Sacre bleu! New British passports made in EU
‘A fair and open competition’
‘Government had no choice’
BRITAIN’S traditional blue passports – to be reintroduced when the country leaves the EU – are to be made by a European firm.
A Franco-Dutch company has won the contract to print the post-Brexit passports, it emerged last night.
They will replace the EU’s burgundy documents from October 2019.
Gemalto, which is listed on the French and Dutch stock exchanges and has a French chief executive, undercut British and other rivals by £50million, sources claimed.
The contract for the passports was worth £490million – though senior Whitehall sources pointed out that the deal had not yet been signed.
Under EU rules, the Government could not favour a British company and had to choose the best-value bid. This was despite calls by MPs for a domestic firm to produce the new documents.
British company De La Rue, which produces the current UK passport, had put in a tender with the UK Passport Agency but lost. The banknote printer had said that it would make a significant investment in its Gateshead site if it won.
Tory MP and leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said last night: ‘I am very sorry to hear it, as De La Rue has a factory in my North East Somerset constituency.
‘It seems odd to have a national symbol produced abroad.’
When the UK leaves the European Union, it will need a passport that does not display the EU logo. The final design of the passport is not known but firms across Europe raced to win the right to print it.
De La Rue was in competition with both Gemalto and French company Oberthur Technologies.
In December last year, the then immigration minister Brandon Lewis announced the new UK passport would be changed to a blue and gold design – the colours used in the traditional British passport.
In November last year, Martin Sutherland, chief executive of De La Rue, said: ‘We have submitted our bid for the renewal, which is in 2019 and will last for ten years. It would be a shame if in the year of Brexit the contract was lost and the British passport was not printed by a British company.’
Navy blue British passports were first produced in 1920. The burgundy EU passport was introduced to the UK in 1988, some 15 years after Britain had joined the trading bloc.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We are running a fair and open competition to ensure that the new contract delivers a high quality and secure product and offers the best value for money.
‘All passports will continue to be personalised with the holder’s details in the UK, meaning that no personal data will leave the UK. We do not require passports to be manufactured from the UK.’
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: ‘Under EU rules the Government would not have had a choice, but in the future we need to look at the total benefit to the UK.’
Gemalto is registered in Holland and has its headquarters in Amsterdam. It employs 15,000 people in 47 countries.
De La Rue is the world’s biggest passport producer. It has six plants in the UK.
Prime Minister Theresa May described blue passports as an expression of ‘independence and sovereignty’.