Passport blues

“It was supposed to be a quick, easy win,” said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. Last year, when EU negotiations were dragging on uncertainly, the Government announced that it would introduce a new British passport, especially for Brexit. Ditching the EU’S burgundy for the old patriotic dark blue, “the passport would stand as a proud symbol of Britain’s newfound independence”. It seemed a “foolproof” plan – until last week, when we learnt who was going to produce the new passport. The £490m contract was given not to Gateshead-based De La Rue, the current provider, but to the Franco-dutch firm Gemalto. As a result, ministers were savaged by furious Brexiteers. Jacob Rees-mogg said Britain risked becoming a “joke nation”. The former minister Priti Patel called it a “national humiliation”.

“One minute’s thought,” said the Daily Mail. “That’s all it would have taken anyone in Whitehall with an ounce of common sense – let alone patriotic feeling – to understand the offensiveness of handing a Franco-dutch firm the contract to print true-blue British passports.” Ministers pleaded that EU procurement rules had forced them to put the contract out to Europe-wide tender. But it’s only Britain that follows such “diktats” so slavishly. France, Germany and Italy have all insisted on placing passport orders with their own firms, because national security is involved. This isn’t a national humiliation, said James Forsyth in The Spectator. In fact, the new French-made British passport is “a perfect symbol for Brexit Britain”. After we leave the EU, “we should be an open, free-trading nation”. If a European company will make passports to the required standard much more cheaply – saving taxpayers some £120m – the contract should go to them. Let’s leave the protectionism to the French. Besides, there is no national security issue here, said The Times. “The sensitive biometric technology embedded in the passport will still be made in the UK.”

Brexit will probably mean more foreign companies getting UK government contracts, not fewer, said David Allan Green in the FT. If we want to be able to sell British services to Europe – and we do – we will still have to observe EU rules on public procurement. And if we want free-trade deals with, for instance, the US, its companies will also want a bite at valuable public contracts. “This is what the UK being ‘open for business’ will mean.” And it cuts both ways: De La Rue supplies national identity documents to 25 countries across the world. The whole passport “fuss” is ridiculous, said James Moore in The Independent. Brexiteers have long raged against the EU’S burgundy. But there was never any EU rule stopping us from having blue passports in the first place: if it was really so important, we could have printed them up in that colour all this time. “Laughing at the absurdity of it all is probably the best way to go.” After all, “that’s what the rest of the world is doing”.