Prime Minister David Cameron tackled over Wick passport office closure
PRIME Minister David Cameron has been challenged over the closure of Wick’s passport office – a move which has left one Thurso teenager facing a 300-mile trip for a 30-minute interview.
Local MP John Thurso said first-time applicants are now facing “unreasonable” journeys to other parts of the country for the interviews and brought the topic up during prime minister’s questions on Wednesday.
He asked Mr Cameron if he is aware of the problems raised by the Home Office’s sudden closure of the office earlier this month.
“Can I ask the prime minister if he is aware of the decision abruptly made to close the passport office in Wick which has obliged a 16-year-old boy to make a 300-mile... trip for an interview and another constituent to travel to Newcastle?” he said.
The 16-year-old is a Thurso High pupil who, it is understood, could not get a booking at the next nearest office in Inverness – which itself is set to shut in September – so ended up having to go further afield.
Mr Cameron replied: “Obviously I will look very closely at the point my honorable friend raises but of course in the modern age we have all sorts of ways of carrying out interviews that don’t require people to travel to a passport office. What matters is having an efficient service so that people can get the decision they need to go on the holiday they want.”
John Thurso, Lib Dem MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, fought the closure of the Wick facility and has made representations to immigration minister Damien Green and the Immigration and Passport Service – but to no avail.
“For reasons I still don’t know, the Immigration and Passport Service accelerated the process and the office closed quite abruptly earlier this month. I’m very critical of that process,” he said.
“It seems to me entirely unreasonable to oblige any British citizen, wherever they live, to travel those sort of distances and at that sort of expense for a passport, which is something I think everybody should have a right to.”
He added: “Forcing people to travel from the Far North to the south of Scotland, or even Newcastle in one case, is astonishing and completely unacceptable. The Government must either increase the capacity for interviews or put in place a viable video-conferencing alternative. It is expensive enough to get a passport without adding travel costs and overnight accommodation to it.”
A new replacement “flexible” interview service operating out of Dundee will not come to Caithness when several other offices in Scotland close in September. It means first-time applicants face a 200-mile round trip to use the service when it visits Inverness, or travel to one of the other remaining offices in Aberdeen or Edinburgh.
However, as proven in the cases brought before Mr Cameron, the service in Inverness is continually busy, argued John Thurso.
“I would suggest that if Inverness is fully booked all the time and I’m getting all these cases then that makes a strong case for some kind of part-time operation in Wick, which is why the office was established in the first place,” he said.
Following prime minister’s questions, John Thurso received an assurance from Mr Green the matter will be looked into.
The Home Office has said several offices across the UK are shutting as they are operating under capacity. The move is expected to save £24 million.
Interviews for first-time applicants are a recent addition to the passport process set up by the previous Government’s Identity and Passport Service and are used to help combat identity theft.
Based in Wick Business Park, the local office opened in January 2008 and operated on a part-time basis until closing on June 11.