A NEW PASSPORT (2)

As I was wasting my time in the U.K. passport office, I asked an employee why things had to be so complicated. In Denmark, you just go down to the local authority office, make an application (without having to go through security), give them the old passport and a photo, and get the new one some 10 days later.

His first answer was because there were ten times as many people in the U.K. than in Denmark. True, but irrelevant, said I; there would also be ten times as many people to process things.

Having realised that his first attempt was a non-answer, his second was that the Danish system was "not secure". But that's also a non-answer. It's one thing to have a central computer system that holds all passport data, indeed I can see sensible reasons for having such a system. But that doesn't mean that log-on access to that system can only be from one physical location, namely a shabby office block just outside Victoria Station. After all, the tax authorities have similar issues, and they don't make you travel to Newcastle in order to file your annual return.

The real reason is that British citizens don't have ID numbers. In Denmark every resident has a 10-digit CPR number, made up of the six numbers of their date of birth and four more, odd for men and even for women. This CPR number is used in most things to do with officialdom (tax matters, for instance), opening a bank account, going to the doctor etc etc. There are issues of data security - you don't necessarily want your doctor to know how much you pay in tax, for example - but the way forward is to solve that, not abolish the principle of being able to identify every resident fairly easily.

The British have got in a tizz about personal ID's, since they believe that they represent an infringement of civil liberties. The problem is that in not having them, you end up having other infringements of civil liberties, such as making it very difficult to get a passport.

Walter Blotscher