was spent on consultancy fees. I would be interested to know over
what period of time that £57 million was spent and what exactly
was the consultancy all about?
Damian Green: A
lot of the consultancy was about the ID card scheme, which is
no longer with us, thanks to this Government. I know Sarah has
the actual figures for consultancy, which, for those who think
governments waste money on consultants, are quite cheerful.
Q116 Chair: We
hope there is going to be no more of that, but I think we probably
haven't got the time to go into all the details.
Damian Green: It
is a 90% reduction this year. There used to be roughly 100. There
are now 11.
Q117 Guto Bebb:
With the stripping out of the consultancy fees, is the service
actually paying its way at this point in time?
Sarah Rapson: The
service will be cost recovery this financial year and next financial
year, so, yes. The passport fee covers the operational costs of
running the passport operation.
Q118 Jessica Morden:
Just two quick questions. Is it 45 or, as now seems to be quoted,
the figure of 35 jobs that you have got in mind for the customer-facing
office?
Sarah Rapson: We
have given a range, which is 30 to 45.
Q119 Jessica Morden:
So it could be as low as 30?
Sarah Rapson: It
could be as low as 30.
Q120 Jessica Morden:
Would you be willing to provide the Committee written evidence
of how you can provide counter staff security, interview, fraud,
processing, printing and a Welsh service within that range of
30 to 45 jobs? Would you be willing to provide that to us as written
evidence?
Damian Green: Certainly,
yes.[5]
Sarah Rapson: Yes.
Q121 Jessica Morden:
Whilst maintaining exactly the same service for the people of
Wales, which has obviously been promised today. Secondly, do you
appreciate that, with projects like St Athan, the barrage, and
the fact we do not know what is going to happen about electrification
of the railways, we are losing a prison and there is a proposed
prison in north Wales, Wales needs some positive news from the
Government, given the last couple of months, and that saving the
passport office in Newport would be one way in order to deliver
this?
Damian Green: As
I said, I always object to the phrase that the passport office
in Newport is closing down, because it isn't. The people of Wales
will still be able to get passports, as they always have done,
from Newport. This is not the place to rehearse the macro-economic
argument, but there is no money. The public sector in this country
is having to shrink. I know the Secretary of State for Wales is
working extremely hard both within Government and outside to make
sure that the private sector in Wales becomes even more dynamic
so that we can have a widely based, sustainable, economic recovery
in Wales, as we seek to do for the rest of the United Kingdom.
Q122 Jonathan Edwards:
Building on Mr Smith's points in terms of savings, would not consolidating
in Newport be more cost-effective for the service as, obviously,
operational costs will be less? In terms of overcapacity—this
is about reducing capacity in the service—would it not be
better to share the pain across the nations and regions of the
UK rather than just targeting Newport solely?
Damian Green: One
of the options—it is in your written pack—was that
we looked at the prospect of, if you like, slicing a bit off everywhere,
and the costs, the wasted money on keeping all those buildings,
were colossal.
Sarah Rapson: It
is £1.9 million a year.
Damian Green: It
is £20 million over 10 years. That option just does not stack
up economically.
Q123 Chair: Minister,
thank you very much for coming along today. We have asked for
a little bit of further evidence from you in written form and
we are going to be publishing a report quite soon on this. It
would help us greatly if you were able to get us the information
we have agreed the Home Office should be able to supply.
Damian Green: Okay,
we will do that.
Chair: Thank you very
much indeed for coming along.
2 See Ev 48 Back
3
See Ev 48 Back
4
See Ev 49 Back
5
See Ev 49 Back
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