At least 10,000 British passports were obtained fraudulently last year, many of them by gangs involved in people smuggling, according to figures released by the Home Office today.

Among the fraudulent applicants were two convicted terrorists, including Diren Bharot, who was jailed for life for plotting to kill hundreds or even thousands of innocent people in September 11-style attacks on both sides of the Atlantic.

The scale of the problem was uncovered as the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) announced new rules on the issuing of passports which will mean that tens of thousands of people travelling for at least an hour for a passport interview.

The IPS said that from May all applicants over the age of 16 who have not held a passport in their own name before will have to attend a passport office for a face-to-face interview.

A total of 69 interview offices will be set up across the UK. These will not be new passport offices and so will not handle general enquiries or take delivery of passports. The first to open will be in Peterborough, Belfast, Glasgow and Newport in south Wales.

The IPS estimates that more than half of the population will be within a 15-minute journey of an interview office and that 95 per cent will be within an hour's reach. A small number, estimated to be less than 4,000 potential first-time applicants, will be able to conduct their interviews over a secure webcam link in premises to be made available.

Today's figures on fraudulent passports, based on a sample of several thousand applications, are believed to be the most accurate estimate so far of the extent of passport fraud.

Joan Ryan, Home Office minister, revealed that the IPS received 16,500 fraudulent applications between October 2005 to September last year, of which “almost half” were stopped by existing safeguards, but the remainder went undetected.

She said: “Our current estimate is therefore that the level of undetected fraud is about 0.5 per cent, equivalent to 10,000 applications against the planned 6.6 million passports issued per year.

“Although precise figures are difficult to obtain, it appears that the level of attempted fraud is increasing and getting more sophisticated.

"Analysis of the frauds shows that the main fraud threat is from first-time adult applications, followed by first-time child applications.”

The IPS said that two convicted terrorists, Barot and Salaheddine Benyaich, each managed to obtain two fake British passports. Barot was jailed in December for conspiracy to murder, with the recommendation that he serve 40 years. He also had seven passports in his own name.

Bernard Herdan, IPS executive director, said that had Barot had a face-to-face interview he would not have been able to obtain the fake passports.

He said: “This is not just about stopping passport fraud - it is about stopping some of the worst kinds of criminality. He [Barot] had two passports in fraudulent identities which would have been stopped if he had been interviewed.”

Mr Herdan said that applicants will be expected to know answers from a pool of 200 questions about their ancestry, financial history and other details such as previous home addresses.

“Before the interview takes place, we will have cross-checked that individual against various databases in order to uncover information about them," Mr Herdan said. "There isn’t a pass/fail mark on this. It’s about assessing in the round the material we have received in the interview and on paper.”

New applicants will be told to allow six weeks to obtain their passports compared with the current three to four weeks.

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