Blue passport applicants may find themselves seeing red
Eu-style burgundy documents will still be issued to holidaymakers until stocks have run out
‘The printing presses all need to be tweaked in stages, otherwise the process would grind to a halt’
HOLIDAYMAKERS hoping to have a blue passport in time for their summer break could still be sent a burgundy one despite Britain’s departure from the EU, the Home Office has admitted.
Stocks of the Eu-style passports will be used up before they are replaced with the long-awaited navy ones, meaning some travellers renewing a 10-year passport before the summer will still have one with a burgundy cover until 2030.
The first blue passports will start being issued before the end of March, but applicants will face a lucky dip over the following months and could be sent either a blue or a burgundy document until all of the old stock is used up and the printing machines have been converted to produce the new covers.
All styles of passport will be equally valid for travel.
The return of the blue passports, after an absence of 30 years, was confirmed by Brandon Lewis, the then immigration minister, in December 2017, to the delight of Brexiteers who saw it as a symbol of British sovereignty.
Jacob Rees-mogg, the Leader of the Commons, has described the return of the blue passport as the “cherry on the icing” of Brexit.
A spokesman for the Home Office, which oversees HM Passport Office, said: “There will be a mixture of blue and burgundy passports issued over a period of months, and we expect all new passports to be blue by the middle of the year.
“As well as using up the existing stock of burgundy passports, the printing presses all need to be tweaked to make blue covers, which needs to be done in stages, otherwise the printing process would grind to a halt.
“So some new burgundy passports will still be printed even though we have left the EU.”
Anyone whose passport runs out before the summer, or who is applying for their first passport, will have to accept whatever they are given, as they will not be able to specify which colour they would prefer.
The Home Office said that anyone with a preference for a blue passport and in no rush to renew their travel documents should wait until the middle of the year.
The new passports will be printed by the French firm Gemalto after it won the contract to make them two years ago.
Gemalto undercut the Gateshead-based firm De La Rue when the contract came up for renewal, leading to the loss of 170 jobs. It was later reported that Gemalto would be printing the new passports at a plant in Poland.
Blue passports were first issued in 1921 but were replaced with standardised burgundy ones after the formation of the European Union in 1993, which replaced its forerunners the European Community and the EEC. The blue passports will bear the same gold embossed crest, but without the words “European Union” at the top.