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Passports: Personal Interviews

My Lords, I warmly congratulate my noble friend on raising this matter and giving your Lordships an opportunity to consider an important development, the introduction of passport interview offices, at which all first-time applicants are to be interviewed. I understood that that was to start next month, although my noble friend said that the process would be phased. When the Minister replies, we look forward to hearing over what period that will happen, how it is to be decided what offices will be opened, in what order and on what dates, and how people will know in advance when they apply for a passport that they will be subjected to an interview. I wonder whether it is feasible to adhere to anything like the original timetable, in the light of my noble friend's observations about the recruitment of the workers who will process the interviews and the large number who still have to be taken on compared with the complement needed to conduct all the interviews. My noble friend referred particularly to the problems that would be encountered by people in remote areas, and to what is likely to happen once there is a requirement for biometric identifiers, such as a digitised fingerprint or iris scan also taken from applicants, to be included in the passport. I approve of the proposal to conduct interviews over a webcam; that is useful as far as it goes but, if there are doubts about the 69 offices and the personnel, there are still more unanswered questions about the ““partner organisations”” which are to be engaged to run the remote webcam links. In an area such as Anglesey and north Gwynedd, for instance, we have no idea how many remote facilities there will be, or where they are to be located. If branch post offices were allowed to bid for the provision of those services, that could provide them with an additional income, especially for those otherwise threatened with closure. However, my noble friend sent me a note to tell me that, according to an answer given to our honourable friend Danny Alexander, the post offices are to be prohibited from competing, for some reason. That seems a bizarre decision and I would like the Minister to explain it, because it could be the way to keep some post offices alive in rural areas that would otherwise have to close. My noble friend has also drawn attention to how fingerprints or any other biometric data will be taken when this information has to be digitised and added to the passport. It would be extremely foolish to set up remote facilities if, in a few years, perhaps when we join the Schengen system or find other ways of exchanging immigration data with other EU countries, we have to close them all down and require applicants to report to the main offices, where the biometrics can be technically more easily collected. We are owed some explanation about that from the Minister. Of course, as my noble friend has also pointed out, that is connected with the ID cards that are coming down the track. If it were the intention to establish a network of local offices to collect the biometrics needed for that purpose, would that network take over from the remote facilities now being planned for passports alone? Alternatively, as my noble friend hinted, will the passport offices be expanded to undertake the work for the ID cards when they come into operation? To conform with US requirements, all new EU passports are required to include a digitised photograph, which will be stored in a chip. Will that be taken via the webcam? If so, will the Minister be good enough to explain how that technology works? I have never heard of such a facility being available. In the recent report by the European Union Sub-Committee F on the Schengen Information System II, reference is made to the problem of lost and stolen passports, which are to be recorded on that system. The evidence given to the sub-committee was that there were 13.7 million lost or stolen passports in the EU in 2006 recorded on the existing Schengen system. In the same year, the Identity and Passport Service processed 291,000 reports of lost or stolen passports in this country and issued 298,000 replacements. As far as I can see, the proposed system does not afford any protection against the misuse of those documents. Will the Minister comment on that? What are we doing this for? Is it going to give us some protection against the misuse of lost or stolen passports, and if so how does that work? My noble friend is naturally concerned about the civil liberties implications of the interviews and of the biometrics that are to be collected later. What data protection regime applies to these operations? Have the Government asked the Information Commissioner to comment on those provisions? How will the interviews be stored, and for how long will the videos be retained and by whom, under what authority? Will that be under the passport service, or will some separate authority hold the DVD or whatever medium is chosen for the interviews? What guarantee does the applicant have that in the future the Government are not going to make the recordings available to other public bodies, such as Revenue and Customs or local police forces? As I understand it, the European Union has already agreed to standards that are to be applied for fingerprints for passports and identity cards used for travel purposes. Have we any scope for national decision-making on those matters, or when the time comes for us to process fingerprints for passports are we bound to follow the EU rules that have already been enacted? As the Minister is no doubt aware from his own correspondence, there is dissatisfaction with the location of many of the 69 offices. The Lib Dem AM for South Wales, Peter Black, has objected to the location of the office in Swansea because it is difficult for people to access without a car: "““This is a badly thought-out location … Public transport to the Enterprise Park is neither plentiful, or cheap””." He asked why the office could not have been located in the centre of Swansea. I generalise from that and say that it appears to me that the location of the offices has been decided by someone in Whitehall without any local consultation whatever. I refer the Minister to the remarks made by my honourable friend the Member for Taunton last week about the absence of any office in the county town of Somerset, Taunton. How many people from Taunton will have to travel to Yeovil, Bristol, Exeter or Barnstaple? If the number is very much larger than that quoted by my noble friend, for example, for Anglesey and north Gwynedd, why cannot it have a webcam? Is it impossible to put one in Taunton so people do not have the hassle and expense of travelling all that distance? Will the Minister say more about the methodology of deciding what towns or villages will have the facility of the webcam? In Anglesey, will there be one only in Holyhead, or will there be one in Llangefni, Amlwch, Rhoscolyn, or Trearddur Bay? It is important for people in those areas to be told whether they will have to travel a long distance. My noble friend has pointed out that no help will be given to people, even if they are on benefits, to undertake those journeys. Does not the noble Lord consider it unjust to heap these additional expenses on them when the cost of getting a passport is already £65 and rising? Does he think that it is fair to people with children, in particular, who will need to accompany the children to the interview and will face an even larger burden? It appears to me that there has been inadequate consultation on these proposals. As there must inevitably be a delay before they are put into operation, the Government could make a virtue of necessity and use the delay to improve the network with a view to reducing the inconvenience and expense to which they are about to subject millions of our citizens.