Recommendation 28

The Department and HMPO asserted multiple times that they were learning lessons from their experience in 2022 to avoid similar problems in 2023 and beyond, including conducting internal reviews.51 However, HMPO has experienced similar issues in the 42 Qq 99–100 43 Letter from Sir Matthew Rycroft, Permanent Secretary, Home Office, to Dame Meg Hillier, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, 18 January 2023 44 C&AG’s Report paras 4.1, 4.3 45 Q 96 46 Q 138 47 Qq 63–64 48 Q 65; Letter from Sir Matthew Rycroft, Permanent Secretary, Home Office, to Dame Meg Hillier, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, 18 January 2023 49 Qq 30, 65 50 Qq 139–146 51 Qq 29, 50, 92, 94, 98 16 Investigation into the UK Passport Office past. In both 1999 and 2014, HMPO struggled to process passports in line with demand, contributing to significant delays for customers. The previous Committee of Public Accounts examined delays to passport applications in 1999 and found that during the summer of 1999, many members of the public encountered great difficulty in obtaining passports. By June 1999 around 565,000 applications were awaiting processing, equivalent to a backlog of over a month’s work. The origin of the crisis was the introduction in late 1998 of a new computerised system for processing passports, involving substantial changes in working methods, which the United Kingdom Passport Agency (then responsible for issuing passports) assumed could be implemented over a few months without detriment to services. Customers experienced similar issues in contacting the Agency to find out what was happening and when they were likely to get their passports, and between the beginning of March and the end of June 1999, there were around 3.5 million unsuccessful attempts to get through to the Agency by telephone. As a result of the crisis, the Agency received around 5,000 valid claims for compensation, including 510 in respect of missed travel dates. For the calendar year 1999, compensation paid t