Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of making the cost of postal passport applications the same cost as for online applications.

When considering passport fees, Her Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO) adheres to HM Treasury guidance, Managing Public Money, which states that fees should be set at levels to recover the full cost of providing the service and that generally no one set of customers should subsidise the cost for other customers.

In making the new passport fee proposals HMPO carefully assessed the costs of providing each of the services provided and the proposals do reflect the fact that processing online applications is significantly cheaper than those associated with handling postal paper applications. In line with the Treasury Guidance HMPO will review fee levels annually to ensure all fees are set appropriately including costs relating to postal and online applications.