Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to clear the backlog of passport applications; and whether her Department is taking steps to install new infrastructure to speed up new applications.

HM Passport Office staffing numbers have been increased over 1200 since April 2021. This has delivered the operational capacity needed to process applications in record numbers, at approximately one million each month.

Across the first 6 months of 2022, HM Passport Office processed 97.7% of UK standard applications within 10 weeks.