To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate she has made of the cost of (a) processing and (b) issuing passports which arise from fraudulent applications in the most recent period for which figures are available. (250078)

The cost of processing and issuing a passport as the result of a fraudulent application which is not identified as such, is the same as it is for any other passport application. For the 2007-08 financial year the average cost of processing and issuing a UK passport in the UK was £55.69 per passport. The provisional average cost for the 2008-09 financial year is £57.35 per passport. The difference between these costs and the final cost of the passport is the FCO fee which varies according to the final price of the product.