Security breach as 3,000 passports stolen from van

A man has been arrested after blank passports worth £2.5m were stolen from a van. 

He is the delivery man who accompanied the driver of the van, sources said.

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said: "A man from Oldham was arrested this morning on suspicion of conspiracy to commit robbery and is currently in police custody.

Hijackers stole thousands of blank British passports as a delivery truck was pulled up outside a newsagents, police have revealed.

One raider jumped into the van after the driver left the vehicle. A second delivery man sitting in the van was attacked before the offender sped off with the haul.

The Foreign Office admitted a serious breach of security today after 3,000 blank passports destined for British embassies worldwide were stolen from a van.

The 24 parcels, containing blank passports and vignettes - the blank stickers for visa stamps - were taken from the vehicle, which was en-route from a factory in Oldham to RAF Northolt near London.

The passports - taken when the van was hijacked near the site of the factory in Chadderton - were said to be the new electronic type which contain a chip replicating the data printed on the document itself.

Former Scotland Yard fraud officer Tom Craig said on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that the passports would be worth around £1,700 each.

Mr Craig, who now runs ID security company Amarlis, said: "That is because they can be used by putting in biographical information of your own, not necessarily getting the chip information right, and then you can use them to open up bank accounts or actually get employment.

Official claims that the passport security features made them "unusable" were challenged by analysts who said the chips in the new documents were easy to clone.

Equipped with a genuine British passport, forgers would simply have to replace the blank chip with a cloned one containing the details of whoever they wanted, said independent consultant Adam Laurie, founder of RFIDIOt.org, an open source library that covers security tag readers.

Keith Vaz, a Labour MP and chairman of the influential Commons Home Affairs Committee, wants an inquiry into UK passport security.

"I find it extraordinary that the theft of so many passports was even possible," Mr Vaz said.

"This government has put the eradication of illegal immigration at the top of the political agenda. It is therefore completely unacceptable that such sensitive documents are transported in a way that puts them at risk of theft."

Greater Manchester Police said it had launched a joint investigation with the Serious Organised Crime Agency and their enquiries were continuing. The hijackers are not thought to have been armed.

The Foreign Office has begun a review of security arrangements with the producers of the passports.

Security Printing and Systems Ltd provided passports for the Government for more than 40 years before it was taken over by 3M in 2006.