The Passport Agency is struggling to cope with a backlog of more than half a million applications.

Hundreds of holidaymakers have been queuing at passport offices across the UK to ensure they have their passports ready for their summer breaks.

Extra staff

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The home secretary told MPs that 100 staff would be taken on in addition to the 300 already being recruited to deal with the backlog.

Some passports are being extended for two years instead of being renewed and the government is funding a £500,000 advertising campaign to inform people how to obtain their passports.

The government has given an undertaking that the crisis will be resolved and on Tuesday night junior Home Office Minister Mike O'Brien staked his and Mr Straw's jobs on sorting out the chaos.

Speaking to Channel 4 News, he said that "all of our jobs are on the line" including his own, the home secretary's and "every member of this government".

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In the Commons, Mr Straw said he believed the pre-holiday season peak in applications had now passed and there should be a "sharp" fall in applications "at some stage next month".

He told MPs: "The agency will then deal with the arrears quickly.

"They tell me, and I expect them to achieve this, that the time for clearing properly completed applications will be down to 10 days by the end of September."

Staff were working weekday evenings and over weekends to speed up postal applications, Mr Straw said during a Tory-led debate on the crisis.

Anxious waiting

Mr Straw apologised for the agency "not providing its customers with the service which they and this House expects".

He told MPs the agency was now clearing almost 150,000 cases per week - 20% up on this time last year.

"In the vast majority of cases, applicants are receiving passports by the stated travel date," he said.

But he admitted that it many cases it had meant anxious waiting and personal visits to caller offices in London, Liverpool, Newport, Belfast and Peterborough.

Mr Straw said: "In 93 cases, the passport has not been delivered on time and those customers have had their plans either seriously disrupted or in some cases cancelled."

'Incompetence'

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Opening the debate, shadow home secretary Ann Widdecombe blamed government "incompetence" for the problems and urged Mr Straw to "get a grip" on his department.

She said: "It isn't just the opposition who deplore the present situation but the hundreds of thousands of Britons who are trying to do nothing more than have their annual holiday."

A Conservative motion attacking the government's handling of the situation was defeated by 351 votes to 186.

The delays have been caused by new computer technology introduced last October at the same time as new rules requiring children and babies to have their own passports.

Delays have seen the average waiting time for passports rise from two weeks to seven, according to unions.

A series of parliamentary answers has revealed that the maximum waiting times for personal callers at the London office had risen from one and three quarter hours two years ago to more than five hours in May this year.