Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to her Answer of 16 April 2018 to Question 904765, Official Report, column 21, if she will publish (a) the evidential basis for the contract for the printing of passports being estimated as saving £120 million and (b) details of that proposed contract; over what time period those savings are estimated to accrue; and what proportion of the cost of the contract those estimated savings represent.

The new contract will run for 11.5 years. Costs will be considerably lower than the current contract, with the savings delivered over the lifetime of the contract. This underlines our commitment to deliver value for money to our passport customers and the tax payer.

As part of the procurement process, all bidders were evaluated against their individual pricing proposal. Proposals relating to unsuccessful bids are commercially sensitive, and therefore no evidence relating to differences between the bids will be published.