UK passports renewal?

The Beeb are reporting that America is planning to insist on people having biometric passports to enter under the visa waiver program and as usual in this country there is no way that the Passport agency will be able to produce this information in passports by the deadline (let alone handling the hundreds thousands of passport applications they will receive). It will be a nice little money earner for the government though and an extra step towards the national ID card scheme so I doubt they will complain too much. Apparently they are "lobbying hard" to get america to extend the time limit.