Tory failures blamed as Passport Office pays record sums for delays | passport office

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The government has been accused of wasting taxpayers’ money after it was forced to pay record compensation to those affected by disruptions at the Passport Office.

New figures show that 3.1 million were paid out in refunds in the seven months to December 2022, significantly more than the 2.2 million paid out in all of 2021-22.

The 448,000 expenses per month is more than four times the average monthly figure before the pandemic and comes after a period of severe disruption for Her Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO), with hundreds of thousands of people affected by backlogs of requests over the summer.

A report by the government’s spending watchdog in December said the delays were caused by an increase in demand after Covid travel restrictions were lifted and the HMPO’s inability to cope. Understaffing and limitations in government systems have exacerbated the problems, the National Audit Office said.

Documents show ministers were alerted to several issues with key contractors ahead of the surge in demand, with the Observer revealing in July that an outsourcing company was not meeting call response targets and to emails as of May 2021.

The HMPO does not routinely pay compensation when claims take longer than published deadlines. Payments include reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses incurred by customers due to operational errors and reimbursement of expedited requests that were not processed on time.

HMPO is also making payments for emotional distress caused by its mistakes, although it says this is not routine, with claims being assessed on a case-by-case basis. Exceptional circumstances in which consolation payments can be made include a missed wedding or funeral due to an error, or the loss of irreplaceable documents.

Stephen Kinnock, Shadow Minister for Immigration for Labour, who obtained the figures, said: Tory ministers’ refusal to heed warnings that the Passport Office was about to be overwhelmed led to long processing delays that cost hard-working families their dream vacation. And now we learn that those failures also cost British taxpayers record sums in compensation.

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The Home Office said the increase in refund requests was mainly due to cases where passport applicants had paid for several services, such as the expedited option, which costs 142 instead of 75.50 and is supposed to take a week.

The Passport Office said: Refunds are often issued when passport applicants have paid for multiple services, and we have refunded more clients this fiscal year for this reason. It is our policy to refund application fees where no processing fee has been incurred.

Teams processed a record number of applications in 2022, he said, adding that since January more than 95% of standard applications have been processed within 10 weeks.

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