The government has been accused of wasting taxpayers’ cash after being forced to pay record levels of compensation to people affected by disruption at the Passport Office.
New figures show that £3.1m was paid out in “reimbursements” in the seven months to December 2022, significantly more than the £2.2m paid out in the whole of 2021-22.
The £448,000-a-month spend is more than four times the average monthly figure before the pandemic and comes after a period of severe disruption for His Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO), with hundreds of thousands of people affected by application backlogs over the summer.
A report by the government’s spending watchdog in December said the delays were caused by a surge in demand after Covid travel restrictions were lifted, and the inability of HMPO to cope. A lack of staff and limitations in government systems exacerbated the problems, the National Audit Office said.
Documents show ministers were alerted to several issues with key contractors before the increase in demand, with the Observer revealing in July that one outsourcing firm was failing to meet targets for responding to calls and emails as early as May 2021.
HMPO does not routinely pay compensation where applications take longer than the published time frames. The payouts include the reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses incurred by customers because of operational errors and refunds for fast-track applications that were not processed in time.
HMPO also makes payments for emotional distress caused by its mistakes, although it says this is not routine, with claims assessed on a case-by-case basis. “Exceptional” circumstances where consolatory payments may be made include a missed wedding or funeral due to an error, or where irreplaceable documents were lost.
Stephen Kinnock, shadow immigration minister for Labour, which obtained the figures, said: “The failure of Conservative ministers to heed warnings that the Passport Office was set to become overwhelmed led to long processing delays which cost hard-working families their dream holidays. And now we learn that these failures also cost the British taxpayer record amounts of money in compensation.”
The Home Office said the increase in reimbursement requests was mostly driven by cases where passport applicants had paid for several services, such as the fast-track option, which costs £142 rather than £75.50 and is supposed to take a week.
The Passport Office said: “Refunds are often issued when passport applicants have paid for multiple services, and we have reimbursed more customers this financial year for this reason. It is our policy to refund application fees where no processing costs have been incurred.”
Teams had dealt with “a record number of applications” in 2022, he said, adding that since January, “more than 95%” of standard applications were processed within 10 weeks.