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Union rubbishes claim holiday sales to blame for passport crisis
Passport Office bosses knew there would be a backlog in applications a year ago but did nothing about it, a union official told MPs.
Mike Jones from PCS told a Home Affairs Committee that the closure of passport counters at seven British embassies overseas had transferred the workload to the UK, leading to a build-up of applications.
Passport Office boss Paul Pugh claimed last week that the backlog was due to rise in the number of people booking overseas holidays. He put this down to a more buoyant economy, although latest figures from industry analyst GfK show summer bookings to date are 1% down on last year.
Mr Jones said that it was known that Passport Offices in the UK would have to deal with an additional 350,000 applications due to the overseas counter closures, but extra staff were not brought in to deal with them. Instead, existing staff were asked to work "massive amounts of overtime".
He said the backlog had reached 493,289 by June 8, almost 350,000 more than this time last year. Despite claiming last week that the figure of delayed passports was much lower, Mr Pugh admitted yesterday that around 480,000 passports were logged as "work in progress".
Yesterday, Mr Pugh apologised before the Committee for any distressed caused by the delay in processing applications and admitted the agency had not done enough to cater for a surge in demand. He also revealed that he had considered resigning. However, he added: "It’s my job to lead the agency and that is what I intend to do."
Mr Jones accused Home Secretary Theresa May of making "misleading" statements about the number of staff in the Passport Office, claiming there were 550 fewer staff than when the coalition came to power in 2010.
Mrs May says the number of staff dealing with passports has not gone down, claiming that the reduction was due Labour’s proposed ID card being ditched.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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