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Passports

Volume 460: debated on Monday 21 May 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether a person who meets the criteria to countersign passport applications is still eligible to countersign while on maternity leave. (138280)

[holding answer 18 May 2007]: A countersignatory for a passport application must be a professional person, or a person of standing in the community, who holds a current British or Irish passport. This is not affected by maternity leave, but it remains essential that a person who countersigns a passport application must be contactable by the Identity and Passport Service.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department under what circumstances difficulty in contacting a countersignatory who otherwise meets acceptable countersignatory criteria can constitute grounds for rejection of a passport application. (138281)

[holding answer 18 May 2007]: The purpose of having passport applications countersigned by responsible persons is to enable the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) to confirm the identities of applicants. The work of the IPS includes contacting countersignatories for their confirmation that they signed an application in the identity shown on the form received by IPS. This is an essential safeguard against forgery of countersignatory details and other methods of identity fraud. If an application is countersigned by a person who the IPS cannot contact, the applicant may be asked to make a fresh application.