£72 for a freakin' passport renewal!!

It seems to me this is just a conveniently applied tax, and bears no relation to any costs involved.

When driving licences were first introduced, they had to be renewed each year at a charge of five shillings (25p). In reply to questions in the House of Commons, the appropriate minister assured the House that this charge was in no way a tax, but was merely to defray the costs of issuing the licence.

Years later, the period of validity was changed from one year to three years, and at the same time the charge was trebled to fifteen shillings. Obviously the cost of issuing a licence for three years was no different, but there was not a murmur of protest at the trebling of the charge. This was presumably because it was considered that drivers were still being charged five shillings a year. Obviously the idea had become accepted that this was in fact a tax, in spite of ministerial assurances.

So I don't think the 70 charge for a passport has anything whatever to do with actual costs.

just softening you up for £200 every two years for a renewed ID card...

The claim is that it does, and you get a breakdown of the individual costs somewhere along the process.

tim

Admittedly,

manual

In 1996 it cost me 18. But that was of course before New Labour.

In 2005 it cost me 42 (and my son 25).

In 2008 it's 72 and 46 for a child.

attempts

massive

It's strange how the rest of the economy seems to have had inflation of around 3% pa over the last 10 years, but anything to do with government seems to have inflation of triple or quadruple that.

whatever

I'd like to see a breakdown of the 12%+ pa average inflation in passport costs since New Labour came to power. Why are we paying around 3 times more in real terms for a passport than in 1996?

Hear Hear, I'd like to know what other countries pay for a passport? There are people on here that live abroad, so how about telling us Brits if we're being ripped off again?

Redman

Probably the extra security checks needed for the millions of pakis skanking the system.

At 21:41:34 on 21/02/2008, Andy Pandy delighted uk.finance by announcing:

Because it's not the same object you're paying for 12 years down the line, either physically in your hand or behind the scenes.

Don't forget to add in the price of the passport photos. That's another £4 if you use the booth in the post office.

So far as the price goes. I use 2 data points when assessing how prices have changed. in 1975,when I went to university beer in the union bar was 22p a pint. It's now 10x that. In 1981 when I was working, beer went up from 49p to 51p a pint - so you couldn't quite get two for a quid any more. You don't say when in the 70's you paid £15 for a passport. Since that was a time of raging inflation, the year does make a difference, but even if it was the end on the 70's, my "inflation index" would put a comparable cost of 5x that for now, i.e. £75 - so I don't think the cost is unreasonable. Plus, you get a microchip and a little loop of wire in your passport now, too.

Anyway, no-one's forcing you to get a passpost and when you amortise the cost over it's 10 year life, it's < £8/year.

Exactly - please remember all of this when voting at the next general election. The only way to stop our own government taxing the crap out of us is to stand up to them and boot them out! Its not as if Britain has dramatically improved with the spending of our tax money taken for various things since they've been in power for them to say its worth taxing us more - its absolutely not!

Its people like you with that bloody mindset that allows these bastards to keep on getting away with it!

So they increase it from ~8 per year to 10 - "oh its only 2 more - think of where you can go".

Then its goes from 10 to 12 and from 12 to 15, etc, etc and because people don't get angry about it they keep on doing it ("till the pips squeak") - this is why almost everything in this bloody country is more expensive than everywhere else in the world! Its people's attitudes and the stupid mental calculations they do to justify to themselves that's everything's reasonable and that its OK - when if you bloody wake up, you realise its not OK, you're being completely ripped off by a greedy incompetant wasteful government. Wake up man!

It's a great incentive to never come back though on the other hand isn't it?

Ripped off? We're being treated like dairy cattle. End of story.

Bollox, how many times a year does the average Brit that has a 10 year passport use it? I had a passport when I was in the RAF do you know how many times I used it? once. When I left the service a few years ago I renewed it, I've used it twice in almost 5 years. We all can't afford 2 or 3 holidays abroad every year as that's what most people have a passport for, holidays.

Redman

"Redman" wrote

How does EasyJet (et al) keep up their volumes, then?

It is extortionate. You hit the nail on the head in your second paragraph. It is to subsidise and hide the true cost of the egregious ID Card and National Identity Register project.

M.

In the sense that no-one's forcing you to travel abroad, right?

Well, I've heard a rumour (the last time I was on a plane is before all this 911 stuff, so I have no first-hand experience) that most airlines now require you to show passports even on domestic flights. Still, I suppose no-one's forcing you to fly and you *could* take the train -- though it's probably more expensive.

Soon they will force you to get an ID card, won't they? And to pay for it, and it'll be even more expensive, but you might get a free passport with every ID card. :-)

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:14:49 GMT, Peter Lynch scribed:

Don't forget to add yet another £4 when you use the post-office check and send and they bullshit you the photo is no good, so you go somewhere else to get the pictures to make sure the post office don't get more of your money.

As a general rule servicemen don't need a passport because they can travel internationally to and from duty on their military ID card.