Quote:
Originally Posted by 1andrew1
Another irony of the passport contract is that the British incumbent De La Rue sounds pretty French to me!
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The founder was from Guernsey, as British as tea and cakes, fish and chips, cricket on village greens,
etc.
The whole passport thing was somehow bound to happen wasn't it? As soon as this went out to tender, there was always the risk that British companies might be undercut under 'Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT) rules.
Unfortunately leaving the EU won't help as WTO GPA rules also require competitive global tendering.
France doesn't allow other countries to make its' passports but that's because it doesn't put out the contract to tender as the government has its' own printing house. The HMSO was privatised in 1996 which is why we need to outsource passport printing.
It's funny how De La Rue is saying it's wrong that British Passports are made by a foreign country when De La Rue make passports and ID cards for many other countries -
http://www.delarue.com/global-insights/case-studies