Delays hit thousands trying to get hold of passport

David Cameron confirmed the Passport Office had received 300,000 more applications than it would normally expect at this time of year and up to ten per cent were taking longer than three weeks to process.

The Prime Minister insisted the Home Office was on top of the situation as it was announced the Passport Office will open from 7am until midnight and extra staff have been drafted in to work on customer helplines.

Mr Cameron told MPs: “The Government has taken action to deal with this problem - not today but in weeks gone past. We have 250 staff already redeployed to the front line prioritising all outstanding applications, that will allow for an extra 25,000 examinations weekly.

“The Government has made sure... longer opening hours at the Passport Office, now seven days a week, 650 extra staff on the helplines to support customers and the Home Secretary has announced today that new offices will be opened in Liverpool next week with an additional 100 staff.

“The Home Office has been on this from the very start but it all begins with 300,000 extra people applying for passports compared with the previous time last year.”

MPs in the region have told The Yorkshire Post they are dealing with dozens of constituents complaining they are in a race against time to secure a passport before they are due to travel.

Earlier this week, Leeds mum Clare Atkin said she had waited almost two months for her two-year-old daughter’s passport and only received it 12 hours before flying.

Labour said official figures showed that while Passport Office staff numbers had risen in recent years they are still 600 below where they were in 2010.

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “While anxious holidaymakers wait for their passport applications to be processed, the Home Secretary just denies there is a problem.

“Yesterday she told us that no staff had been cut, and all the targets were being met.

“Yet today we learn the Passport Office has had major staff cuts in the last four years, and the Home Secretary is belatedly trying to find more staff - including from fraud and security checks.

“If the Prime Minister and Home Secretary won’t admit to the scale of the problem, how can we have any confidence they will sort it out?”

The Public and Commercial Services Union claimed there were 500,000 passport applications waiting to be processed.

PCS group secretary Mike Jones said: “Even all the contingencies that they are trying to put in place, we are still seeing that figure rising, so there is clearly a crisis going on within the Home Office and the Passport Office as well.”

Passport Office head Paul Pugh will be grilled by MPs when he appears before the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee next week.