§ Mr. BurstowTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what action he is taking to reduce passport fraud. [125073]
§ Beverley HughesAs indicated in its 2003–08 Corporate and Business Plan, the UK Passport Service is taking forward a range of initiatives to reduce passport fraud through improved fraud detection and prevention. These include:
- establishing from December this year a new more comprehensive database for the recording and dissemination of lost, stolen and recovered passport information;
- exploring the benefits of using private sector and other Government databases in establishing identity;
- introducing secure delivery for the despatch of all passports;
- increasing the professionalism of its fraud investigation capability through the creation of fraud and intelligence units in each of its offices, and strengthening training and support for these units;
- developing its IT systems to undertake more automatic checks, to better link passport records to an individual, and to identify passport fraud;
- investigating the use of biometrics to improve the security of the passport book;
- changing the law to make passport fraud offences arrestable, and by creating a new offence relating to being in possession or control of false identity documents, without reasonable cause; and
- actively working with law enforcement agencies to apprehend, disrupt and dismantle the activities of those involved in passport fraud.
These initiatives build on the successful implementation of a number of anti-fraud measures, including the prevention of fraudulent applications using the identity of dead children, and strengthening of the counter-signatory requirement for passport applications.