Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the (a) causes for delays in processing passport applications at HM Passport Office and (b) the impact of those delays on people in Birmingham Erdington constituency.

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.

Across the first 6 months of 2022 HMPO processed 97.7% of UK standard applications within 10 weeks.