Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average waiting time for an application for a child's first passport to be processed is; and if she has made an assessment of the potential impact of industrial action on that waiting time.

HM Passport Office is well-positioned to manage the current period of industrial action, and there are no plans to change the guidance which states that it takes up to ten weeks to get a passport.

In March 2023, the median processing time* for applications using the standard UK service for a child’s first passport was ten days.

*The processing time starts from the date that supporting documents are received and allocated to the application, to the date that the passport is printed plus a further two days for courier delivery.