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Passports: Personal Interviews

asked Her Majesty’s Government whether they will review the introduction of personal interviews for first-time adult passport applicants. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I appreciate the opportunity to draw up certain matters causing concern regarding the personal passport interview offices. The House might not be quite as full as it has been earlier this week, but I am sure that those who are here and those who might read in Hansard the report of the debate will realise that this is an important matter. Noble Lords will be aware that a number of Questions for Written Answer on it have been answered; it has also been raised on the Floor of the House in shorter questions. Clearly, the proposals relate not only to passports but also to the proposed plans for identity cards. The steps taken regarding passports and the network to be established will ease the way for the introduction of identity cards. We have opposed ID cards on the Liberal Democrat Benches, believing that the cost could soar to many billions and that the money could be far better spent—partly, on more and better policing. That is still our position, but the Government in their wisdom or otherwise press on. With my best regards to the Conservative Party, I am not quite sure where it stands on the introduction of ID cards. The proposal is that we have 69 passport interview offices whose purpose will be to verify the identity of the individual applicants. Every adult making the first application will be required to have a personal interview. There will be 69 full offices dealing with about 600,000 applicants a year; they will have200 interview positions and a staff of about 600. My first concern is about staffing. Following the release of an IPS document of May 2006, an Answer by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, on 12 October stated that, "““454 staff have been recruited and a campaign to fill the remaining 151 positions has started””.—[Official Report, 12/10/06; col. 360.]" Yet in a Written Answer from the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, on 6 March—that is only a week ago—I was told that only 55 people had been recruited and offered work. What has happened to the missing 400? Was the recruiting for the remaining151 posts completely unsuccessful? We know that the posts were advertised last summer; presumably those appointed, be it 55 or 500, have received salaries, while not one of the 69 new offices is functioning at present. In addition, there is the expense of office accommodation and equipment; this must have been paid for. We must know the cost of these developments. I know from the Written Answer only last week that the salaries for the55 already appointed amounted to some £607,000—just over £0.5 million—and the offices have not yet been opened. My second concern relates to those applicants who live at a distance from the nearest passport interview office. We are told that there will be a remote facility in 22 areas where interviews will be conducted by webcam. The nature of these interviews also causes me concern. To begin with, they will require only facial recognition—a photograph will be needed. Gone for the time being are the original requirements for fingerprints and iris scans, but only for the time being. In the next two years, as the centres are used for identity card purposes, this biometric detail will be needed. How is it possible by webcam to obtain fingerprints or iris scans? Eventually will not the remote areas, if they are to fulfil their function, need to be complete personal interview offices, or have we devised a new sort of webcam that the rest of the world knows nothing about? Noble Lords were told by the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General on 2 February 2006 that the location of the offices had been designated such that the average travelling time for all one-way journeys was 19 minutes. I suggest that you cannot calculate an average in that way. If you live in Westminster there might be an office just three minutes down the road; if you live on the Western Isles or the Isle of Skye or the Orkneys and Shetlands it will take a wee bit longer than an average of19 minutes. Tell that to the people in the Western Isles or the Lleyn Peninsula. But even on 12 October 2006 we were told that fewer than 4,000 people were likely to be more than an hour away. I question that. We were also told that the cost for travel would be at the most £3 to £4. Have the Government any idea for someone without his own private transport of the frequency of public transport in our rural areas? In some areas, if you miss the bus this Wednesday you may have to wait until next Wednesday to get the next bus—or if the ferry for some reason keeps an island isolated, you can be isolated yourself for two or three days. The designation of remote areas itself leaves something to be desired. Aberystwyth, with 1,223 applicants last year, has a full office. Anglesey and north Gwynedd, with 1,265 applicants—more than Aberystwyth—is designated a remote area and has no office. There are other similar examples. What are the criteria when there can be such disparity regarding the provision of these offices? Why are the Government refusing to help with the travel costs of those who have to go to these offices? Many of the first-time applicants for passports are youngsters on low incomes, or students at technical colleges or universities with low incomes, yet, in some places, they will be paying far more than £3 or £4 in order to reach a passport interview office. Is it not possible to give some help to them? I would ask—this is where my Welshness comes out—that where, in a Welsh community, there is need for passport interviews in the Welsh language that that provision be made certain. In answering, the Minister might be able to tell us when the network of offices and interview arrangements will be underway. Last year, we were told that by the autumn of 2006 the offices would be functioning. At the beginning of 2007 we were told that it would be April 2007. This is a repetition of things we have said in the Chamber regarding other proposals; they seem to dragging their feet, they seem to be delayed, they seem to be behind time on these things—Have the new applicants, the adults, who are supposed to have a personal interview, been informed of the starting date and the new proposals for applying for passports? Yesterday I went on the internet and found the following information: "““The requirement to attend an interview is to be introduced gradually, starting with a limited service in April, and not all first-time adult customers””—" called ““customers”” there— "““will be called for an interview initially””." Neither will they have a choice of interview offices. This approach is gradual: it is as if in Wales we had decided that we would remove travelling on the left-hand side of our roads to travelling on the right-hand side but that we would do it gradually by taking the heavy trucks first, then the buses, the cars. You either do a thing properly or not at all. It is unfair to ask some people but not others to attend a personal interview. If I live in Swansea, where there is going to be a new passport interview office, they might say, ““You have to come for a personal interview, but perhaps not if you live in Aberystwyth””. Does this not mean that, contrary to what we have heard before, the whole network is not ready? Does it not mean that they are just discriminating between people? And it does involve discrimination to say that one person should come for a personal interview and another does not have to perhaps because of their location or, more worryingly, their background or surname. How are the applicants to be chosen? We were informed last year, again in an Answer from the Minister, that the interview will take 10 to20 minutes , but yesterday I was told that the interview will take about 30 minutes and will be conducted—this is on the internet—““in a friendly manner””. I am delighted that it will be conducted in a friendly manner; that is some consolation. But very different numbers of appointments are possible in 10 or 30 minutes and the nature of an interview lasting 30 minutes is different from an interview lasting 10 minutes. A person may feel that they have other concerns but have to remember that they were allowed only 10 minutes and not30 minutes. The assurance we need is that this whole scheme, if it needs to be introduced at all—especially the identity card element—has been thought through thoroughly, is fair to everyone and can be effective. From what I have learnt, I do not think that that is the case.