Are passport fees paying for ID cards?
Tony Collins writes in Computer Weekly:
The official explanation for passport fee increases will always be that they are needed to cover the cost of more security to get in line with US and European requirements.
But that argument goes only so far. The internal cost of producing each passport – called the unit cost – was about £15 in 1999 – and this was expected to fall with the advent of new technology. Indeed, there was talk in 1999 that the Treasury would allow the Passport Service, on the basis of a £15 unit cost, to make a profit.
Since then there have been many fee increases, leaving one to wonder whether the cost of ID cards is being subsidised by passport fee increases.
The Identity and Passport Service denies that passport fees have been increased to cover the cost of ID cards, but its spokesman conceded that passport fees will in future cover the cost of the combined ID cards/passport infrastructure. That makes it highly possible that there will be, one day not too soon, a £200 passport fee. Already the cost to the public of a passport has risen from £28 in 1999 to between £72 and £114 today.
