Her Majesty’s Passport Office, which was hit by chaotic delays earlier this year, is to be abolished and its work taken under direct control of the Home Office, Theresa May has announced.
The Home Secretary said Paul Pugh, HMPO’s chief executive who saw a backlog of hundreds of thousands of applications develop, will lose his job.
He will remain in place until a replacement is found, the Home Secretary said.
Mrs May made the surprise announcement on the day Parliament is to be recalled to debate airstrikes on the Islamic State, leading to allegations that she was attempting to “bury bad news”.
The Home Secretary said: “As the events of the summer showed, it is essential that HMPO is run as efficiently as possible and is as accountable as possible.
“I also know that its hard-working staff are committed to delivering a high quality service to the public.
“I believe these changes will put them in a stronger position to do so.”
On the timing of Mrs May’s announcement, a few minutes before MPs began discussing the situation in Syria and Iraq, a Labour party source said: “It raises significant suspicions that this is an attempt to bury bad news.”
David Hanson MP, a shadow Home Office minister, said: “This back of the envelope re-organisation is too little too late for the thousands of families who suffered this summer in a passport crisis caused by the complacency and incompetence of Theresa May and David Cameron.
“Belatedly bringing the agency back into the Home Office raises the question about their ability to manage this crisis even now.”
Last week a report by MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee recommended the HMPO should lose its agency status as they condemned its “summer of chaos”.
But it is unclear how Mrs May’s announcement will tackle one of the report’s key findings, which said it was a “mistake” to close overseas passport application centres and replace them with a centralised service in Britain.
Paul Pugh
The decision, sanctioned by ministers, had played a critical role in the delays and the reorganisation had been “poorly handled”, it said.
Keith Vaz, the chairman of the committee, said: “I am delighted that the Government has accepted the recommendation that the HMPO should lose its executive agency status and report directly to ministers.
“The passport crisis, which consumed the UK over the summer, disrupting travel for over half a million people, was handled appallingly by senior management.
“I hope that the new director general will provide the HMPO with the fresh start that it needs.
“This change must ensure that the British people never again experience such a terrible service from this critically important institution.”
The MPs’ recent report expressed their concern that a number of travellers had ended up out of pocket because of the delays.
Many people had been forced to pay extra fees to speed up the passport process while others had to pay charges to alter flight bookings, or even miss their holidays altogether, it said. Members of the public who lost out should be compensated, the report added.
At the start of the summer Mr Pugh told MPs he considered resigning over the delays fiasco but decided instead to see the agency through “tough times”.
Mr Pugh, who earns £104,000 a year, also apologised to customers whose applications had been delayed.
Theresa May, the Home Secretary
“In the light of what has happened in the last few months I have considered whether it would be right for me to step down, whether it would be helpful,” Mr Pugh told the Home Affairs Select Committee during the evidence session in June.
“But my job is to lead the agency through tough times as well as the less tough. And that is what I intend to do.”
Mrs May said today that the chief executive’s post would be abolished and replaced by a director general, to reflect the HMPO’s reduced standing within the Home Office.
The HMPO was only created in May last year, replacing the Identity and Passports Service which was renamed to reflect the Government’s decision to abandon plans for a national identity card.
The changes to the Passport Office reflect Mrs May’s approach to shaking up the UK Border Agency in 2013.
She announced then that the beleaguered agency would be split in two and brought directly under ministers’ control for the first time in five years, to end its “closed, secretive and defensive culture”.
