The Future of the Newport Passport Office

NPO 006

Written evidence from William Graham AM (Conservative AM for South Wales East)

1. The Welsh Conservatives Group in the National Assembly for Wales have expressed united opposition to the closure of Newport Passport Office, with eleven of the Group's Assembly Members signing a Statement of Opinion calling on the UK Government to reverse the proposal.
 (Written Statement of Opinion -OPIN 2010-0057 - Tabled -11/10/10 [1] )
 
Conservative Councillors who lead Newport City Council have unanimously joined the campaign against the closure.

2. The Passport Office closure has the potential to cause considerable reductions in revenue for small businesses operating in Newport City Centre. The City Centre has suffered recently as a number of retailers have opted to leave the location on favour of out-of-town retail parks. In October, Marks & Spencer announced it would be moving location to the Newport Retail Park in Spytty, Newport transferring 70 staff in early 2012. Other major retailers to have announced plans to leave the City Centre in 2011 include Next and Monsoon.  The number of empty business premises in Newport is above the national average, and the closure of the Passport Office will further exacerbate the problem.

3. Following the decline in heavy industry, the Civil Service has become Newport's biggest employer. According to Newport City Council Figures, between 3,000 and 4,000 civil servants work in the City [2] . In addition to the Passport Office, the National Statistics Office (1,300 jobs), Intellectual Property Office (1,000 jobs) and HM Prison Service (500 jobs) are major employers [3] .  Having acquired a reputation for expertise in administering public services, it may harm the City's prospects of gaining jobs from Government departments that are earmarked for relocation to be seen to be cutting public jobs. There is the prospect of further job losses at the other civil service employers in the City, while weak growth in the private sector and one of the lowest rates of business start-ups in the UK mean that the private sector is unlikely to be able to employ those people previously employed in the civil service in the short to medium term. The City experienced a net loss of 6,700 jobs in the private sector between 1998-2008 [4] despite advertising campaigns highlighting the quality of office space available in Newport.

4. Local communities have expressed considerable opposition to the proposed changes. The local newspaper based in Newport, The South Wales Argus, has organised a petition against the closure attracting 20,000 individual signatories. On Saturday 16th October, over 1,000 people marched through Newport in protest culminating in a rally in John Frost Square.

5. The proposed reduction in staffing levels will leave Wales as the only nation of the United Kingdom not to have a large Passport Office. Constituents have contacted my office expressing concern that they will have to travel to London to access a same day Passport service. My correspondents have also highlighted the inequity of Newport suffering 250 job losses when this figure could have been reduced if the cuts burden had been spread more evenly between the Identity and Passport Services’ other regional offices at Liverpool, Belfast, Peterborough and Durham.

8 November 2010