Passports costs to keep rising

MPs say costs are to cover electronic chips which will hold more personal information

Andrea-Marie Vassou, Computeract!ve 11 Oct 2007

The cost of a passport is set to increase “substantially” over the next five years, according to a report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

The parliamentary spending watchdog has said the rising costs are to cover the cost of better electronic chips in passports that can hold more personal data.

Between 1998 and 2006 the cost of adult passports in the UK has risen from £45 to £66. This is as a result of the introduction of the first biometric passports, which contain chips storing a digital facial image of the holder.

The UK passport office also charges an additional £6 to “fund the introduction of interviews for all adult, first time passport applicants”.

However, the report said the cost of a passport would rise further by 2009 as a result of the second generation of ePassports, as a larger-capacity chip would be needed to hold additional fingerprint data.

It also said the costs would cover the need for more places where fingerprints can be taken and the cost of additional staff needed to collect the biometric data from adult applicants.

However, some MPs are concerned and have questioned the durability of the chips being used in existing ePassports. This is because they only have a manufacturer's guarantee of two-years, even though passports are issued for 10 years.

Edward Leigh MP, chair of PAC, said the public needed to know how durable the chip was and who would pay for a replacement passport if it stopped working.

He also had concerns about the consequences a chip failure would have at passport control: "The prospect of ePassport failures contributing to yet further delays at border controls is not an enticing one."

Leigh called on the Home Office to justify the need for both an ePassport and a national identity card, when they would contain very similar data.

When contacted by Computeractive the Home Office said it would “formally respond to the committee’s issues in due course,” but outlined the reasons behind issuing both an ePassort and ID card to UK citizens.

A representative for the organisation said: “An ePassport will only be issued to UK citizens, but an ID card will be issued to everyone living in the UK including foreign nationals.”

She also said that an ID card would contain “more functions” than an ePassport chip, which was "constrained by international standards".

"The ID card will let people confirm their identity in a secure, way in a range of transactions with public and private sector organisations that you cannot with an ePassport. It will include functions such as Chip and PIN to do this,” she added.

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