§ Lord Marlesfordasked Her Majesty's Government:
How many of the total number of United Kingdom passports in issue are machine readable and how many are not; and at which points of entry into the United Kingdom immigration officers have equipment to record electronically details of machine readable passports. [HL1047]
§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Rooker)The United Kingdom Passport Service has been issuing machine-readable passports since 1988. As a result, almost all United Kingdom-issued passports are machine-readable. The only exceptions will be where a passport has been exceptionally extended due to an emergency. A small number of non-machine readable passports are issued by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at posts overseas. It is not possible to provide details of the numbers of passports this involves.
All arriving passengers subject to immigration control are checked against the computerised warning index (WI) which automatically reads personal details from machine readable passports. The WI already contains the details of large numbers of lost or stolen passports and identity cards.
While the Immigration Service does not currently retain the passport details of all arriving passengers, it is currently urgently exploring with other control agencies the use of technology to require airlines to retain the passport or identity card details of passengers before they board a flight to the United Kingdom.
§ Lord Marlesfordasked Her Majesty's Government:
How many passports were reported lost or stolen in the last financial year; how many passports which have been reported lost or stolen were subsequently handed back to the authorities; and whether the charges made to those losing their passports reflect the complete cost of issuing replacement passports. [HL1048]
21WA
§ Lord RookerThe United Kingdom Passport Service records information on passports reported lost, stolen or unavailable. For the year ending 31 March 2001 there were 122,269 passports recorded under this category. The Passport Service does not routinely collect data on the number of passports lost or stolen which have been recovered.
Requests for the issue of a replacement passport are handled in the same way as first-time applications. The costs involved are broadly comparable and therefore no additional charges are made. The Passport Service operates on a net running cost regime and all costs are recovered through receipt of passport fees.