Passport fees, in particular, have increased for the following reasons:
* to cover the cost of issuing passports overseas;
* to cover the costs of providing consular assistance/help to British nationals who find themselves in difficulty while overseas;
* to cover the extraordinary consular costs arising from disaster overseas that affect British Nationals. The ECP is retained in the Emergency and Disaster Reserve (EDR) held by the Treasury.
Why is it more expensive to issue passports overseas than in the UK?
* The FCO issues a little over 500,000 ordinary passports each year from 104 locations, (plus emergency and temporary passports from other posts) and must recover the full costs of issuing through the fees
* We cannot match the economies of scale at the Identity and Passport Service, which is able to exploit issuing 10 times as many passports from just a handful of locations
* Consular costs also include the costs for maintaining UK based staff overseas e.g. residential accommodation