Civil employees are still battling a huge Covid backlog while more than 500,000 Britons wait for their passports to be processed.
By the end of the previous month, according to Thomas Greig of the HM Passport Office, there were still 550,000 unprocessed passport applications, 10% of which had been in the system for more than ten weeks.
He claimed that each week between 200,000 and 250,000 passports are presently processed, making this year’s processing of 5 million passports already surpass last year’s total.
In contrast to the 7m yearly average, it is predicted that the total would reach 9.5m by the end of the year.
When he practically joined the Home Affairs Committee after trains were canceled, Mr. Greig stated that waiting periods of up to 10 weeks may last for “months.”
He was unable to promise that the three-week deadline for returning applications would be met by year’s end.
The backlog has somewhat decreased since April, when it was about 700,000.
British citizens waiting to renew their passports have previously been put on hold for hours before being informed by remote customer care representatives that they are unable to offer updates on applications.
Mr Gove told a discussion about what Conservatives want from the next prime minister that the state should ‘do fewer things’ but be ‘strong and effective’.
‘I believe that there are certain essential functions that the state needs to do better, and which we fail to deliver at the moment,’ he told the Policy Exchange event.
‘There are some core functions, giving you your passport, giving your driving licence, which is simply at the moment not functioning.’
He also raised ‘bureaucratic impediments’ on broader issues such as defence procurement.
Between 200,000 and 250,000 passports are currently being processed every week, he said
‘We are no longer providing people, either with the efficient delivery of services or the effective focus on what the state should do,’ he said.
‘I think that’s because we have become a Government and an administration that is knocked off course by powerful stories that are told by people with a mission – and our own sense of mission has not been strong enough to resist that.’
After more than 12 years in Government, some critics have blamed the Conservatives for the problems but Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, sought to apportion some blame to civil servants.
‘We’re always told that we have a Rolls-Royce and the problem is that ministers don’t make their will clear,’ he told the discussion.
‘Well, ministers made their will clear about coming back into the office several months ago and yet it is still not happening. So I believe there is something very fundamentally wrong in the way the Civil Service and the state is working.’
But Baroness Cavendish, a former director of No 10’s policy unit, was angered by his remarks, instead criticising ministers.
‘There are people on this panel who have been in government for the past few years and under you guys this stuff has fallen apart – so why haven’t you done anything about it?’ she said.
The Passport Office has previously blamed its backlog on more than five million people delaying their applications because of the coronavirus pandemic.