LONDON: The Passport Office chief executive, Paul Pugh, has refused to resign over his handling of a backlog at the Home Office agency after it was confirmed that there were currently 480,000 applications being dealt with.
Pugh told MPs on the Commons home affairs committee that he apologised to the public for the “anger and distress” the backlog had caused, but did not give any indication of how long it might take to resolve. He said he had considered whether he should step down but decided “it is my job to lead the agency and that is what I intend to do”.
The Labour MP Paul Flynn accused him of “management by panic” and pressed him to think again, to which Pugh replied: “I am not sure how my resignation would help people in any way.”
Pugh said the 480,000 applications now being dealt with was 200,000 more than at the same time last year. He was unable to give precise figures for how many of the applications had already taken longer than the normal three-week processing period.
The MPs made clear that they were receiving a steady stream of complaints from constituents unable to travel abroad. The committee chairman, Keith Vaz, gave Pugh until tomorrow to come up with a detailed picture of the scale of the backlog or face being recalled to give evidence next Tuesday. He said the MPs needed to see “a rapid improvement in the service”.
He told MPs that 3.6m applications for passports had been received since 1 January, 1.9m of them since 1 April. He said 480,000 applications were “work in progress”. New applications were being received at the rate of 150,000 a week, and last week 160,000 new passports were issued, 90 percent of them within the three-week service standard.
The Guardian
