THE so-called fury over passport charges going up by 33 per cent is, surely, overstated.

For although this increase is 15 times the rate of inflation and will affect three million people a year, for an adult it amounts to paying £7 extra for something that lasts 10 years and compares with the thousands of pounds that many families are prepared to spend every year on travel abroad.

It hardly amounts to a punitive burden on anyone's holiday budget. But this does not mean that the government will escape political damage.

Home Secretary Jack Straw insists that the increases are to pay for modernisation of the Passport Agency and not to meet the £12.6 million cost of resolving the fiasco that this year saw thousands of desperate people queuing for hours outside passport offices.

But those scenes will stick in the mind of many voters, along with the assumption that they are now being asked to pay for the government's mistakes.

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