§ Mr. Peter Bruinvelsasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the answer of 3 February, Official Report, column 6, on how many occasions in each of the last five years passport officers have exercised their discretion in the exceptional circumstances described; if he will now take steps to widen this discretion to permit the issue without charge of a replacement passport where the family passport has used up less than a third of its period of validity and where it has been used on no more than one occasion; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. WaddingtonI regret that the statistics requested are not available. We have no plans to extend the criteria on which current discretion operates.