Black British passports were stolen by hijackers in Northern England.

From the AFP (via Yahoo News):

Hijackers made off with boxes of blank British passports worth a fortune on the black market in a raid on a delivery van, police said Tuesday, in the latest blow to the government’s record on security.

Detectives said the 24 boxes of about 3,000 passports and visa documents, destined for British embassies around the world, were worth some 2.5 million pounds (five million dollars, 3.2 million euros).

Although the passports will be useless as travel documents, the article mentions that buyers could use the passports to establish identity at financial banks.

An industry expert said the passports would not be of much use as travel documents but warned that they could be used to create a new identity while forgers could use them as proof of identity for banks.

“From that one document you could literally create your own identity as a foreign national who last month got a British passport,” said Steve Beecroft, a specialist in so-called “smart technology”.

The stolen documents could be sold to people like asylum seekers who want to pass themselves off as British citizens, he said.