Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 15 July 2015 to Question 5846, what (a) proportion and (b) number of applications for a passport for a child overseas take longer than eight months to process.

A total of 49,173 international child passport applications finished processing in January-June 2015. Of this total, 1,068 (2.2%) took longer than eight months to be processed.

The processing time is the length of time from receipt of the application to the passport being printed.

Her Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO) must be fully satisfied that all appropriate checks have been completed successfully prior to the issuance of passport facilities. This is particularly important in relation to child applications as part of Her Majesty’s Passport Office responsibility to protect potentially vulnerable children, including those potentially at risk of child trafficking and to maintain the integrity of the British Passport.

These checks can require the provision of information from other agencies overseas – particularly in complex applications such as surrogacy cases.

Delays in the provision of this information to HMPO can lead to significantly extended timeframes in processing applications.