The Foreign Office is facing a massive challenge to help repatriate hundreds of thousands of Britons seeking to return home, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said.
Raab said as many as 1 million people may be returning to the UK, with or without FCO help.
There have been widespread complaints that Britons overseas have been unable to secure prompt help from British diplomatic services.
He said demand for consular services was rising exponentially, and pointed to the Málaga call centre, in Spain, where the FCO helpline fielded 28,000 calls on Wednesday, a record number. He said he had asked for daily updates on the numbers working at the call centre to bring waiting times down.
Pressed on whether British people were being charged £1.80 a minute waiting to get through to the call centre, he said that was a new figure to him. He said in some countries staff had been unable to reach their embassy, given the advice issued to FCO staff on self-isolation.
He said specific repatriation problems were focused in Morocco, Peru and Vietnam, adding he was working with other countries to see if special flights could be commissioned to bring British nationals home.
He said the UK was working with host countries to help stranded British nationals and even asking airlines to send planes to destinations to where they might not ordinarily fly. He denied claims the British embassy in Lima was in effect closed, but said at present no flights were leaving the country.
Raab said: “We are striving every sinew in these less accessible routes to do everything we can.”
Foreign affairs select committee member Royston Smith said he had seen emails suggesting one airline, Avianca, was willing to offer flights back from Lima to Europe at a cost of $3,500 (£3,000 ) per passenger.
The embassy in Kuwait on Twitter has advised: “If you are stuck in Kuwait and you don’t have enough money, please seek assistance through friends/family or local charities in Kuwait like Bait Alzakat or Salvation Army.”
Raab said there there were no plans to change the UK government’s travel advice at this stage. This leaves the UK in a more liberal position than the EU Schengen countries that have closed their external borders completely.
He said: “If we introduced these measures it would have knock-on effects,” adding the UK was at a different epidemiological stage to some countries in Europe.
Raab insisted the UK was actively cooperating at G7 and G20 levelsbut admitted there were differences in national approaches.
He said he could not give a “cast-iron guarantee” that Cop26, the pivotal UN climate change conference scheduled to take place in Glasgow in November would go ahead, saying it depended on the trajectory of the virus. “We would want it to go ahead,” he said, adding the coronavirus had shown the need to step up to the plate on some of these global challenges.
He said: “It’s even possible as of today it might be doable, but we face a greater challenge in pulling it off.”
He said 114 countries had promised to present more plans on emissions at the conference.
The chair of the foreign affairs select committee, Tom Tugendhat, suggested a bold postponement of a year might be necessary given the energy all countries were applying to fighting the virus.
He revealed that he had tried to hold the select committee session by video conference, but had been told it was not permissible.
