§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate he has made of the total savings to public funds of the Private Finance Initiative contract for Passport Agency contracts by comparison with a non-Private Finance Initiative alternative. [49651]
§ Beverley HughesThe original business case for replacing the obsolete passport production system (PIMIS) and improve the efficiency, effectiveness and security of the passport document compared a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) solution with non-PFI which resulted in the PFI solution being £32 million cheaper to public funds over the proposed 10 years of any system:
£ million Upgrade to digital in-house system 371 PFI solution 339 Since the business case was completed in July 1997 there have been many changes to the Agency, with major initiatives including modernisation, anti-fraud and customer service improvements. The flexibility within the PFI contract has allowed the Agency to drive forward on these initiatives in the most economical fashion calling on our private sector partners' expertise and achieving improvements through a controlled and negotiated contract change control process.
Now that the PFI solution is fully in place at all seven passport offices an efficiency strategy for the remaining years of the contract is being formulated with efficiencies expected to be realised for financial year 2002–03 onwards.