§ Mr. CohenTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what will be the purpose of the computerised slip inside the back cover of the new common format European passport; what information stored on the strip is envisaged as being interchangeable between member states; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. RentonThe machine-readable element of the new British passport in the European Community common format will contain the following information which will be readable by the human eye as well as by optical character recognition equipment :
- (a) a letter identifying the document as a passport;
- (b) the number and date of expiry;
- (c) internationally agreed letters identifying the country of issue and the nationality of the holder;
- (d) the holder's name, date of birth and sex;
- (e) check digits calculated according to a published formula, which enable the machine reader to confirm that it has read the document correctly.
The machine-readable format should help to speed the movement of travellers through immigration controls where passport-reading equipment is installed.
There are already circumstances, for example when there may be doubts about the genuineness of a passport, when the factual information that has been recorded on the document may be passed to the authorities of another country, but we have no plans to use the new method of issue to facilitate the routine exchange of information between member states.