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Posted By: cools New Passport - 22nd Mar 2018 3:11pm
Infuriating!! Just read that the new British Passport will be made in France! The UK supplier said the France-Dutch firm Gemalto had won the £490 million contract...I don't care that they were cheaper , it should have stayed with the British firm. Think it's totally wrong....
Posted By: venice Re: New Passport - 22nd Mar 2018 4:02pm
We were raging about the same thing this morning cools. Seems an absolute disgrace - and ironic that France wont allow foreign firms to make passports for the French ! I reckon it must be part of a deal to get something else 'passed'. Be interesting to hear Mrs May's reason .
Posted By: cools Re: New Passport - 22nd Mar 2018 5:12pm
I hope Nigel Farage kicks up a stink and causes uproar, Venice. Think most British people will find this outrageous....
Posted By: diggingdeeper Re: New Passport - 22nd Mar 2018 5:26pm
You can't have free trade then put in restrictive rules.

As we are still in the EU, contracts of this value have to be put out to Euro-tender.
Posted By: cools Re: New Passport - 22nd Mar 2018 5:50pm
Well DD there should be exceptions to the rule and this certainly should be one. Venice says that France won't allow foreign firms to do theirs so why should we.. Should have just used the British firm fir something so sensitive and important to people as this.
Posted By: diggingdeeper Re: New Passport - 22nd Mar 2018 9:40pm
It does make you wonder what is going on.

B&Q in trouble
Mos Bros in trouble
Carpetright in trouble
Mothercare in trouble
New Look in trouble
M&S in trouble

We have a Government that's borrowed more than any other Government, taken more money from Council's than any other Government, taken more from the people of the Country than any other.

Where is the money going?
Posted By: RUDEBOX Re: New Passport - 25th Mar 2018 12:51am
It isn’t just ironic that the Government has awarded the contract for printing Britain’s new post-Brexit blue passports to a Franco-Dutch firm instead of the current, UK-based, unionised De La Rue print company. This is exactly the sort of Brexit that some hard-right politicians have been after all along.

As Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey told the Daily Mirror last night “Instead of taking back control, the Government is doing things on the cheap.”

Unite and the GMB have joined forces with the Mirror to run a petition demanding that the new passports are made in Britain to support UK jobs, and we want as many people as possible to sign up and share the petition with friends and workmates.

The decision to recreate the old pre-EU British passport colour – something we could of course have done without leaving the EU – was a populist policy put forward by those advocating a Leave vote in the 2016 referendum.

What they didn’t tell voters was that the contract for printing UK passports, held for ten years by unionised British firm De La Rue, would then be awarded to the lowest bidder, wherever they came from.

GMB union leader Tim Roache said "At this rate, a Tory hard Brexit is going to be a passport to nowhere for our manufacturing industry."

The contract to print UK passports provides jobs for 150 workers at the main Gateshead plant, although the two hundred year old De La Rue company also prints bank notes and a host of other products. It is a highly unionised, motivated and skilled workforce who are stunned and appalled by the decision.

As well as unions, politicians from across the political spectrum are opposing the decision taken by the Home Office, whether they voted leave or remain. But this is the logic of a Tory Brexit – it’s not in the national interest at all, just the interests of a small group of the already rich and powerful.

The vast majority of people who voted to Leave did not vote to send the UK passport contract overseas, and it is decisions like this that make the TUC’s call for a jobs-first, rights-first Brexit so important.

This would not happen in France, where they produce their own passports in the interests of national security, despite remaining in the EU, and it should not happen in the UK.

Vowing to fight the decision and to secure UK jobs Unite national officer Louisa Bull said: “Theresa May and Amber Rudd need to explain to De La Rue workers why ‘taking back control’ means their jobs could be put at risk while the production of Britain’s new iconic passport is shipped overseas to France.”

Sign the petition here

https://www.tuc.org.uk/blogs/so-brexit-passports-contract-taken-unionised-british-firm#.
Posted By: venice Re: New Passport - 25th Mar 2018 12:04pm
Have had the family sign a couple now - for what good it might do - too late I guess.
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