§ Lord Inglewoodasked Her Majesty's Government:
How many United Kingdom passports are currently valid for persons aged over 100 years; and [HL2429]
How many United Kingdom passports are at present in issue; and how many of these are electronically readable. [HL2430]
§ Baroness Scotland of AsthalThe United Kingdom Passport Service (UKPS) does not routinely collate information relating to the age of passport holders and there are no systems in place to extract this information from the UKPS database. Figures for the current number of passport holders aged over 100 years are therefore not available.
In the last 10 years (1 April 1994 to 31 March 2004), 47.5 million British passports have been issued by UKPS and a further 4.1 million by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). All of the passports issued by UKPS are machine readable, as are 85 per cent of those issued by the FCO (approximately 3.5 million passports). Since January 2004, all FCO issued passports have been machine readable.