BRITS stranded abroad have been "left at the mercy" of forces beyond their control in their bid to get home, Labour's Lisa Nandy has warned.
The Shadow Foreign Secretary has written to Dominic Raab demanding that the UK government act to help those still stranded abroad because they cannot get home on commercial flights and said that "cost must not be a barrier to bringing British citizens home".
Foreign Secretary Mr Raab told people abroad to "return home now" on March 23rd as lockdown began, but an unknown number of Brits haven't been able to get home.
The UK government has relied for the most part on people taking flights with commercial airlines to get home, commissioning a smaller number of its own flights to help people get home than many other European countries.
Ms Nandy has called on the government to "rapidly scale up" the number of flight it is chartering to get people home - and to publish statistics on the number of Britons who aren't yet home on a daily basis.
She warned that the current system had left families "at the mercy of cancelled flights, airline strikes, extortionate prices, domestic lockdowns and chaotic booking systems".
She added: "It is now five weeks since lockdown began in the UK, and over three months since the World Health Organisation declared this a global health emergency.
"While I note your department does not have an estimate of the number of British citizens still stranded overseas, my office is currently in contact with 2,200 British citizens stranded in 47 different countries and it is estimated there are hundreds of thousands of British citizens who remain stranded overseas."
The Shadow Foreign Secretary said that "around the world, many governments have been far more successful than we have".
"For example, it has been almost two weeks since Germany repatriated the last of its 12,000 citizens from New Zealand using twenty-six charter flights arranged by their government.
"By contrast only 2600 Britons have returned from the country and the first UK charter flight from New Zealand only departed this week," she added.
Some estimates put the number of Brits struggling to get home as high as 180,000.
Countries like France and Germany relied much more heavily on chartered flights - meaning citizens got home quicker but at a much higher cost.
The Government has defended its policies focus on using commercial flights to get Brits home.
At the end of March, Dominic Raab said that he had struck as £75 million deal with British airlines to help those still stranded around the world.
But last week, the top civil servant at the Foreign Office told MPs that while many Brits were now home it would take "several weeks" for the government to help those looking to return to the UK.
Sir Simon McDonald, who is Head of the Diplomatic Service, told MPs that an estimated 1.5 million UK citizens were abroad at the time of the crisis and that 1.3 million were now home thanks to mostly commercial flights.
He said the strategy of relying on airlines where they could was the best use of taxpayers cash and helped the government direct support.
Sir Simon described the decision to rely on commercial flights was a "good one" despite causing delays getting some people home.
He added: "Now we are able to charter flights to bring home those who cannot get home by commercial means."
The top Foreign Office mandarin responded to criticism that the UK's approach by saying that it was right that "travel companies and insurers should be the first to be called on" to foot the bill and that the taxpayer now faced lower costs with the collapse in the cost of commercial flights.
Sir Simon said they had focussed on the most vulnerable - telling MPs that getting them on to flights was a priority for ambassadors across the world.
