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Passports: Personal Interviews

My Lords, although the debate has not been well attended, noble Lords have contributed to an interesting discussion. I am most grateful for the contributions that have been made, although noble Lords will not expect me to agree with everything that has been said. I cannot agree with the suggestion that the Government should review their policy on the introduction of interviews for first-time passport applicants. It is an important process. As noble Lords will know, the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has introduced many measures to improve the security of the passport, including the successful introduction of the e-passport last year. The current process of applying for a passport by post dates from times when identity fraud, as we all accept, was not a widespread problem, there was no serious threat from international terrorism, and illegal immigration was rare. As one can apply by post, the identity criminal or terrorist remains hidden from view while the application form and photographs they have sent in are examined. The photograph sent in might, in fact, be a person outside the United Kingdom seeking to enter illegally. It might be the intended passport holder’s own photograph, but with an application form showing the personal details of an innocent victim whose identity he is trying to steal. The application might be one of several the terrorist or criminal is submitting in different identities. If this attempt at fraud is detected, they can always try again. The Identity and Passport Service has various ways of detecting frau of which your Lordships would not expect me to give graphic details. But, given the increasing threat of identity fraud and theft, it is plain common sense for the Identity and Passport Service to check that a person really exists simply by seeing him or her. It is a pretty basic and fundamental concept. Without seeing the applicant in person, however, the IPS cannot be certain that it is issuing passports to the right people. What is certain is that more and more people are attempting to get passports in false identities. It is also hardly a radical approach, as the United Kingdom is currently one of very few western countries that do not require an in-person first-time passport application; those that do not include Estonia, Macau, Malaysia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. I argue that we must get into the real, modern world; if we do not, the problems of identity theft can only multiply in a form that will be increasingly hard to check. The key benefits of the changes will be to help us fight passport fraud and forgery, help protect the UK and its people from identity theft and ensure that the British passport stays one of the most secure and respected in the world. The introduction of passport application interviews will mean that all adult customers applying for a passport for the first time must attend an interview with the IPS in person to confirm their identity. I stress that these changes do not currently apply to people wanting to renew their existing passport. The requirement for an interview will apply only to those adults who have never previously held a British passport in their own name. This is estimated to affect approximately 609,000 customers per year. Many questions were asked during the debate and I will endeavour to focus on those towards the conclusion of my comments. One recurring theme related to the interview process. What has been arranged is that normally a 30-minute slot will be provided for an interview; the interview may be as short as 10 minutes and perhaps take a maximum of 20 minutes. At the interview, customers will be asked basic information about themselves—not deeply private information, but information only they will know that can be checked to confirm their identity. I should make it clear that people applying for passports will not have to give any more information than they do now. The application forms will be unchanged and the interview is not about gathering information. The information used in the interview will be deleted from IPS records shortly after the passport is issued. The requirement to attend an interview will be introduced gradually, as noble Lords have noted, and the Government will be making further information available about this in another place later this month. The IPS is opening 69 local interview offices across the United Kingdom and the majority of customers will be within 60 minutes’ travelling time of an office from either their home or workplace. The network of 69 interview offices has been designed to provide an interview office within 15 minutes’ travelling time via public or personal transport for just over half of the population of the UK. More than 95 per cent of the population will live within an hour’s travelling time via public or personal transport of an interview office. The interview offices will not be new passport offices. They will be used only to conduct interviews and will not handle general inquiries or take delivery of passport applications. The size of offices is related to the estimated number of interviews to be carried out at each location. Most will have three interview positions or fewer and some will not be open every weekday, but all will be open on Saturdays. For each day that an office is open, it will open at 8 am and close at 6 pm, except for the seven smallest offices which will only open two half-days per week. Deciding on the location of the new offices was a painstaking task, needing to balance customers’ wishes for the lowest possible additional increase to the passport fee and convenient locations. Customer research was carried out in March and April 2004 and again in July 2005. The results of both surveys showed that the majority of respondents felt that a one-way journey of approximately 20 miles or approximately half an hour once every 10 years was reasonable. This research also identified that in more rural parts of the United Kingdom this expectation increased to approximately 40 miles or approximately one hour’s travelling time. The IPS used mapping software and census data to model an office network which, over several months, was subjected to independent verification by a specialist company and to local consultation with authorities responsible for more sparsely populated areas. The work used a range