WISHART HITS OUT AT HOME SECRETARY AS CRUNCH TIME REACHED IN PASSPORT FIASCO

Published date : 26 June, 2014

The Scottish National Party’s Mr Pete Wishart MP, Member of Parliament for Perth & North Perthshire, has highlighted the level of disruption being caused locally by the difficulties that the UK Passport Office is experiencing in dealing with a backlog of passport applications. Mr Wishart said: “The mishandled mess of the UK’s passport crisis is hitting home in Perthshire as it is in other parts of the country. “My office is receiving at least two enquiries a day, usually more, as people come to us frustrated and worried that their holiday plans are being put in jeopardy by the delays in receiving passports. “The people who come to me have usually had multiple conversations with the passport office without resolution and they see approaching their MP as a last resort to try and get their problems resolved. “Thankfully, In all of the cases so far, we have managed to get people sorted out in time for their holiday, sometimes at extremely short notice. “The service at passport office unfortunately seems to be slowing down. They have moved to a new system as of yesterday, and where my staff were receiving callbacks within 2-3 hours, we are now waiting over a day. “This whole debacle is incredibly frustrating for people and it is a disgrace that the Home Secretary, Theresa May, appears to have entirely failed to take on board the fact that the schools in Scotland break up for the summer holidays weeks ahead of those in England. “With Perthshire schools now closing for the holidays we are really hitting crunch time to ensure that travel plans are not ruined and my staff and I will be doing what we can to help constituents still waiting on passports.”

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