Passports And Driving Licences: Follow The Money

~ beetleypete

Following the recent debacle over renewal of driving licences that I have written about extensively on this blog, Britain now faces a new ‘delay scandal’.

Tens of thousands of people are unable to travel abroad, and have had to forfeit holidays they had booked. This is because the Passport Office has ‘untold delays’ in issuing new and renewed passports.

The reasons given are the same as with the Driving Licences.

They ‘didn’t expect’ so many people to want to go on holiday once all the restrictions were lifted.
They ‘didn’t expect’ so many people to want to renew expired passports in 2022.
So many staff were working from home because of Covid-19, and they didn’t have ‘full access’ to the systems required.
Postal applications mounted up after Post Office delays saw them being delivered in bulk.

Strange how two huge government organisations like the DVLA and The Passport Office had all these issues during the pandemic, don’t you think?

Or maybe it is not so strange.

Yesterday, government ministers announced that the Passport Office is going to be privatised, to make it ‘more efficient’. Something similar is also being mentioned regarding the DVLA, to make the issuing of driving licences run more smoothly.

Let’s see how that works.

*Create a bureaucratic nightmare. Send home staff during the pandemic, making sure they have no access to the system that allows them to do their jobs.

*Once the scandal erupts, and public outrage is reported in the media, you can ‘justify’ selling off the organistations concerned.

Who would buy them? Well existing ‘logistics’ companies, owned by friends or relatives of government ministers of course. The contracts will be huge, lucrative, and long-lasting. That will insure the move is not overturned if a different government comes to power in 2024.

Will the passports and driving licences arrive faster when that happens? Probably not. There will of course be a ‘transition’ to the new owners, one that will likely see tens of thousands of applications get lost in the system forever. Existing staff will be disposed of, and new staff on lower salaries and insecure contracts will be employed, using the ‘call-centre model’.

You can be sure of something else too. Passports and Driving Licences will cost a great deal more than they do now.

If you ever want to know the answer to anything going on in this country, follow the money.

50 thoughts on “Passports And Driving Licences: Follow The Money”

      1. I’m going through the same pain. In order to renew your license, do you have to show every document known to man that proves who you are and your lawful presence? It is like selling your firstborn child over here. I am getting nowhere…

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  5. trump’s elected heads of the us post office did the same thing, made all the post offices throw out their sorting machines and eliminated many public boxes, right before the election, and of course he owns a company that wants to privatize it. biden is still working on getting him out.

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  8. My son flew home from New York City. When he got to the airport, he was told his flight had been canceled due to the lack of staff. He raised a big stink. They found him a flight to O’hare in Chicago. It was three hours out of his way without a ride home. I hear there are similar horror stories for travelers all over the US. Even private companies are blaming COVID for their issues.

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      1. They sent everyone home to work, but a lot of people never went back. I was one of them. I’d turned retirement age, planning to remain at least two more years in the work force. I decided I’d had enough of it when they kept bouncing me around like a ping-pong ball.

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  9. It is all so sickening. I saw the beginnings of this years ago when BA became controlled by stockholders. The only thing that mattered was their bottom line. We were expected to do more and more work for less and less benefit. I’m sure I don’t know how it will end but I think it will not be pretty. I would just love to see the smile wiped off all those smug, corrupt faces.

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  11. I think that passports ought to be issued as standard items along with birth certificates and I believe that all people over a certain age should be allowed to drive without a license if, in fact, they have ever had one in the past. And if they did not have one in the past then they should be entitled to a complimentary “Elder” license issued by a government grateful for their years of service.

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  15. Your final comment is bang on the money of course, Pete, if you’ll pardon the pun! 😉 Not wishing to support the government, whose back I only wish to see expeditiously, but I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly my replacement passport came back, within the last month; I was also updated by email during the process, so I am guessing that the service must vary depending on where you live: not good, of course. It’s a grand life if you don’t weaken 😀 Cheers, Jon.

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    1. Glad to hear you got your passport, Jon. One of my dog-walking friends had to cancel an Easter trip to visit relatives, after waiting 3 months for a renewed passport that has still not arrived.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  18. Something tells me new staff will be friends and relatives of the owners. I decided to renew my passport last month and I sent the old one off. Goodness knows when a new one will come back. Good thing I haven’t planned a foreign holiday this year.

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