of data from the 2001 census, including the distribution of people aged 16 to 34—which is the age range when most adults apply for their first passport—broken down by local authority wards. Journey-to-work data was analysed, showing the proportion of people who would use each mode of transport in different areas of the United Kingdom. This was combined with data on travel costs and times to model journeys from a total of over 220,000 population centres of about 250 people each to 264 potential locations. The aim was to design a network that optimised the number of offices to minimise costs and maximise operational efficiency through, for example, lower fixed costs and overheads and greater staff flexibility to handle the peaks and troughs of demand, while selecting locations that maximised the proportion of UK residents who would need to travel no more than 20 miles to their nearest interview office. From the conclusion of this research and consultation, the IPS identified 69 locations that provided the right trade-off of efficiency, public travel expectations and the needs of sparsely populated parts of the UK. More than 82 per cent of the population lives within 20 miles of an office in the network, and more than 84 per cent within a 30-minute journey. All interview offices are pleasant, modern places that comply with the Disability Discrimination Act and have wheelchair access. Our normal assumption is that an individual who is sufficiently mobile to require passport facilities can travel to an interview office. However, if the passport is required for, for example, medical treatment abroad and the applicant is too ill or insufficiently mobile to attend an interview, the interview may be waived if evidence is provided. As I indicated, a small number of potential first-time passport customers, estimated to be less than 0.7 per cent—or 4,000—live more than an hour’s journey from an interview office. This mainly affects people living in rural Wales, as the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, said, and the Scottish highlands and islands. To reduce the travelling time for this group, IPS is putting in place secure video-conferencing facilities where customers will be interviewed by visiting the premises of a partner organisation, such as a local council. IPS plans to have remote interview facilities in 25 locations. However, consultations with regional stakeholders are continuing, and I think we can take it that there may be some variation as a result. The interview offices will not initially be used to record biometrics, but they have been planned with sufficient space to allow for the future recording of fingerprints. This will be necessary for the second generation of biometric passports, which are expected to be introduced from 2009 in line with new EU standards for passport security. It will also allow passport interview offices to be used for future enrolments to the national identity scheme. The volume of first-time adult passport customers is a fraction of the volume that will need to be handled for recording fingerprints for the second generation of biometric passports, and later for ID cards. Some offices in the new network will have room for expansion, but it is clear that further premises will be needed to support these developments. Decisions on the number and location of extra offices have yet to be taken. To ensure that IPS is not burdened with premises that might prove unsuitable for the long term, premises for the first-time passport applicant interviews will be occupied on licences of three years, extendable to five years. The majority of offices have now been acquired. All offices will be open on Saturdays. IPS is informing local MPs as interview offices are acquired, giving them details of the location and estimated number of customers. This necessary change to the application process means that first-time adult customers will need to allow more time than in the past to attend an interview and get their passport. IPS will conduct a publicity campaign to ensure that its customers are aware of the need to allow six weeks to obtain their passport and, as now, not to book any travel arrangements until the new passport is received. These measures are essential to protect our citizens from identity theft and to ensure that the British passport remains one of the most secure and respected in the world. My time is up. With the leave of the House I will happily put on record answers to some of the questions asked. Will there be interviews in the Welsh language? Interpreters will be available to assist with passport interviews. I think I have dealt with the time available for interviews. The interview may take between 10 and 20 minutes. We have recruited some 55 staff, who are in post and are working in the project testing and trialling its development. We have a further 539 staff, both full-time and part-time equivalents, who have been recruited and will join as offices roll out throughout 2007. I reassure noble Lords that the Data Protection Act will apply to any personal information held as the result of a passport interview, just as it does now to information provided by postal applicants for passports. The Information Commissioner’s Office has obviously been consulted, and it is happy with the arrangements. On remote community partner organisations, it is intended that local councils should provide the location for the video-conferencing interview. The number of first-time applicants in remote communities is small. We expect some 91 applicants a year from the Isle of Skye and as many as 52 a year from the Isle of Bute; so we should be able to fashion our arrangements to suit their needs. The roll-out will be gradual, and we envisage that not all first-time customers will be called for interview during the initial introduction. We will choose people who live within a short travelling distance of the office, to minimise inconvenience during the early stages of it. There will be an inbuilt preference for those who live quite close. I have probably answered the main questions. There was another about the security of staff. All ID and passport service staff, including those recruited for the local interview offices, will be security checked. That has, I think, answered the main points. If there are others that I have not responded to in detail, I will check the record and ensure that noble Lords are supplied with a full, written response.