PASSPORTS

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Every day 550 UK passports disappear, either lost by the owners or stolen and then passed on to gangs, who sell them on the black market for around £3,000. Home Secretary David Blunkett said 46,273 passports went missing in the first three months of 2003. And the Passport Agency admitted that the total number reported "stolen, lost or unavailable" would hit 200,000 by December. Police and immigration officials fear that tens of thousands are falling into the hands of terrorists and criminals, who use stolen passports to forge new identities for illegal immigrants and bogus asylum seekers.

In May two eastern Europeans who ran a passport forgery factory from a flat on the South Coast were jailed for helping illegal immigrants sneak into Britain. LibDem Simon Hughes said, "Britain is suffering organised immigration fraud on a huge and growing scale." Over 31,000 UK passports went astray in 1998. That hit 114,624 in 2000 and 166,358 in 2002. The number of forged IDs and passports seized at British ports soared by 46% to a record 9,665, according to Home Office figures.

The number of passports that went "missing" in the post last year totalled 2,982, up from 2,541 in 2001. A Passport Agency spokeswoman said, "The losses remain a serious concern." Traditional passports could have a computer chip added with "biometric" information about the holder, but at a price. The UK Passport Service's business plan for the next five years also revealed the cost of a passport is to rise 58% from £33 to £52 by 2006. Officials are to draw up plans for the new "smart" passports by March 2004, and hope to begin implementing the scheme by April 2005.

The chip would carry facial recognition data about the parameters of the passport holder's face, such as the exact distance between their eyes and the distance between their nose and chin. Within a year of the new hi-tech passport books, the agency hopes to introduce a "passport card", similar to a credit card, to be used in conjunction with the paper document. The card would be valid for travel within the EU and "certain other defined countries" and would feature "up-to-date security and fraud prevention features". It is likely to feature extra biometric information such as an iris scan or fingerprints, stored electronically on the computer chip.

It is also likely to form the basis of Britain's compulsory national ID card since the Second World War, if ministers decide to go ahead with a scheme proposed by Home Secretary David Blunkett. A UK Passport Service spokeswoman said, "The level of fee increase for passports has been kept to a minimum and will enable the UKPS to provide additional security features in passports and improvements to existing fraud detection and prevention systems. Fees will be reviewed on an annual basis with increases being sought only as and when absolutely necessary." And anyone who believes that........

More than 4.5 million people a year will have to go to an interview to get a new passport from the end of 2008. The interviews are part of plans to replace traditional passport photos with high-tech biometric data such as face scans, fingerprints or iris scans and will check people's identity with questions about their previous addresses and their schools. The Home Office said all 27 countries involved in the US visa waiver scheme, and all EU countries, are adopting biometric passports and without them, travellers would need many more documents to be able to travel between those nations.

From the end of 2006 first-time adult passport applicants will be called to an interview at one of 70 centres nationwide. From July 2006, all new passports will include a computer chip which would initially contain only facial scans. UK Passport Service chief Bernard Herdan said, "The next stage will be putting fingerprints into passports. We will be moving from 600,000 being interviewed at the end of 2006 to interviewing more than 4.5m a year from the end of 2008."

Mr Herdan said the interviews should take 10 minutes for "law-abiding citizens". He added that private companies, such as banks, would be able to have information checked against passport details. "They wouldn't have access to our database because it is protected but they can send us data on the passport and we can give them the green or red light," he said.

Passport applicants will have to wait up to six times longer for their documents and travel up to 80 miles for face-to-face interviews at passport offices under changes paving the way for the government’s ID cards. From March 2007, all first-time applicants will have to be interviewed in person and by 2008-9 this requirement will be extended to all those seeking to renew their passports, causing millions greater inconvenience by forcing them to travel to one of 69 new passport offices for face-to-face interviews.

The changes are being introduced in preparation for ID cards, which will include biometric data such as fingerprints, eye or facial scans. The Home Office’s Identity and Passport Service (IPS) said, “The speed at which passports are to be issued to first-time applicants will be slower owing to the application-by-interview process. The IPS is recommending that first-time applicants should allow four to six weeks for the process rather than the current 10 days for standard applications and one week for urgent applications via the fast track service.”

With 69 centres planned for the whole of Britain, many people, largely in rural areas, will have to make round trips of up to 80 miles to attend their interviews. At least 97% of the UK population will have an office within 20 miles (urban areas) or 40 miles (remote, rural areas) of their address. Martin Godfrey, a senior Central Office of Information official, said, “First-time applicants will experience a more complicated, longer application process involving a potentially intrusive personal interview.” (Source: Times Online, Dec/06)

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