16. The Identity and Passport Service issues over six million passports a year and, in addition, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office issues around 450,000 passports a year to UK citizens living abroad. The Border and Immigration Agency is responsible for ensuring that electronic readers at UK border control are equipped to read electronic travel documents from around the world.

17. The Identity and Passport Service and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have formed a single project board, with the intention of conducting a single competitive procurement for the production of second generation ePassports. The Identity and Passport Service told us it will seek to build flexibility into that procurement in order to allow for future developments over the next decade.

18. The Identity and Passport Service is also working closely with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to harmonise passport issuing procedures. Validation procedures could not be standardised because the biographical footprint checks which the Identity and Passport Service conducts in the UK on British residents may not be possible in other countries, but the two organisations were bringing their processes closer together. The Identity and Passport Service and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have formed an identity standards group, and with the introduction of Authentication by Interview for first-time applicants in the UK, the Identity and Passport Service will encourage the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to conduct similar interviews overseas to tighten the system. In the longer term, the Identity and Passport Service is working with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office towards the potential repatriation of all passport production to the UK, so as to eliminate the security risk associated with issuing passports overseas.[19]

19. Passport readers that can detect whether an ePassport has been tampered with are currently being set up in back offices at UK immigration points. Recent data indicate it takes about 16 seconds to read an ePassport,[20] raising the prospect of queues forming at UK arrivals lounges at ports and airports, particularly at peak travel periods. Alternatively, there is a risk that immigration checks may be relaxed to avoid the build up of queues. There is scope for closer liaison between the Identity and Passport Service and the Border and Immigration Agency particularly in relation to possible technical improvements to electronic readers to speed up the time taken to read an ePassport.[21]

20   Ev 21 Back

21   Qq 102, 110  Back