To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what measures he plans to reduce waiting times for passport applications; and if he will make a statement. [83138]

To meet its customers' needs the Passport Agency is now prioritising applications by customers' declared travel dates. Its secondary standard of service target is to give priority to customers' travel needs aiming to meet their declared travel dates for at least 99.99 per cent. of passports issued. The Agency is meeting this target and will continue to do so.The Agency's aim is to reduce turnround times in all the six regional passport offices to its target of ten days by September and in the meantime to meet customers' declared travel needs. It will do this by injecting additional resources, through system improvements and clear messages to passport applicants on how they can best assist the Agency to meet their needs.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) new applications and (b) applications for renewal of United Kingdom passports were received in each month since January 1998; how many unprocessed applications there were at the end of each month; and if he will make a statement. [83137]

Information on new and renewal applications and on unprocessed applications is shown in the table.

Month	New	Renewal	Work in Progress
January 1998	179,812	210,465	118,983
February 1998	205,613	221,535	139,879
March 1998	233,839	223,772	168,064
April 1998	192,314	167,118	136,174
May 1998	268,357	202,910	184,505
June 1998	245,467	176,988	204,589
July 1998	233,388	168,073	190,857
August 1998	230,835	179,665	101,300
September 1998	138,630	109,215	86,848
October 1998	125,315	99,087	53,652
November 1998	145,815	117,807	77,423
December 1998	90,208	74,731	61,396
January 1999	166,995	172,346	129,778
February 1999	208,906	188,515	210,292
March 1999	294,787	239,533	222,631

The Passport Agency has encountered a number of operational problems arising from the introduction of new high technology driven passport issuing arrangements into its Liverpool and Newport passport offices. This has caused delays in the processing of non-urgent applications and has increased the backlog of unprocessed work.To meet its customers' needs the Passport Agency is now prioritising applications by customers' declared travel dates. Its secondary standard of service target is to give priority to customers' travel needs aiming to meet their declared travel dates for at least 99.99 per cent. of passports issued. The Agency is meeting this target and will continue to do so.The Agency's aim is to reduce turnround times in all the six regional passport offices to its target of 10 days by September and in the meantime to meet customers' declared travel needs. It will do this by injecting additional resources, through system improvements and clear messages to passport applicants on how they can best assist the Agency to meet their needs.