Blue passports betrayal
Home Office accused as British firm drops fight to win the contract
The home Office was accused of betrayal last night after British firm De La Rue abandoned its legal fight to print the UK’s new blue postBrexit passports.
The company had until midnight on Tuesday to appeal against a decision to award the contract to a Franco-Dutch firm. But it said it had been ‘holed below the waterline’ by the home Office’s rigid adherence to eU competition laws – rules that other european nations had chosen to ignore.
Despite more than 330,000 Daily Mail readers signing a petition demanding the contract be given to a British firm, the new passports will now be printed by Gemalto, which is part-owned by the French government.
Last night, the home Office compounded the anger by putting out a gushing Press release in praise of its decision, with the director general of hM Passport Office saying he was ‘delighted’.
The home Office is already under fire over the Windrush scandal. Critics said yesterday that its handling of the passports decision raised worrying questions over the Government’s commitment to fighting for national sovereignty after Brexit.
While eU members such as France and Germany bar foreign companies – including De La Rue – from printing their passports on national security grounds, Britain imposes no such exemption.
Yesterday, De La Rue’s chief executive, Martin Sutherland, told the Mail: ‘The home Office has followed a rigorous, open and competitive tender process under european procurement rules. My understanding is that some of those other countries don’t. I think they use national security as a reason to award it to a local provider.’
Asked if he felt the De La Rue bid was ‘holed below the waterline’ by the home Office’s adherence to strict eU rules ignored by other countries, Mr Sutherland said: ‘Yes.’
An industry source added: ‘The German and French governments invoke a national security exemption to bar overseas competitors – notably De La Rue – from bidding for their passport contracts. Both governments habitually hand contracts to their domestic operators.
‘Only the UK does not invoke this exemption. It could if it wanted to. But it doesn’t.’
home Secretary Amber Rudd has insisted that handing the work to Gemalto will save taxpayers £120million over 12 years.
But yesterday MPs reacted with fury to the failure to award the passports contract to a British firm, pointing out that UK workers would suffer.
Labour MP John Spellar said: ‘This Government has given no regard to the overall economic impact and regional policy. All the way through this they have refused to accept that the rest of the world acts differently, by supporting their own industries and not giving their jobs away.
‘I would like to see Theresa May and Amber Rudd going up to Gateshead and apologising for the jobs that are under threat.’
Tory MP Priti Patel, a former Cabinet minister, added: ‘This is a real mess. De La Rue is a great British company with an outstanding record of delivery on its contracts. It is a sad day and the implication, sadly, is job losses in the United Kingdom.
‘De La Rue has shown time and time again that it delivers outstanding service abroad, as well
as value for money for the taxpayer. And it is a great global brand for Britain abroad.’
Fellow Tory Andrew Rosindell, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on flags, said: ‘This is a huge error, and the sad thing is it could all have been avoided. France, Italy and many other European countries wouldn’t even consider outsourcing this out to other countries.
‘I’ve been told that the difference in the bids works out as just 60p per passport. I would rather pay that to know that it was made in Britain by British workers, in the knowledge that the UK could keep complete control of the security aspects of those passports.’
Last night the Home Office said the new blue document will be the world’s first carbonneutral passport and claimed it was awarding the contract to an ‘experienced and trusted company’ which prints passports for 40 nations across the world. The department said the value of the new contract was £260million, meaning it will deliver ‘significant’ savings compared with the £400million contract awarded in De La Rue in 2009.
It said Gemalto already acts with the Government in a number of areas, including the production of UK driving licences and biometric residence permits, and on automated selfservice gates at borders. The contract will add approximately 70 jobs to Gemalto’s existing British workforce, the Home Office said.
Admitting defeat, Mr Sutherland said lawyers had advised that the chances of getting the decision overturned were slim.
He added: ‘It is a surprising and disappointing decision. De La Rue is a very successful international business and a very successful exporting business.
‘We provide passports for over 40 countries in the world. We are very good at what we do. ’
Noting the huge support for the Daily Mail petition to have the decision overturned, Mr Sutherland added: ‘The British passport is an icon of national identity. The general public gets quite passionate.’
No decision has been made about jobs at its Gateshead site, he said, and the firm would seek new orders to replace the British passport contract when it runs out in 18 months.
Mr Rosindell accused the Home Office of making too many errors. ‘The Windrush debacle has done us a huge amount of harm,’ he said.
‘It was a huge avoidable error – and the same is true of passports. We’ve got to learn the lessons from this.
‘From now on we should start to think for ourselves, in our own national interests.’
Louisa Bull, national officer at the Unite union, said it was a ‘dark day for UK manufacturing’. She added: ‘This news will come as a bitter blow to De La Rue workers who now face an uncertain future.’