Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many passports that her Department has returned to applicants in the last year have gone missing; and if she will estimate the annual cost to her Department of returning passports to applicants by (a) second-class post, (b) first-class post and (c) recorded delivery.

Since Her Majesty's Passport Office (HMPO) starting collecting this data in February 2014, 62 cases of passports wrongly delivered or packages damaged on delivery have been reported and investigated by HMPO and this has resulted in passports being cancelled. Subject to the outcome of the investigation, a new passport is issued to the passport holder. This is 0.0017% of the total passports issued for this period.

New passports are sent to customers by secure courier in the UK and overseas, any expired passports submitted with applications are returned to customers in the UK using second class post and overseas by secure courier which the customer pays for. In the 2013-14 financial year securely delivering new passports in the UK cost £17 million, overseas the cost was £6.25 million.
It is not possible to identify separately the cost of returning expired passports to customers in the UK.