Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many passport applications are (a) outstanding and (b) remain unprocessed for more than ten weeks.

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. 98.6% of all passport applications are dealt well within 10 weeks and we are processing around 250,000 per week,

A British passport cannot be issued until all checks are satisfactorily completed to ensure the applicant is entitled to hold one. If further information is required to enable an application to be progressed, then it will take longer.