MPs reacted with incredulity when an HM Passport Office executive said that 55,000 applications are delayed beyond the 10-week stretch that prospective travellers are advised to allow.
Thomas Greig, director of passports, citizenship and civil registration was answering questions from members of the Home Affairs Select Committee.
The committee chair, Labour’s Dame Diana Johnson, said MPs’ offices had been “inundated with people who are struggling to get their passports”.
HM Passport Office is processing record numbers of passports since international travel restrictions were lifted by the UK in March 2022.
Mr Greig said that one in 10 of the 550,000 passport applications currently pending had been with HM Passport Office for over the 10-week allowance for processing.
“I have to say I’m fairly shocked at those figures you’ve just described,” said Dame Diana.
“That is completely unacceptable.
“This is not rocket science, is it? I’ve looked back at the experience in the Passport Office over the last 10 years.
“There’s been criticism from the National Audit Office of your ability to project and plan.
“Why have you failed so miserably?”
Mr Greig said: “We have achieved record output and we have produced more passports than we ever have.
“So a lot of our planning was directed towards that.
“We’ve brought in increased numbers of staff to deal with these applications.
“There have been a smaller proportion of applicants for whom it has taken longer than we would have liked.
“We have put measures in place so they could contact us and where they do need their passport urgently we are able to provide it.”
MPs have access to a special passport unit in Portcullis House, where the hearing took place, as well as a special Home Office telephone link.
But Tim Loughton, Conservative MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, said: “We don’t see our staff very much these days because they’re sitting in queues in the passport unit here or they’re permanently on the telephone.
“The productivity of most MPs’ offices has gone down extraordinarily, more than anything else I have ever known in 25 years in parliament, because we are dealing with constituents who are desperate to get their passports that they applied for 10 weeks or more before.”
In February 2018 the then-immigration minister, Caroline Nokes, told parliament: “We currently process 99.9 per cent of straightforward applications within three weeks, and on average, customers making a non-priority application can expect their passport to be issued seven working days after the application is made.”
In April 2021, the normal three-week processing time for a renewal or new passport was extended to 10 weeks.
Around half of the overdue passport applications are “available to decision-makers” – ie in a position to be issued, rather than awaiting further information or documentation.
The chair also said the committee was “incredibly disappointed” at the absence of a representative of Teleperformance – the French service company that operates the Passport Adviceline.
She said: “We think this is extremely out of order that they have not found time to come and be scrutinised at this committee.
“They have a contract with the Home Office, and I hope the Home Office will be making it very clear that not attending a select committee is something that is not right and that they should make themselves available when we have asked to question them.
“I hope, Mr Greig, you will take that message back.”
Earlier, Simon Clark, chief secretary to the Treasury, told the BBC Today programme: “If you look now at the situation with, for example, passports, there is clear evidence that the Home Office is now totally on top of that situation, and that the long backlogs that were seen with that explosion of demand as people returned to travel are now abating.”
