TNAG-1405-FCO40-1880-Future-of-Hong-Kong-passports-and-visas-1985 — Page 96

Mr Fairweather

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- 6 JUN 1985

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NJ Barrington

DATE: 3 June 1985

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CC:

Mr Renwick

Mr Cambridge, MVD Mr Galsworthy, HKD Mr Thorpe, ITD

Mr Sanderson, WIAD

Mr Partridge, NTD

Mr Adam Fergusson

Mrs Denza, Legal Advisers

Sir M Butler, UKRep Brussels

COMMON FORMAT PASSPORT

1.

I have discussed your draft submission with Mr Partridge,

who has shown me a copy of his minute to you of 15 May. We

entirely agree, of course, that we should try to keep the Home

Office to the 1987 target date for the introduction of the

computerised Common Format Passport (CFP).

2.

Some staging, however, has always been envisaged even before responsibility for the Passport Office was passed to

the Home Office, so we cannot brief the Secretary of State to express surprise at this (para 3 of the draft Ministerial minute). What we should do is to argue that the 1987 introduction target be met. If computerisation is to be

introduced by then it means the Home Office must overcome their financial problems with the Treasury (who are saying

that this year's costs must be found from within the Home Office budget) and also technical problems due to delays in completing the 'full study report' on which a call for tender for computerisation will be based.

3. If the computerisation target cannot be met, then I agree we should urge the Home Office to introduce the CFP manually by 1987. This may not be popular politically, but one might argue that a certain familiarity with the new passport type would help pave the way for efficient computerisation.

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