The Passport Office Writes

This just in from the passport office...

Dear Mr Scott

Thank you for your e-mail of 11th August 2005 regarding passport fees. As Customer Services Manager for the Peterborough Office I have been asked to reply.

Passport fees are set by Parliament in consultation with the Passport Service and the Treasury and are published in Consular Fees Order papers. The fees reflect the economic cost of providing the world wide passport issuing service. A proportion of the fee covers services provided by our Embassies abroad to British Citizens when they require help and also helps pay for new initiatives to combat fraud and identity theft (one of which is putting a biometric chip in the passport). We do not make a profit. As a Government Department we are required to recover costs.

Fees are reviewed annually, There has been no agreement about an increase yet this year. As soon as this information is available it will be posted on our website www.passport.gov.uk which is regularly updated.

Yours sincerely


Susan Coles (Mrs)
Customer Services Manager

This seems to suggest that no price increase is confirmed as yet. Also, the fact that the Passport Office has to recover its costs makes it unlikely that they'll be very interested in paying for the NIR. The ID Card Bill suggests, however, that the ID card administration will be done via the passport office, so presumably both the card fees and the passport fees will go into the same pot. It's difficult to tell from the letter whether Mrs Coles has told be all that she is allowed to tell me, or that she really doesn't know what the future holds. Knowing the Labour government, who regularly has had to dramatically change its policies in light of politicians saying the wrong things in speeches (much of foregin policy emerged from Blair's public addresses rather than the Foreign Office), this hardly seems surprising.