NOW HAVE YOUR VOICE HEARD — SIGN OUR PETITION TO HAVE PASSPORTS MADE IN UK

THERE is still time to have your voice heard and send a powerful message to ministers that you want Britain’s post-Brexit blue passports to be made in the UK.

By last night the total was already well over the 100,000 mark – the point at which petitions lodged on Parliament’s website can trigger a Commons debate.

Ministers are already facing a week of grilling over the decision to have our passports made abroad. A further surge of support will pile on more pressure to reverse this – before the deal is finalised.

In the adjoining panel, we explain how simple it is for you to have your view heard and urge ministers to think again.

This newspaper has made clear time and again the many compelling reasons to stand up to the members of our ruling class behind the decision.

Theresa May talked in December about the pride Britons should feel at the reintroduction of the emblematic blue passport, hailing it as ‘an expression of our independence and sovereignty’ that symbolises ‘ citizenship of a proud, great nation’. But having them made abroad makes a mockery of this and of the 17.4million who voted for Brexit in order to be free from the shackles of the very eU rules that led to this decision.

This Government also claims to be

Cost should not be the only factor

standing up for British jobs and workers.

But employees at the De La Rue plant in Gateshead, where our current burgundy passports are made, face job losses – in a region with the highest unemployment rate in the country and where six in ten people voted Leave in the referendum.

Furthermore, countries such as France and the US produce their own passports on the grounds of national security, prompting the question: Why shouldn’t we?

handing data on British citizens to a foreign company potentially only increases the risk of it being hacked into and ending up in the wrong hands.

The home Office has sought to justify the outsourcing move by saying it will save around £120million over ten years.

But cost should not be the only factor when producing such vital security documents.

Tens of thousands have already been roused into action, and now it’s time to drive the message home.

It takes seconds to log on to our website and register your support.

If you share this newspaper’s view that having our symbolic post-Brexit passports made in Britain would help restore national pride and identity as a sovereign nation, be better for national security and keep jobs and investment in Britain, then please sign our petition.