NO2ID

Does anyone have a definitive link to somewhere that lists the price of UK passports over time?

My first one, in 1982, cost a mere ELEVEN pounds

The second one, ten years later cost only FIFTEEN pounds.

By 2002, it cost THIRTY pounds - double in ten years!!

The current price, a mere five years later is SIXTY SIX pounds, and in just over a months time they will become SEVENTY TWO pounds each!!!!!!!!

At that rate of increase, it is a no-brainer to renew (for freedom) now - because who knows what they will cost in a few more years

mb

It's more informative to track the price increase for the time Labour has been in power (1997 to present) as before that, increases tended to be more of the rate-of-inflation type...

...that's one reason why i want a definitive list, rather than just my own experiences. I think that the 2002 hike was when the service was "privatised", and i seem to recall queues for passports and missed holidays - this was the start of the rot.

I am sure that i saw a report comparing the cost of the "components" of a passport (paper, postage, admin etc.) and it was the admin component that had increased by some phenomenal percentage.

Still, if you want to pre-condition the population to accept the cost of ID cards

mb

Are you sure you're not thinking of the summer of 99? Handing out umbrellas to people in the queue etc...?

The report you mention might have been one of the annual agency accounts, though having just taken a quick look at one (2004) I don't see it, so either it's not always listed, or it had to wheedled out of someone in a parliamentary question...

If you trust Wikipedia, there is a list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_passport#Fees

* £18 - November 1992
* £21 - 26 March 1998
* £28 - 16 December 1999
* £30 - 14 January 2002
* £33 - 21 November 2002
* £42 - 2 October 2003
* £51 - 1 December 2005
* £66 - 5 October 2006
* £72 - 4 October 2007

This is for British Citizens who live in the UK. If you live outside the UK it costs more, currently £119 instead of £66.

ChrisF,

thanks for that - i never thought of Wiki

Adding in my actual purchase prices with approximate dates (because they probably were not exact price-rise points) we get:

• £11 - 1982
• £15 - 1992
• £18 - November 1992
• £21 - 26 March 1998
• £28 - 16 December 1999
• £30 - 14 January 2002
• £33 - 21 November 2002
• £42 - 2 October 2003
• £51 - 1 December 2005
• £66 - 5 October 2006
• £72 - 4 October 2007

...so for the first fifteen years under study, much of which was during (Tory governed) high inflation, the price didn't even double, and yet over the lesser last ten years, with (Labour governed) low inflation, the price has actually quadrupled!!!!!

They can't be preparing for ID cards under the guise of passports - surely



mb

On the pathetic income we seniors have to survive on, I can't afford to renew my passport and I have been invited to go to China next year. That is out because I get 50% above the cost of renewal, to live on per week. I don't get to swan off around the world at taxpayers expense like Blair did and Brown now can.

July 2009: £77.50 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8138285.stm

This is a very interesting assertion, since every time anyone asks about the costs of ID cards, they are given the 'one-bucket' response. Specifically, that it is not possible to split the costings of ID and passports since they are all within the same budget ("and 70 percent blah blah blah").

If passport costs are ring-fenced, are ID costs inside the fence - in which case the 'not related' assertion above is rubbish - or are they outside the fence - in which case the 'one-bucket' answer is rubbish...?

Or did I miss the trick there?