5 Applications from overseas
70. Research published by the Home Office in November
2012[72] stated that,
although there were difficulties in producing accurate estimates,
there were around 4.5 to 5.5 million British citizens or UK-born
people living abroad. The World Bank estimated there were 4.7
million UK emigrants (around 7.5 per cent of the UK population)
living abroad. They report the largest stocks of UK-born, based
abroad, to be living in Australia, the USA, Canada, Spain, Ireland,
New Zealand, France and Germany, as shown in Table 5:Table
5: Top ten countries for stocks of UK-born citizens resident abroad
| Country of residence
| Residence stocks of UK-born citizens
|
| Australia | 1,208,000
|
| USA | 701,000
|
| Canada | 675,000
|
| Spain |
411,000 |
| Ireland | 397,000
|
| New Zealand | 268,000
|
| France | 173,000
|
| Germany
| 155,000
|
| Netherlands | 46,000
|
| Philippines | 42,000
|
Source: Extracted from Emigration from the UK,
Second Edition, Research Report 68, November 2012, Home Office
The decision to move the processing
of overseas applications to the UK
71. The idea to transfer the responsibility for processing
overseas applications for passports to the UK for approximately
5 million UK citizens was first proposed in a report by the National
Audit Office in November 2005. The report suggested that most
other comparable countries had already repatriated their passport
service to their home countries, in part to improve security,
but also recognising that this is a more cost effective service
for applicants. It clearly acknowledged that these repatriated
services were often slower than the local services they replaced.[73]
The Committee of Public Accounts supported this proposal in April
2006:
Issuing passports at over 100 Posts is inefficient
and exposes the Department to increasing risks from fraudulent
applications. The Department should analyse the costs and benefits
of repatriating large elements of passport work to take advantage
of the economies of scale and quality assurance arrangements of
the United Kingdom Passport Service. Consolidating its passport
issuing service in fewer locations would also aid the Department
in reducing inconsistencies in security checking, and in dealing
with the technical complexities in moving to biometric passports.[74]
72. On 28 April 2009, the Identity and Passport Service
(IPS) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) signed a Memorandum
of Understanding for the integration of UK and overseas passport
issuing operations. At the time, it was expected that full integration
would be achieved by 2014-15.[75]
On 1 April 2011, IPS officially took responsibility from the FCO
for UK passports issued overseas.[76]
The Home Office's 2013-14 Annual Report and Accounts highlighted
that the process of repatriation had concluded:
In partnership with the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office, HM Passport Office completed the transfer of responsibility
for passport applications from British nationals overseas and
now serves an additional 390,000 customers annually, as the single
UK passport issuer. Following the reduction in fee for domestic
UK applications in 2012, HM Passport Office announced a fee reduction
for its overseas customers, which took effect on 7 April 2014.
The reduction, as a result of the efficiency savings made by bringing
the processing and issuing of overseas passports back to the UK,
is a further step in providing the fee payer better value for
money.[77]
The impact on HMPO
73. Given the similarities between the increase in
demand and the number of expected overseas applications coming
into the system—both figures are in the region of 350,000—we
pressed Paul Pugh as to whether the current delays had been caused
by the decision to transfer overseas applications back to the
UK. He said:
It important to understand the kind of history
of the overseas work. I think the figures that you are referring
to are a bit like comparing apples and pears. We knew when we
were preparing to take over the overseas work that we would need
additional capacity to deal with that work. That was planned for,
that was built into the organisation and indeed we recruited a
substantial number of staff and trained them specifically in expertise
of overseas work to make sure that that could be dealt with.
