Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent progress her Department has made on reducing the backlog in passport applications.

To support the processing of an unprecedented demand, Her Majesty’s Passport Office has increased its staffing numbers across the UK. 650 new staff have joined HM Passport Office since April 2021, with plans for a further 550 to have joined by the summer.

This has helped to process applications in record numbers. Across March, April, and May, HM Passport Office completed the processing of approximately three million applications, with 98.5% of applications from the UK being completed within the published processing time of up to ten weeks