PASSPORTS

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The Home Office has admitted that thousands of people, including two men convicted over terror attacks, obtained passports under false pretences. It admitted 10,000 passports were wrongly given in the past year, but said plans to interview applicants would combat such fraud. The two men who obtained false passports were Dhiren Barot and Salaheddine Benyaich. Barot, from London, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder at Woolwich Crown Court and was sentenced to life with a recommendation that he serve 40 years.

He had seven passports in his true identity and two further passports in fraudulent identities. The Identity and Passport Service said he would not have been able to obtain the latter two passports in fraudulent identities if he had been interviewed. Moroccan national Benyaich had two British passports in the name of a British citizen born in Brighton. He is currently serving 18 years in Morocco for terrorist offences. The IPS said a face-to-face interview would have stopped his application.

Home Office minister Joan Ryan said the IPS had 16,500 fraudulent applications during the 12 month period to September 2006 - 10,000 of which went undetected. She said that represented a level of undetected fraud of about 0.15% of the planned 6.6 million passports issued per year. Downing Street said the multi-billion-pound plans for biometric ID cards would help in the fight against fraudulent applications.

The prime minister's official spokesman said each fraud case was being followed up and the problem was being addressed by the interviews. Ms Ryan said the main threats of fraud came from first-time adult applicants, followed by first-time child applications. IPS executive director Bernard Herdan said applicants would be expected to know answers from a pool of around 200 questions about their personal and financial history, such as previous addresses and when their parents were born. (Source: BBC News, Mar/07)

British citizens will be quizzed on up to 200 different pieces of personal information in a 30-minute grilling if they want a passport. Thousands of applicants will be forced to travel 20 miles or more, at their own expense, to attend one of the interviews. The application process, which will cause huge inconvenience to holidaymakers, will take up to six weeks and involve at least 700 civil servants in a huge logistical exercise which threatens to descend into chaos.

Those who fail to convince the bureaucrats they are who they say will be denied a travel document,- or face a full investigation by antifraud experts. There is no formal appeal process. The details an applicant will be questioned on include sensitive financial information, such as bank account details and mortgage applications purchased by the Government from a credit-checking company.

Officials at the Identity and Passport Service defended the requirement for applicants to undergo the 30-minute interview process, comprising 20 minutes of questioning and ten minutes of form-filling. They say it will reduce the number of passports handed over to fraudsters and terrorists each year, a figure which currently stands at 10,000. The process will begin as soon as a person applies in writing for a passport.

Initially, the new regime will apply to around 600,000 first-time applicants each year - but is likely to be extended to everybody wanting a document by 2009. To deal with the 600,000 applicants involves the appointment of 700 extra civil servants, 600 to carry out the interviews and 100 managers. With 6.6million applications processed every year, extending the face-to-face interview to all applicants would require up to 7,000 staff.

Once the application arrives, officials will begin compiling a 'biographical footprint', containing 200 different pieces of personal information. It will be drawn from Government records, birth and marriage certificates and, most controversially, material purchased by the IPS from one of the UK's. The bill for buying the personal data from Equifax is one of the main reasons why the passport fee has rocketed to £66. As recently as December 2005, it cost only £42.

Bernard Herdan, executive director of the IPS, said the information would include previous and current addresses, how long they have lived there, who with, whether they have a mortgage, and any bank accounts which may be held. Details of a person's ancestors, family background and any credit cards applied for are also likely to be included. Once the 'footprint' is complete, the applicant will be invited to attend one of 69 interview offices due to open across the UK. They will not be open in the evening, forcing most people with jobs to attend on a Saturday. The smallest offices will open only two and a half days a week.

Initially, Ministers claimed that over half of the population would be within 15 minutes of an office. Officials have now conceded this was a crude estimate. Instead, they said most people would be within 20 miles, with travel costs to be paid by the applicant. Once there, the interview will take place, with civil servants bombarding the would-be holidaymaker with questions from their 'footprint'. Mr Herdan said there would be no pass or fail mark. Instead, the official will be attempting to get an overall picture of whether the person is who they say.

Those rejected must write to the IPS to ask for the case to be reconsidered, or ask an MP or ombudsman to take up the matter. Even those who are successful are told to expect the process to take as long as six weeks, compared with three or four at present. The fast-track service, for people who desperately need a document within a week, has been scrapped altogether for first-time applicants. Mr Herdan insisted the interview process was not meant to be 'daunting', but to weed out fraudulent applications.

Phil Booth, of the NO2ID campaign, said of the 10,000 fraudulent applications, "Assuming it is even vaguely right, then the Identity and Passport Service plans to add hundreds to the price of a family holiday, inconvenience and intimidate millions of lawabiding people, and spend billions of pounds, all to tackle a problem that affects just 0.15 per cent of all passports issued. No-one should be fooled, the interrogation system is for the ID card scheme." (Source: Daily Mail, Mar/07)

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