HM Passport Office: Backlogs

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer to the Question in the other place. I start with an anecdote: last Monday, a friend of mine showed me a picture of an 11 year-old Ukrainian boy in Wandsworth in his brand-new school uniform. He started at Southfields Academy, in Wandsworth, on Monday; I understand that so far it is going very well. He was standing there, proud as punch, in his new school uniform. My friend said that Wandsworth Borough Council has been very helpful in setting up all the various measures they had to put in place to host this family. I will not try to claim that as a Labour success, given that it happened only on Monday.

I thank the hard-working staff at the Home Office for trying to deal with this backlog. We believe that this is a problem of leadership and planning, not of the staff themselves. We also believe that the surge in applications for passports was wholly predictable. Too often, we have to come to this House to ask about delays—on passports, on Ukraine visas and on asylum claims, including those of Afghan interpreters, for example. The costs to the people involved in this application process are difficult to describe because of the extremity of the situation in which they find themselves. Does the Minister believe that the management and leadership process in the Home Office is fit to deal with the current shortcomings and future requirements that will be made of it?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

First, I join the noble Lord in being happy about his story of the Ukrainian schoolboy standing proudly in his school uniform on Monday. I praise the noble Lord for not trying to claim it as a Labour victory; whenever these things happen, we are all happy that they turned out well.

It might be helpful to outline the context in which we find ourselves. As I said, HMPO processes 7 million passport applications in a normal year. Due to Covid, only 4 million applied in 2020 and 5 million in 2021. That means that more than 5 million people delayed applying for a British passport throughout 2020 and 2021. Therefore, the unprecedented figure of 9.5 million applications is forecast for 2022.

As I said, some of the problems with phone lines are completely unacceptable, but I think HMPO staff have performed to their best. In this context, 90% of applications being issued within six weeks, between January and March this year, is an excellent figure. In fact, over 98% were processed within a 10-week timeframe, but I am not going to stand and deny that there have been snags in the system. As I outlined, we are working very hard to resolve them.