More than 50,000 Brits have been waiting more than 10 weeks for their passport application to be processed - as service chiefs are accused of "failing miserably".
Despite a surge in applications being predicted a year ago, MPs heard there were around 550,000 applications being processed at the end of last month.
Of these around 10% of applicants had waited more than 10 weeks, a Passport Office chief admitted this morning.
The new figures come weeks after outgoing PM Boris Johnson told Parliament in May : "To the best of my knowledge, everybody is getting their passport within four to six weeks."
He later rolled back last month and claimed that 91% of people were getting their passports within six weeks.
Labour MP Diana Johnson, who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, this morning said she was "really shocked" by the delays.
The committee heard that a sharp rise in applications was expected as early as last July, as the UK came out of Covid restrictions.
"It's not rocket science is it?" she fumed, before demanding: "How have you failed so miserably?"
She said MPs across the country had been inundated with frustrated constituents fearful of missing out on international trips, adding: "It just seems to me this is a complete failure if you were looking at this from last July."
In response Passport Office director Thomas Greig admitted: "We've reached record levels of output and in doing so we've had a decent service for the vast majority of applications, however there are a group, a very small proportion of that figure for who we haven't delivered the service we'd like to."
He added: "We accept that's an issue and we're very sorry for the people who have been put in that situation."
Mr Greig said that in a normal year his department would process around seven million applications, but this is anticipated to rise to 9.5 million by the end of 2022.
Last year the number dropped below 4.5 million, committee members were told.
He said more than 1,000 additional staff had been brought in to handle the backlog, and added that this was falling at a rate of around 60,000 a week - but he could not guarantee a three-week target could be met by the end of the year.
As a result, he estimated that the number of outstanding applications is "in the low 400,000s".
Contractor Teleperformance came under fire for failing to appear in front of MPs.
Ms Johnson said: It's incredibly disappointing that we don't have a representative of Teleperformance."
She added that it was "out of order" that there was no one present from the contractor.
Last month Shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said: “These figures blow apart Boris Johnson’s nonsense claims.
“This backlog is causing misery for families who are already feeling the pinch, and this hapless government is refusing to even acknowledge it.”
