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

THE Daily Mail is giving you the chance to send a powerful message to ministers that you want Britain’s post-Brexit blue passports to be made in the UK.

We have started a petition which we hope will force the Government to reverse its decision to have the documents made abroad.

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

As this newspaper pointed out yesterday, there are 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 unique and emblematic blue document, hailing it as ‘an expression of our independence and sovereignty’ which symbolises ‘citizenship of a proud, great nation’.

But having them made abroad makes a mockery of this and of the 17.4million people who voted for Brexit in order to be free from the shackles of the very European Union rules which have led to this outsourcing decision.

This Government also claims to be standing up for British jobs and workers.

Cost should not be the only factor

But employees at the De La Rue plant in Tyneside, where our current burgundy passports are made, stand to lose their jobs – 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 United States produce their own passports on the grounds of national security. 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 that it will save around £120million over ten years. But cost should not be the only factor when producing such vital security documents.

A deluge of phone calls and letters in protest roused this newspaper into action, and now it’s your turn.

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.