The Government in the guise of the UK Passport and Identity Service is opening what it calls 'Investigation Centres' across the country On March 26th, with virtually NO media publicity the Government opened the first group of Investigation Centres.

The nearest one to Surrey is at Crawley, Second Floor, Belgrave House, Station Way, Northgate, Crawley RH10 1HU These centres will be used for what the government is calling "Authentication by Interview". The interview will demand official numbers, addresses for the last few years, educational institutions,etc. That information will be used to look up everything that can be found out about you on all the government and private sector databases they can lay their hands on: school records, social services, police, credit checking, family details. Why this renew Now? to build a single dossier on you containing personal information.

Applicants will be called in to their nearest investigation centre. There you will be fingerprinted and photographed, and put through what they describe as an "intrusive interview" to check that you can give answers about your private details that agree with the official ones. If you can, you'll get your passport. If not... it is not clear, but trying to get a passport under 'false pretences' - if the computer says "no" - could be quite serious.

The government has already estimated that 1 in 4 people who apply under this new procedure will have to cancel their trip because they don't get their passport in time. "It is true that the Labour Party is the only one that supports the ID cards," said Nigel Farage, "but anybody who applies for a new passport between now and the end of this government will have their files kept forever.

The answer is simple. Apply for a passport now, or risk the government holding all your information on file". So if you do NOT want the authorities to have a dossier on you, please apply for a new passport sooner rather than later For new applicants, typically children/teenagers, it is already too late . They must now report to one of these centres before getting a passport For renewals, we do not yet have a deadline, but it is probably best not to wait, especially if you only have a short time left on your existing passport. Some think that the deadline may be as near as this coming October.

Personally, if I only had a short time left out of the original 10 years, say, less than 4 years, I would renew NOW. You do not need a reason to renew before the expiry of the existing passport. It delays the date you will have to report to one of these centres to a later date, when, who knows, we may be living in a free country again.