A legal battle was looming in the UK yesterday over a £400million contract to produce new hi-tech passports.

A losing bidder is threatening action over the fact that one of Gordon Brown’s senior mandarins is a director of the firm which won the contract.

Gill Rider, a leading member of the Cabinet Office, not only directs the hiring of senior civil servants but is also director of De La Rue printers, which last week secured the job of producing biometric passports.

Rival firm 3M, furious that its bid was rejected, is considering a legal challenge based on potential conflict of interest, The Daily Mail reported yesterday.

But even more anger has been sparked by a claim that De La Rue is to print a fifth of the new passports – which will carry a mass of personal information in a special microchip – in Malta, costing British jobs and raising security fears.

In fact, it was on this aspect that most of the comments on The Daily Mail’s blog focused.

A spokesman for the Identity and Passport Service, said: “The Identity and Passport Service announced earlier this month that De La Rue had won the contract to produce the new British passport book having shown it is superbly placed to deliver the project.

“IPS met its legal obligations and followed guidance from the Office of Government Commerce throughout the procurement process to ensure a fair, transparent and robust exercise that ultimately identified the most suitable supplier to deliver the contract.

“IPS is confident that the vast majority of jobs relating to this contract will remain in the UK. The majority of passports will be produced in the UK and every passport will be personalised in Britain.”