New Blue Passport Covers to be made in France

Mr Bump

Mr Bump

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Yes
you can't make this stuff up.
Not that I am bothered its all about good value for our tax money.

Also I note when you renew your passport you can choose an EU coloured one anyway,
 
I know the argument is that the cheapest tender is best as the cost to the tax payer is the lowest. But from a government perspective could you not argue that a higher price paid to a UK manufacturer is better as they money stays within the UK economy, paid to UK company, distributed to employees withing the UK, to be spent on the whole within the UK. Where as with paying a non UK company less is actually worse as that money leaves the UK never to be seen again.
 
bass_junkie83 said:
I know the argument is that the cheapest tender is best as the cost to the tax payer is the lowest. But from a government perspective could you not argue that a higher price paid to a UK manufacturer is better as they money stays within the UK economy, paid to UK company, distributed to employees withing the UK, to be spent on the whole within the UK. Where as with paying a non UK company less is actually worse as that money leaves the UK never to be seen again.
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well therein lies the issue, EU rules dictate the job had to go out to EU tender.

So France win it.
 
Yes but as far as I am aware there is nothing forcing the lowest price offered to be sole/main award criteria.

I know from my line of work that the cheapest tenderer almost never wins the job. Cheap does not = value for money.
 
Mr Bump said:
well therein lies the issue, EU rules dictate the job had to go out to EU tender.

So France win it.
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Agree, PR balls up of the highest order. Anyway, surely the government could weight the tender in the way they want (ie. price has a 10% weighting rather than say 50%).

Also why the hell should it go out to EU tender?
 
cambsno said:
Agree, PR balls up of the highest order. Anyway, surely the government could weight the tender in the way they want (ie. price has a 10% weighting rather than say 50%).

Also why the hell should it go out to EU tender?
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EU law dictates it has to go out to tender the government has no other option.
 
The French get around that issue by making their passports in-house rather than putting it out to tender but at some point the UK subbed the work out rather than doing it themselves.
 
Nod said:
The French get around that issue by making their passports in-house rather than putting it out to tender but at some point the UK subbed the work out rather than doing it themselves.
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They did to a company called Del A Rue who bid for the work this time as well but were undercut by the French
 
Is F........ing swearing aloud on this Forum ............
 
Well, after Brexit they’ll all be made in China anyway, if I understand the Brexiteers arguments correctly.
 
Said on the news the taxpayer would save 120 mil having the French make the things

So....that's the next question, how is that possible.

I mean, I'm all for saving a bit of cash but is this the French with some obscure economic advantage or British tenders taking the p155
 
Mr Bump said:
They did to a company called Del A Rue who bid for the work this time as well but were undercut by the French
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And that's who my missus works for.....

Well, until next Friday. Thankfully she'd already seen the writing on the wall and got another job to go to, a month ago.

Very, very lucky escape there
 
Makes perfect sense, outsource the manufacturing to a foreign country and the savings for the taxpayer can go towards the benefits for those put out of work. Top job!
 
To be honest I don't care who makes them, the lower the cost the better, government already spunks enough money on Brexit as it is...
 
It’ll also be nice to see the reduction in the cost of said passports.... oh wait....
 
Isn't this going to a company that already have premises and works in this country, who already do our driving licences? If the contract goes to gemalto, then they already have works in Hampshire and Lancashire, so that'll be extra jobs in that area.
Plus it's reported to save £120m over 5 years. That's a lot.
 
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Byker28i said:
Isn't this going to a company that already have premises and works in this country, who already do our driving licences? If the contract goes to gemalto, then they already have works in Hampshire and Lancashire, so that'll be extra jobs in that area.
Plus it's reported to save £120m over 5 years. That's a lot.
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Very good point, I see they also make USA e-passports amongst many others too. It’s just astonishing to see the furore over the passports, we really have developed a victim mentality here in England (I say England for reasons that will be obvious ;-) ).
 
Yes it's an embarrassing PR cockup, but let's look at the economics.

The Gemalto bid was reported as being worth £490m, and as being £120m cheaper than DeLaRue. I have no idea how much profit there is within that £490m, but I'd be surprised if there's very much, given the magnitude of the difference between the bids. So since the new passports are apparently going to be made in the UK anyway, that's maybe £20m-£40m of profit going out of the country and £450m-£470m staying in the UK. To my mind, that seems a reasonable price to pay, in order to save UK taxpayers £120m.

Here's an interesting thing though. There are about 42m UK passport holders and they'll all need to be renewed during the 10-year contract. So that means they cost less than £12 each to make, maybe £11 each plus <£1 profit for Gemalto. But a new passport costs the holder £72.50. So where does the extra £60-odd go? Administrative costs, or essentially a stealth tax?
 
isn't this government supposed to advocate transparency, as such you would think that some sort of explanation of the facts would be made to prevent speculation!
 
StewartR said:
Here's an interesting thing though. There are about 42m UK passport holders and they'll all need to be renewed during the 10-year contract. So that means they cost less than £12 each to make, maybe £11 each plus <£1 profit for Gemalto. But a new passport costs the holder £72.50. So where does the extra £60-odd go? Administrative costs, or essentially a stealth tax?
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Stealth tax like the driving license renewal and the push for compulsory ID cards even though some people like me have a full UK license AND passport.

I may be a sceptic, but there's a hell of a lot of costly things occurring that simply don't need addressing! We complain about not being in control of our country, yet the things we can control we monumentally fudge up!
 
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Opinion-Based
I can't see how £60 per passport can be justified as an administrative cost, when the majority of the work is now automated.

And the renewal is the same principal. The term 'Admin Fee' is too widely accepted in my opinion

It's outrage when insurance companies charge large amounts for a simple change on your policy, this amounts to the same thing..
 
Mr Bump said:
well therein lies the issue, EU rules dictate the job had to go out to EU tender.
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Unless you are France, in which case EU rules don't apply ;)
Neilc28 said:
It's outrage when insurance companies charge large amounts for a simple change on your policy, this amounts to the same thing..
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This is to keep the headline figure down on price comparison sites. They need to take in a certain amount of money each year so since they can't charge enough for insurance to cover their costs, they get it in other ways.

It's the people frantically comapring the market on every renewal that have caused this.
 
Neilc28 said:
Opinion-Based
I can't see how £60 per passport can be justified as an administrative cost, when the majority of the work is now automated.

And the renewal is the same principal. The term 'Admin Fee' is too widely accepted in my opinion

It's outrage when insurance companies charge large amounts for a simple change on your policy, this amounts to the same thing..
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My sister works in the passport office in the North East, there's a huge amount of people work there, manually checking all the applications
 
Neilc28 said:
Stealth tax like the driving license renewal
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Driving licence is now more of an identity document as it has your image on it, so falls into line with passport renewal so your image can be updated. There's no stealth about it at all, rather keeping the document upto date.
 
I do quite like the photo driving licence it does cut sown on people using hooky licences
 
Mr Bump said:
EU law dictates it has to go out to tender the government has no other option.
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onomatopoeia said:
Unless you are France, in which case EU rules don't apply ;)
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srichards said:
Isn't procurement and tendering part of WTO regulations anyway?
https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/gproc_e/gpa_overview_e.htm
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Yeah but no but. If the government puts work like this out to tender, then EU law and WTO rules say they can't discriminate between bids from domestic suppliers and bids from foreign suppliers. But the operative word there is "if", and the French workaround has already been explained:
Nod said:
The French get around that issue by making their passports in-house rather than putting it out to tender
Click to expand...
 
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