More than five million people delayed applying for a passport during the pandemic, immigration minister Kevin Foster told the House of Commons on Monday (25 April).
"This has led to unprecedented passport demand," said Foster. "To meet this, we have increased output to unprecedented levels."
Foster said HM Passport Office was "delivering record output", and processed more than one million applications last month alone.
He said the organisation had introduced contingency measures to meet demand, including upping resource.
His comments came in response to a question from Easington MP Grahame Morris, who asked what steps the government was taking to ensure HM Passport Office meets "service standard times" for processing applications.
Foster further revealed that between January and March, 90% of cases were completed within six weeks, although he warned people to allow up to 10 weeks for their applications to be processed.
It means anyone requiring a passport, or a renewal, may not be able to travel until early July.
Stuart McDonald, MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, said every MP would have constituents having to cancel holidays, adding in his experience, the new 10-week target was "routinely being missed".
He called on Foster to give assurances the 10-week target would not slip further ahead of the summer. In response, Foster said the office usually only dealt with around seven million applications in an entire year.
"For some time we have advised people to allow up to 10 weeks for an application to be processed," he said.
"We have no intention of further extending the standard. We are processing most passports well within that time, but this is a virtually unprecedented surge in demand.
"If people are planning to travel this summer, we advise them to get their application in as soon as possible."
Defending the office’s record, Foster added: "Early in January, we were processing about 60,000 passports a week, and by mid-March we had nearly trebled or even quadrupled the output of the service."
