The Passport Agency has opened a new pilot call centre in the hope of avoiding last year's severe delays in processing applications.

The centre in Bristol was being opened on the same day a House of Commons select committee prepared to quiz those responsible for last year's difficulties.

Representatives of the Home Office, the Passport Agency and the firm that introduced the much criticised computer systems - Siemens business services - held responsible for much of the chaos are all due to give evidence to the Public Accounts Committee on Monday.

The new call centre received hundreds of calls within its first few hours of opening.

The chief executive of the UK Passport Agency, Bernard Herdan opened the new building before appearing before the MPs later in the day.

National system by March

Mr Herdan said: "One of the problems last year was that members of the public could not get through on the telephone to staff at the call centres in the individual passport offices.

"This was because the staff there were also people who were examining passports and dealing with other inquiries.

"I took the decision when I came into this post to make more use of current technology and set up a national call centre for dealing with general inquiries."

Another call centre in Bangor, Northern Ireland, will start work on 7 February.

The new system, which will be fully operational by 1 March, is expected to deal with 2.5 million calls a year.