Written question asked by Baroness Thomas of Winchester (Liberal Democrat), in the House of Lords. It was answered by Lord Henley (Conservative) on Wednesday, 28 March 2012.

Fraud

Question: To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of passports and driving licences in circulation which were obtained fraudulently.

Answer: The periods of validity for the passport and the driving licence prevent a reliable estimate being made of the number of fraudulently obtained documents that may be in circulation. That is because there are a number of circumstances over the lifetime of the documents which may impact on their validity. The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) undertakes sampling and testing to determine the nature and volume of passport fraud. Small sampling exercises between 2005 and 2011 indicated that between 0.25% and 0.39% of applications for UK passports contain evidence of fraud. In 2010-11, the IPS detected a total of 7,870 suspected frauds out of a total of 5.384 million passport applications. In 2011, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) carried out investigations and identified 1,000 fraudulently obtained driving licences. The DVLA processed 9.3 million driving licence applications in 2011.

Secondary information