Passport Renewal

I suppose the loophole was going to be closed sooner or later. According to the Register, the new UK Identity and Passport Service has slipped a stiletto between the ribs designed to foil ID card refuseniks:

The new UK Identity and Passport Service, spawned out of the Passport Service after the ID Cards Act became law on Saturday, has celebrated its birth by trying to stop people renewing their passports whenever they want to, whether or not the passport is about to expire. The change in terms and conditions has been slipped into the website without announcement, and is quite clearly ID card related.

Previously, the service would add nine months to a passport renewed early and no reason was required for early renewal – although I did receive a phone call checking whether I really wanted to pay for a new passport with over five years outstanding on my old one. It would seem that the rules have changed.

As The Register article notes:

From the perspective of the individual, this buys up to 10 years card-free existence, although the 10 isn’t guaranteed, because we don’t know what other dumb stuff they might get up to during the period. And from the point of view of organised opposition, a huge spike of early renewals just before the off would likely paralyse the system.

So it doesn’t take much to visualise dim awareness evolving to acute anxiety round at the new Stasi and Passports Service. Why on earth they think this might work on its own, however, is entirely unclear. Dogs have been eating homework, key presentations and, yes, passports for years, and if one’s passport were to cease to exist for some mysterious reason shortly ahead of ID card deployment, well, what is that they can do apart from give you a new one? They could crack down on people suspected of deliberately destroying their passports, and stamp hard on anything that looked like an organised campaign to encourage co-ordinated passport destruction, but how the hell do they prove it? We’d guess tough new penalties (70 per cent probability) coupled with high profile but symbolic police action intended to scare people into not trying it on.

So, it looks like my advice to renew now, while you can and buy as much ID card free time as possible makes sense. I guess The Register is right, sooner or later, this advice will constitute an offence. If they can’t find something to hang on me already, I expect they’ll find a way of making something fit. Thought crime sounds like a suitable candidate…

See you in Room 101 :dry:

The Passport Service (as was) certainly has experience of seasonal spikes and ones related to price hikes, and it may already have some data on biometric-related spikes.

Yup. Indeed, there was… :devil:

Addendum: something’s afoot….

And then, spookily close to the publication of The Register’s first version of this story drawing attention to the change, they changed it back again. Fortunately, we have witnesses and while, no, we can’t fathom precisely what they’re up to, it’s probably reasonable to guess that they know they have a potential problem, and they’re going to have to figure out how to deal with it before ID cards go live.

Watch this space, I guess.