Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many instances of passports being damaged by foreign border control agents have been reported to his Department in each of the last three years.

Where a passport is declared as damaged as part of an application to replace a British passport, His Majesty’s Passport Office does not require information to be provided as to the cause of the damage for the application to progress.

Should a customer choose to inform HM Passport Office of the cause of damage to their passport and the information be recorded, the data is not held in a reportable format and could not be obtained without disproportionate cost.