To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many forged UK passports, including biometrics, have been detected and cancelled since November 2006. (169566)

Since November 2006 the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has recorded the receipt of 1,172 passports which have been tampered with or in some way forged. All 1,172 passports have been cancelled. Over the same period the Borders and Immigration Agency (BIA) has detected 384 fraudulently used UK passports. The records collated by IPS and BIA do not distinguish between biometric and earlier types of passport.