He explained the difference between domestic work,
which is high volume but broadly very consistent, and overseas
work, which is low volume and highly variable, depending upon
which country people were applying from. Additionally, he explained
that in the transition HMPO found that improvements in the information
for customers were required to make sure the right information
was received the first time. To enable this, staff had to develop
their familiarity so that HMPO could "get to a steady state
on the overseas work". He added that the way that an overseas
case is processed will differ very significantly depending on
the country, depending on the level of risk and depending on the
complexity of the application, but he expected over the next few
months for the Agency to get to a position where it would be able
to see the great majority of straightforward properly completed
overseas applications being turned around in no more than four
to six weeks.[78]
Interaction with the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office
74. On 5 June, the same day that passport delays
were first raised in the House of Commons, a written ministerial
statement was made by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Entitled
"Support for British Nationals Overseas" it described
the achievements of the 2013-16 FCO Consular Strategy. It states
"One year on, the FCO has already delivered significant improvements
to the services received by our consular customers across the
world", and cites positively that "In March 2014, we
completed the full transfer of all responsibility for passport
applications, decisions and the issuing of documents to Her Majesty's
Passport Office (HMPO), who now offer [an] online passport application
service to 4 million British nationals overseas, and have reduced
the cost of replacing or renewing passports for British nationals
overseas by 35% (from April 2014)".[79]
75. The Foreign Affairs Committee have been undertaking
an inquiry into FCO Consular Services, where the decision to transfer
responsibility for overseas passports has also been challenged.
That Committee asked former British Ambassadors whether it was
a good decision to repatriate responsibility for passports to
the UK and the Home Office. Sir Michael Arthur KCMG, said, "It
was unpopular in Germany. A lot of Germans felt that the distance
made it more difficult to get a passport. … It is a service
that is provided postally. Logically, it is not hugely different
to do it in the UK than overseas, but it is not popular".[80]
76. The
initial decision for overseas applications was taken by Ministers
in 2009 and confirmed by the current Government in 2011. This
was part of the regrettable line of removing overseas posts. The
Committee have consistently been against the reduction in overseas
resources. Whatever the reason for transferring responsibilities
for processing overseas passport applications from the FCO to
HMPO, it is clear that this is a mistake. Regardless of whether
the overseas production of UK passports was more expensive than
in comparable countries, or could have been produced more efficiently
in the UK, UK citizens should be able to achieve a standard level
of service. HMPO's own statistics show that in the current financial
year to date, only 13% of applications from overseas have been
dealt with within the three-week target. Successive Ministers
over the last 29 years from all administrations have been too
focused on their departmental budgets, rather than the fact that
providing a passport is a service, the cost of which is paid for
by UK citizens.
77. The management
of the transfer has been poorly handled. HMPO say that further
work is required for them to get to a steady state in overseas
work, whilst the FCO say that on transition risk had been managed.
This contradiction highlights that the appropriate questions about
business resilience were not being asked. Furthermore, the transition
was completed in April 2014, which meant that this year HMPO was
approaching its annual peak in demand with full responsibility
for overseas applications for the first time. We believe it would
have been far better to manage the transition so that responsibility
was passed over when there was low demand, and then as demand
increased this could be managed more effectively. In the meantime
the Home Office have created emergency travel documents which
British citizens should be able to pay for in the overseas posts
until the crisis has passed as these will be quicker and more
secure.
72 Emigration from the UK,
Second Edition, Research Report 68, November 2012, Home Office,
p18 Back
73
Consular Services to British Nationals, Report by the Comptroller
and Auditor General, HC 594, Session 2005-2006, 24 November 2005,
para 2.19 Back
74
Consular Services to British Nationals, Public Accounts Committee,
HC 813, Session 2005-06, p5 Back
75
Identity and Passport Service
Annual Report and Accounts 2008-09, HC 629, p51 Back
76
Identity and Passport Service
Annual Report and Accounts 2010-11, HC 1077, p6 Back
77
Home Office Annual Report
and Accounts 2013-2014, HC 21, p16 Back
78
Q 128-129 Back
79
HC Deb, 5 June 2014, col 14WS Back
80
Foreign Affairs Committee oral evidence, FCO Consular Services,
25 February 2014, Q 121 Back
|
