Home Office written question – answered at on 20 February 2026.
Richard Holden
Shadow Secretary of State for Transport
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 20 January 2026 to Question 104868, what the service standard wait times at passport control are, and what assessment the Department has made of the economic impact of passenger delays at the border.
Mike Tapp
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
Border Force publish data on the percentage of sampled measurements cleared within service standards, with the target of 95%.
The service standard is 25 minutes for passengers using eGates or queues where the Majority of passengers are GBR/ EEA/ B5JSSK nationalities / 45 minutes for passengers using queues dedicated to other nationalities.
The latest published data was Quarter 3 2025 (Jul-Sept) which showed 97.9% of sampled measurements were cleared within service standards.
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Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
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