Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent estimate she has made of the number of cases in progress being handled by Her Majesty’s Passport Office as of 12 May 2022.

Since April 2021, people have been advised to allow up to ten weeks when applying for their British passport as more than 5 million people delayed applying due to the pandemic. The vast majority of all passport applications continue to be dealt with well within 10 weeks.

HM Passport Office has increased its staffing numbers by 500 since April 2021 and is in the process of recruiting a further 700. This has helped to ensure that passport applications continue to be processed in higher numbers than ever before. Across March and April 2022, HM Passport Office completed the processing of two million applications.