People in the printing plant may steal some blank passports to sell on the black market.
—
Don’t know about the rest of the world but US passports have bar codes that provide information. Someone may be able to steal or make a fake passport but they would not be able to enter the US with one.
I would assume the UK passports would have something similar for security.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine-readable_passport
In September we went to Scotland and Amsterdam. They both use the digital passport scanners just like we do. I’m sure most of the countries that are not third world hellholes do the same.
I don’t think it’d be used for entry into any country but used for ID only - there are people who know how to forge bar codes and stuff and also there’s a chip in the cover (which is why there are instructions not to bend the pp).