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Passport Office (Delays)

I will come to that point in a minute. If the situation could be sorted out in that way, I would wholly agree with the hon. Gentleman. I am not sure that it can be because one of the problems, which I will deal with later, is that the Government have left it so late to react to this burgeoning problem that there is probably no time left to deal with it in the relatively short period before the holidays. That is one of the tragedies of the situation.

The nub of the problem lies in the cuts that the Government have made. They have cut 700 personnel who are directly concerned with processing and examining passports before they are issued. Those are not back-office jobs, but people who are directly involved in the process. There has been a 20% cut, with no plans to retrain, reskill or build up alternative resources for the key periods. We all know that businesses have to plan for such key periods.