The Guardian<\/a>, criticising the British Home and Foreign offices.<\/p>\n\u201cThe embassy, the Home Office and the Foreign Office bounced us from one to another,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are playing with people\u2019s lives, a child\u2019s education. It is loathsome.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 15-year-old was forced to miss more than a month of education, prompting her school to contact the government as they were \u201cincreasingly concerned about her prolonged absence from education\u201d.<\/p>\n
Because she had never had a British passport, the Home Office could not issue a temporary passport for the teenager, Mr Somerville said.<\/p>\n
The father said the local MP became involved as well, which eventually led to an emergency travel document being issued.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite having a British parent, two valid passports, and having been at school in the UK since nursery, changes to Home Office rules resulted in her being stuck in Rome and missing six weeks of school,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThankfully, we were able to help and she\u2019s now at home and back in school, but unfortunately this was not an isolated case, and it raises serious concerns about how government departments communicate policy changes once they\u2019ve been introduced \u2013 and support those who have slipped through the net.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Somerville said that he had been met by \u201cremarkable kindness\u201d from the frontline workers at the passport office but a wall of \u201cstupidity\u201d was reached once it was escalated higher.<\/p>\n
He described the whole process as a bureaucratic nightmare, which came to a head when he was told by a senior official that they could no longer communicate with Mr Somerville as his daughter had turned 16.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told them I had spoken to 14 different people in their office and, instead of resolving the complaint, they were phoning me to tell me they couldn\u2019t speak to me. It beggars belief,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the kind of general circumlocution that goes on, the sheer lack of intelligent use of manpower.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey should be focusing on real cases, which need effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe frontline customer staff are very kind. But it is not their fault they are impotent.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to The Guardian, Mr Somerville\u2019s child is not the first to be left high and dry because of the new rules; with other minors being stuck in Denmark, and a woman in Spain.<\/p>\n
The Home Office has been criticised for its poor communication of the new rule.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Home Office told the masthead that the teenager \u201cwas granted an emergency travel document in May, enabling them to return to the UK\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also remained in contact regarding a passport application, and once the required information was received and checks were concluded, a passport was issued within eight days,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson added that \u201call dual British citizens have needed to present either a valid British passport or certificate of entitlement when travelling to the UK. Without one, carriers cannot verify British citizenship, which may lead to delays or refused boarding.\u201d<\/p>\n
They did not answer questions about a minor being stranded overseas, nor the impact on education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bureaucratic nightmare has left a teenager stranded overseas for six weeks, missing school. In April, the unnamed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2057,43,44,41,39,42,40,5429,1720],"class_list":["post-805287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-europe","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uk","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}