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Home Office

OIG (re US-VISIT)

IDABC (re OSCIE)

China (re Golden Shield)

FBI (re NGI)

Agencies

 

The case for a £23 ten-year adult passport
17 August 2010

It's March 1997, you've booked your holiday, checked your passport and found you need to renew it. How much does it cost? £18.

It's March 2010, you've booked your holiday, checked your passport and found you need to renew it. How much does it cost? £72.

Why has the price quadrupled? To pay for ID cards and the National Identity Register, a project that enjoyed unstinting political support under the previous government and an open-ended budget and yet the Home Office still managed somehow to fail.

It's May 2010, the people have voted, we have a coalition government, and what do they do? They draft the Identity Documents Bill, which will cancel the ID cards project and dispense with the National Identity Register. The price of a passport can go down again.

It's July 2010 and the Home Office issue a press release about passport fees. They're going down? To £23? No. In the Alice in Wonderland world of the Home Office, on 3 September 2010, they're going up. To £77.50.

Something doesn't seem right. BCSL asks the Treasury and the National Audit Office to investigate:

http://DematerialisedID.com/BCSL/23.html