The most senior Public Servant in the United Kingdom Home Office has hit back at calls to privatise HM Passport Office, saying its outsourced hotline should serve as a warning to anyone questioning whether it should remain a public body.
Permanent Secretary, Matthew Rycroft took the opportunity to reject claims that the Passport Office would be better run by a private business during a Parliamentary Home Affairs Committee grilling.
Prime Minister, Boris Johnson is said to be among those keen to see passport processing outsourced, having reportedly threatened to “privatise the a** off” the Agency if it failed to get on top of delays.
Labour MP, Carolyn Harris took Mr Rycroft (pictured) to task over a case her office had taken on for a constituent, saying a member of her staff had spent several hours on the phone after being told the application would be expedited.
Ms Harris said one three-and-a-half-hour phone call had cost her office £38.40 ($A67.85) and did not resolve the issue.
“The following day we started the process again, only to be told that the constituent’s application had been declined because there was insufficient paperwork,” Ms Harris said.
“Within half-an-hour, that constituent got a telephone call asking them to go and pick up their passport from the nearest Passport Office.”
She said if that was the service MPs were getting “how on earth can you justify the level of service that the general public are having from the Passport Office?”
After apologising to Ms Harris’s constituent and members of staff, Mr Rycroft urged the MP to use the example the next time anyone suggested the way to reduce the size of the Public Service was to privatise it.
He then revealed the only part of the Passport Office’s function that was privatised was its hotline service.
London, 29 June 2022
