Passports (Hansard, 2 July 1987)

§ Mr. Hurd

Continuing heavy demand added to severe disruption to the passport-issuing process by industrial action has led to the delays currently experienced. These vary across the regional offices with current delay times in dealing with non-urgent applications as follows:

	Weeks
London	12
Newport	10
Glasgow	8
Liverpool	6
Peterborough	5

At the small Belfast office, which caters for Northern Ireland residents, the normal turnround time of one week is being maintained.

Special measures have been taken to help those with an urgent need to travel where applications are locked in the system. These include:

(1) the recruitment of additional casual staff (for the hardest pressed offices virtually doubling 1986 levels);
(2) overtime working by non-striking staff;
(3) giving priority to personal callers with an urgent need to travel;
(4) the grant of short-term extensions to expired passports, free of charge, for personal callers;
(5) issuing emergency travel documents to personal callers whose postal applications cannot readily be traced.

In addition, Governments of countries to which British citizens travel most frequently have been approached and 127W invited exceptionally to accept travellers using out-of-date passports. To date the following countries have agreed to accept uncancelled United Kingdom passports which expired within the last five years:

United States of America	until 29 September 1987
New Zealand	until 31 August 1987
Hong Kong	until further notice

They have also agreed, exceptionally and for the same periods, to accept travellers using British Visitors Passports. These passports, which are available from the 1,500 main post offices throughout Britain, are of course already accepted by all countries in Western Europe.

Information about these developments is being made available through the travel trade, on Prestel, through the media and through recorded telephone messages at the London passport office.

People whose applications for 10-year passports have been delayed and who have therefore to obtain a BVP from a post office shortly before they are due to travel will be able to obtain a refund of the BVP fee later if the following criteria arc met:

(1) the standard passport application must have been properly completed and accompanied by the necessary documents, fee and photograhs;

(ii) it must have been lodged in good time and at least four weeks before the stated travel date as requested in passport application forms;

(iii) the application for the British visitor's passport was made not more than a week before the date of travel indicated on the standard passport application.

Inquiries about refunds should be addressed to the passport office which handled the standard passport application and should be accompanied by the British visitor's passport and the number and date of issue of the standard passport or the date on which the application was submitted if the standard passport has still not been received. It is unlikely that passport offices will be able to deal with requests for refunds before the end of September.

In the longer term, arrangements are in hand to disperse work on postal applications now done in London to an enlarged office in Glasgow. This will enable the London passport office to concentrate its attention on applications lodged at the public counter for which the demand is heavy. Computerisation of the entire passport-issuing and record-keeping operation in the United Kingdom is due to begin in 1988 and over the next three years each of the six passport offices will be computerised. By enabling the passport department to give a faster service to all its customers computerisation should help to reduce substantially the problems currently being experienced during periods of peak demand.