Paul Flynn: ...I was a local councillor at that time and I know the service well. The last crisis that everyone made a big fuss about was a computer disaster. We virtually had two passport staffs—one employed by Siemens and one employed by the passport service—running in parallel. That crisis was nowhere near as bad as this one. At no time has there been such a sense of anxiety and of being betrayed,...
Stephen McPartland: ...hon. Members will be shocked to discover that I was actually there when the work of the Passport Office was outsourced by the previous Government. In 1998, the Labour Government outsourced me to Siemens Business Services, which wanted to replace my dot-matrix computer with 125 passports on it with some high-falutin’ laser printer based in Manchester. We would examine the passports in...