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Open letter Susan
Ronaldson Director National
Audit Office 157-197
Buckingham Palace Rd London
SW1W 9SP |
Your ref. GF/1378/10
14 October
2010 |
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Dear
Ms Ronaldson The
£23 passport
Thank you
very much indeed for your letter dated 27 September 2010[1]. In a letter
to the Treasury and several other people dated 17 August
2010[2],
and in a related press release[3],
I asserted that passport fees collected by the Identity
& Passport Service have been used for years to fund
the failed project to introduce government ID cards into
the UK. This assertion was made in good faith but turns
out to be flat wrong. It was based
on a longstanding misunderstanding of mine and I would like
here to retract that assertion and apologise to both the
National Audit Office and the Identity & Passport Service. ---------- The nominal
price of a ten-year adult British passport quadrupled between
May 1997 and May 2010 from £18 to £72. Subsequently it has
increased again, to £77.50. Given the rate of RPI inflation
during that period, the real price has trebled. Why? British
passports have a potential customer base of 60 million or
so. That should keep the price down. They have to abide
by EU regulations. EU-compliant passports have a potential
customer base of 650 million or so. That should keep the
price down. EU passports have to abide by International
Civil Aviation Organization regulations. ICAO-compliant
passports have a potential customer base of seven billion
or so. They are commodities, and they should be very cheap. They should
be cheap also because technology prices have fallen since
1997, and continue to fall. They should be cheap because
the Home Office have been the object of several efficiency
reviews and because contracts are put out to competitive
tender. They should
be cheap, but they’re not, their real price has trebled. Does
that price increase reflect any benefit to passport-holders? •
The
introduction of biometrics based on facial geometry brings
no benefits to anyone[4]. •
Nor
does the introduction of RFID chips into the passport. If
anything, RFID is a security risk. •
Although
it can’t do anything to prove that a passport was issued
to the current holder, PKI can prove that it is an authentic
passport issued by the Identity & Passport Service and
that it hasn’t been subsequently revoked. But is the PKI
technology used at border crossings abroad? Is it even used
in the UK? There’s no point paying to introduce these security
facilities if they aren’t used, like the security facilities
in the biometric residence permits[5]
issued to non-EEA nationals and the smart gates[6]
installed at 10 UK airports. •
Authentication
by interview for first time passport-holders can provide
only limited security enhancements. The interviewers may
be satisfied at the time that the person in front of them
is who he says he is but that is of no use later to the
UK Border Force or anyone else. The Identity & Passport
Service are rumoured to be likely to close four interview
offices[7].
That would leave them with a network of just 64 offices
for the entire country. They are not serious about authentication
by interview. •
We
are being asked to pay £385 million[8]
for CSC to develop a new passport application system. We
already have a passport application system. A lot of the
proposed facilities for a new passport have been dropped,
like adding fingerprints from [2012]. And there is no longer
a National Identity Register to be maintained. So why do
we need a new application system? • We are currently members of the US visa waiver scheme.
There is no guarantee that we will continue to be members.
We could find ourselves having to pay three times more than
we need to for a passport and yet still have to pay for
US visas in addition. Take these,
and other elements, out of the cost side of the equation
and perhaps the ten-year adult passport could once again
approach its natural level of £23. Since passports
are not included in government expenditure, none of today’s
Browne and Green reviews is likely to consider them. A £23
passport wouldn’t save the government anything. But it would
leave several billion pounds in 60 million long-suffering
people’s pockets. The Identity
& Passport Service, a monopoly supplier, perhaps a bit
credulous[9]
about technology, perhaps led on by over-enthusiastic politicians
and salesmen and consultants, could continue to over-charge
its clients without scrutiny ... ... unless
the National Audit Office can find room in its budget to
do a value for money examination of today’s passports. You might consider for instance this announcement,
PA wins gold at the 2010 MCA
awards[10]: The winning project involved
working with the IPS to procure a new passport provider.
This complex and high-profile project required a redesigned
passport which met the new international regulations for
travel documentation, with enhanced security features to
keep ahead of the threat of counterfeiting and the capability
to store additional biometric information. Cui bono? PA
Consulting get a gold award and a consultancy fee. The British
public gets to pay three times more than it needs to for
a passport. PA Consulting
themselves, it may be worth noting, believe that biometrics
is “mostly hype”, please see the children’s graphic on page
3 of their paper on biometrics[11].
And yet they continue to charge the Identity & Passport
Service and the UK Border Agency[12],
i.e. the British people, for advice on how to deploy biometrics. ---------- Once again,
thank you very much indeed for your letter and if you can
look into passports, please do. Yours sincerely David Moss cc Rt Hon Danny Alexander MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Stephen Hammond MP
Damian Green MP, Minister of State (Immigration)
Keith Vaz, Chair, Home Affairs Committee
Andrew Miller, Chair, House of Commons Science and
Technology Committee
Sarah Rapson, Chief Executive, Identity & Passport
Service
Alan Brown, Deputy Director, Policy, Identity &
Passport Service [1] http://dematerialisedid.com/BCSL/NAO20100927.html [2] http://dematerialisedid.com/BCSL/23.html [3] http://dematerialisedid.com/PressRelease23.html [4] http://dematerialisedid.com/Register/regBiometrics.pdf [5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/30/idcards-civilliberties [6] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/5110402/Airport-face-scanners-cannot-tell-the-difference-between-Osama-bin-Laden-and-Winona-Ryder.html [7] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-11503599 [8] http://www.whitehallpages.net/news/archive/185894 [9] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article1019239.ece [10] http://www.paconsulting.com/our-experience/pa-wins-gold-at-the-2010-mca-awards/ [11] http://dematerialisedid.com/PDFs/foresight_biometrics.pdf [12] http://www.paconsulting.com/our-experience/delivering-a-biometrically-enabled-visa-system/
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