They have long outlived any usefulness but act as yet another tax and the justification for an expensive, unnecessary government department.

At one time, possessing a British passport while overseas brought a measure of protection and safety. These days, it is more likely to bring resentment & danger. Any grudging help from the FCO is charged at their “current rates.”

So, if a passport does not actually facilitate travel nor provide any benefit; why have it?

If lack of a passport doesn’t seem to prevent entry into the UK; why have it?

If passports really are so irrelevant; why the expense and inconvenience in obtaining them?

Now that the USA – doubtless to be followed tit-for-tat by other countries – demands a full biography, electronically and in advance;

Now that countries routinely photograph and fingerprint people on entry & exit;

What is the point of an expensive, cardboard UK passport?

(unlike tax returns:
Q. How much did you earn last year?
A. I don’t know, didn’t you tax me on it already, why don’t you know?)

With the passport they have to ask all those questions that they DO know the answers to (please tell me they DO know the answers) because when Bin Laden applies in your name he WON’T know all the answers and will slip up.

It may cost us 60 squids for another birth certificate copy, but Mr Laden will have to pay 100 times that for another forgery, at which he’ll be hopping mad, possibly leading to more mistakes.

Yes, the passport form was mailed to your address, but the genuine man knows his own address and won’t be copying the address along with subliminal errors from the envelope, like Bin Laden will.

It’s not that they don’t have the information to hand (please don’t let it be that) it’s that they don’t know that it’s YOU filling the form in.

In fact “YOU” doesn’t have much meaning, hence the desperate need for some kind of biometric magic bullet that can tie us to a primary key in a national database.

Currently, it seems, knowledge of YOU is serving as a proxy for the real YOU.