PASSPORT/ID CARD SAGA

I thought I'd share with you a (perhaps not so) small tale of trouble and strife that has come to my attention.

I have an expatriate septugenarian friend, living in the US, who, because she is efficiency-minded, decided to attempt to renew her passport over this past summer - not urgently as it still has a year or so to run. Before the introduction of all this biometric malarkey, she would have applied by post to (I think) the consulate in Atlanta and the whole matter would have been turned round quickly and conveniently. Now, as the IPS web-page says: "Please note that we do not accept applications by post or e-mail if you live abroad." Manifestly those routes are closed to her. So she elected to try and get in touch with somone to ask how best to proceed. Six or so fruitless weeks later, having telephoned a bunch of automated call centres trying to get hold of a human being to talk to, she finally and frustratedly, chose to call the FCO in Whitehall directly only to get on the end of the line with some clueless girl whose only response to all of her questions was: "Ooooh ... um ... I dunno." She did finally extract a phone number from this dimwit of a girl, purportedly of the relevant section of the Embassy in Washington but when she rang it - yes, you've guessed it! - it was just another automated call centre. The upshot is that, despite being a UK citizen and a current UK passport holder, the only way she can renew is to go to the expense and inconvenience (considerable if one bears in mind all the additional accomodation costs, &c) of flying to either Washington or UK. And she is minded, almost in a fit of pique, not to bother.

A few points arise from this wretched saga. First, to state the bleeding obvious, it is ludicrous - even offensive - that a wholly legitimate citizen of the UK (with an equally legitimate expectation of all the rights that such a status confers) should be subjected to such inconvenience in this way. And no doubt there are a bunch of other people in a similar predicament. Such shabby and cavalier treatment would shame a banana republic.

Then one has to bear in mind that, for the purposes of the Identity Cards Act, a passport is a "designated" document (the 'compulsion by stealth' argument), the intention being that the data garnered for the purpose of issuing it will subsequently be used to seed the National Identity Register. One assumes therefore that the underlying motivation for all the palaver it is proposed my friend subjects herself to is to facilitate the collection of her relevant biometric identifiers and for a face-to-face interview to be conducted as a means of confirming various elements of her biographical details, all of which will be transferred (eventually) to the NIR. Now, if the ID cards project is scrapped - for whatever reason and/or whether by the Great Bottler or an incoming Conservative administration - the chilling fact is that all this data will continue to exist, albeit within the IPS database. In other words, the mere fact of scrapping ID cards doesn't in fact kill off the project for the vast majority of us (i.e. the 80% or so of the UK population who feel the need of a passport). It is conceivable that the electronic footprints of ourselves allowed for by the NIR would be less extensive under an IPS system but they would be there nonetheless. And then we have to add PNR data into the mix. There may not yet be specific statutory provision for 'linking' this to the IPS database, but we have to reckon that our lords and masters have doing so firmly in their minds. And such augmentation/consolidation of data would deliver biographical templates of us that would be pretty much equivalent to (perhaps even better on the basis of the information that could be inferred by any half-way decent AI-programme) those envisaged by the NIR.

There is too the specific provision on the face of the Identity Cards Act that only those resident in the UK for longer than three months need consider registering. The point here is that anyone applying for a passport out-of-country, although they have no statutory obligation whatsoever to buy into the NIR or ID cards all the time that they remain abroad, are in fact compelled so to do if they want to have a passport. In effect, the arrangements are such that the Government is circumventing the strict letter of the law.

As I say, I just thought I'd share this with you. And I'd welcome any thoughts anyone may have as to how my friend might be able to resolve her problem.