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Passport Office chief to face MPs amid 'chaos' claims Passport Office chief Paul Pugh sorry for 'distress'
(about 17 hours later)
Passport Office boss Paul Pugh is due to give evidence to MPs on the home affairs select committee amid claims that his agency is in "chaos". Passport Office chief executive Paul Pugh has apologised for any "distress" caused by a large backlog in applications.
MPs would seek a "full explanation" of long delays in handling applications, committee chairman Keith Vaz said. Mr Pugh admitted he considered standing down over the crisis, but told MPs: "It is my job to lead the agency and that is what I intend to do."
The hearing comes shortly after the home secretary announced a plan aiming to deal with a backlog of 30,000 cases. He admitted the agency had not done enough to cater for an anticipated surge in demand.
Labour said the spike in demand should have been foreseen and Theresa May should apologise for the "shambles". The PCS union has not ruled out strike action over the crisis.
In a statement, the Home Office has said Mrs May recognised the "understandable concerns" about delays and was "determined to do everything possible, while maintaining the security of the passport, to speed up the system". Last year, Mr Pugh estimated applications would surge by as much as 350,000 this summer because of overseas embassies shutting their passport desks and transferring operations to Britain.
The government said last week that people facing delays to their passport renewal would be able to get it fast-tracked for free. Pressed on why there had still been delays in processing passports, he told the Home Affairs Committee the actual surge had turned out to be between 390.000 and 400,000, although that was "over the whole 12 month period".
Among other emergency measures, those applying for passports overseas on behalf of their children will be given special travel documents. He insisted adequate preparations had been made for the closure of the overseas centres and said the surge in demand had been higher than expected - something which he said could be put down to other factors such as a "significant shift in the seasonality of customer's behaviour".
'Extraordinary lengths' He said he had ordered an independent review into the agency's forecasting system.
Mr Pugh has said there had been "exceptional" summer demand but that extra staff had been brought in to handle applications. 'Anger and distress'
Mrs May and other Home Office ministers have partly attributed the surge in applications to growing public confidence about the economy. He confirmed figures provided earlier to the Committee by Mike Jones, Home Office group secretary at the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), that as of Wednesday around 480,000 passport applications were logged as work in progress at the agency.
But critics have blamed the closure of seven overseas passport processing centres, which has seen all the paperwork they used to handle now processed in the UK. Mr Jones earlier revealed that this figure has surged from around 290,000 work-in-progress applications in March this year.
Unions have said ministers had gone "to extraordinary lengths" to deny the scale of the problems, which they say are a result of staff cuts since 2010. The Passport Office has been accused of putting thousands of summer holidays in jeopardy after it emerged interviews for first-time applicants were suspended in London as staff struggled to deal with the backlog.
Labour MP Mr Vaz MP said: "The HM Passport Office is in chaos and the Home Secretary's urgent action shows the true scale of the problem." Mr Vaz asked Mr Pugh if he would like to apologise "to all those who have been waiting".
"We will be asking Mr Pugh for a full explanation of what has happened and specifically how these emergency measures are being put in place. Mr Pugh replied: "I absolutely recognise the anger and distress that some people have suffered and I would like to put on record that yes, in every case where we haven't met our service standards, where we haven't been able to meet the customer's needs, yes, certainly, we are sorry for that."
"It is vital we have the full facts in order to understand whether this government agency is still fit for purpose." Mr Vaz asked: "We can take that as an apology?"
Mr Pugh is due to give evidence following testimony from Public and Commercial Services Union representative Mike Jones. Mr Pugh replied: "It is an apology."
Three million UK passports have been issued in 2014, including more than one million since the start of April, while about 465,000 renewals and first-time passport requests are currently in the system. 'Reading books'
In its annual report last year, the Passport Office forecast that changes to the way overseas applications were handled would lead to it dealing with 350,000 more applicants. Mr Vaz revealed he had sent a text message to the Home Secretary, Theresa May, over the weekend in a bid to resolve a passport crisis faced by one of his constituents in Leicester.
The committee chairman explained that the woman, who was set to travel on Wednesday, had made the journey to the passport office in Durham, from Leicester, to discover her passport was not ready.
After failing to get an answer from Mr Pugh at the Passport Office, Mr Vaz contacted the home secretary and ultimately the constituent was able to travel.
Mr Vaz ordered Mr Pugh to appear before the committee again in a month's time, by which time, he warned, the work-in-progress figures must have been reduced to the public's satisfaction.
The Passport Office boss claimed that in 2010 staff at the agency were so under-employed that they were filling in time by tidying the office and "in some cases reading books".
But he denied union claims that the closure of 22 passport centres and the loss of 550 jobs - as well as the closure of the overseas units - had caused the crisis.
Mr Jones said Passport Office managers had decided to "use massive amounts of overtime", rather than extra staff, to deal with the extra workload, which had "burned the staff out".
He said Mr Pugh had ignored requests for talks on pay, staffing and "an end to privatisation" - and he refused to rule out a strike ballot if their calls for negotiations "continue to be ignored".
Mr Pugh, who earns £104,000 a year, said the PCS was not the only voice of workers at the Passport Office but he had no objection to holding talks with with its representatives, including Mr Jones.
He also hit back at claims that a photograph leaked by a member of staff of paperwork piling up at the Passport Office in Liverpool showed a service in chaos, telling the MPs the files appeared "well ordered" and in a "well-contained area".
The agency has launched a leak inquiry to discover the identity of the worker who passed the pictures to the media.
After weeks of mounting public anger, Home Secretary Theresa May announced a raft of measures aimed at clearing the backlog.
Fast-track processing fees for passport applicants who need to travel abroad urgently have been dropped, and people renewing their UK passports from overseas are being given a 12-month extension to their existing passport.
Those applying for passports overseas on behalf of their children will be given emergency travel documents.