Guidance

Complaints: MP enquiries: caseworker guidance

Published 21 March 2024

Version 4.0

This guidance is for His Majesty’s Passport Office staff dealing with MP enquiries

About: Complaints: MP enquiries

This guidance tells HM Passport Office staff how to deal with customer questions made through MPs (Members of Parliament).

Contacts

If you have any questions about the guidance and your line manager or senior caseworker cannot help you or you think that the guidance has factual errors then email the Guidance team.

If you notice any formatting errors in this guidance (broken links, spelling mistakes and so on) or have any comments about the layout or navigability of the guidance then you can the Guidance team

Publication

Below is information on when this version of the guidance was published:

• version 4.0
• published for Home Office staff on 22 September 2023

Changes from last version of this guidance

This guidance has been updated to reflect a change of name for the Guidance team.

How we receive MP complaints

This section tells HM Passport Office staff how the Home Office gets MP complaints and how they share them with HM Passport Office.

If a Member of Parliament (MP) gets a complaint about a Home Office department or application, the MP’s office will contact the Home Office MP team by email, phone, or letter.

If the complaint is about an application, policy or guidance, and the Home Office MP team cannot reply to the complaint, they will email the correct HM Passport Office team (for example, Quality, Examination Support team (QuESt) or the Guidance team) to ask for more information.

If a complaint is sent to us from a different email address, staff must check with the Home Office MP team before replying.

If an MP contacts us directly, you must direct them to the Home Office MP team.

Service level agreement for MP enquiries

The Home Office MP team have a 20-day service level agreement (SLA) to reply to the MP (this includes quality check and approval). This means you (HM Passport Office staff) will only have a few days to give the MP team the information they need.

For this reason, you must make sure you reply to the Home Office MP team either:

• in 48 hours
• before the deadline given by the Home Office MP team in the email

Sharing information with the MP team

We process customer data within HM Passport Office on the basis:

• that processing is necessary for a public task
• the Civil Registration Directorate personal data is process for compliance with legal obligations

The Home Office is the data controller for passport data and HM Passport Office will share data:

• internally where necessary, to achieve the purpose for which the data was collected
• where it is legal and proportionate to do so, with:
  • other government departments
  • law enforcement agencies
  • local authorities

Under schedule 1 part 2 of the Data Protection Act (2018), we can disclose information to MPs about their constituents through the Home Office MP team.

How to do an MP enquiry investigation

The Home Office MP team will ask a series of questions based on the complaint from the MP. You must answer these questions:

• in a timely manner (within the SLA)
• factually (no opinions)
• concisely (in brief)

To investigate, you must:

1. Read the questions or information provided by the MP team.
2. Review the application on AMS (Application Management System) and DAP (Digital Application Processing).
3. Contact the Guidance team if the MP team asks for a copy of guidance.
4. Reply to the MP team by email within 48 hours or before the deadline.
5. Delete the MP team email from your inbox as soon as you have answered it.
6. Delete your reply to the MP team email from your sent items as soon as you have answered it.
7. Delete the MP team email and your reply from your deleted items folder within 3 months of answering the questions.

If you get a follow up email from the Home Office MP team, you must deal with it in the same way as a new enquiry.

MP enquiries: contacting someone outside of your team

If you need to contact someone outside of your team (for example, an examiner or Counter Fraud investigator), you must do this by emailing them. You must also let the Home Office MP team know by copying them into your email so that they can manage workflow and targets.

Official or Official-Sensitive must be used when you need to apply additional handling controls and because of its sensitivity to limit who has access to it.

In some cases, it may be appropriate to email a team inbox, but in other cases it may be appropriate to email an individual. The main thing to remember is, the email must only go to staff who need to see it.

If you need to, you can share the information you received from the MP team with any member of staff. If the information you need is not held by HM Passport Office, you must:

• tell the MP team who holds the information
• ask the MP team to contact the team who holds the information

How to add case notes about an MP enquiry

You must add a case note to an application if we have made a mistake (for example, if an examiner did not follow guidance correctly) and for audit purposes.

If HM Passport Office staff are reviewing an application, they must case note why we are looking at an application and any specific instructions. This will prevent duplicate handling or contradictory information being given.

What to do after answering an MP enquiry

If you notice an issue when answering an MP enquiry (for example, a quality issue), you must contact the correct team or operational team leader (OTL) to explain the problem.

If you find an error on an application, you must contact the examiner’s OTL. The OTL will decide what to do.

If you see a trend (several people have made the same mistake) you must submit a work request.

You must submit a work request if you identify an issue with:

• guidance
• policy
• GOV.UK