Did the Foreign and Commonwealth Office do enough during the COVID-19 pandemic?

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), like other departments, had to respond rapidly to the emerging COVID-19 crisis. Its diplomatic and consular capabilities were tested more severely than at any other time of peace.

In April, we published our verdict on the FCO’s diplomatic response to the crisis. The focus of our new report is an evaluation the FCO’s consular response to the crisis.

During the peak of the pandemic, around 1.3 million were travelling abroad. We conducted a survey calling for personal stories from Britons stuck abroad as a result of the pandemic, receiving 1,250 responses — both positive and negative — from those who sought the help of consular services.

The UK Government made an early decision to rely on commercial flights as the main means of getting people home. Other countries moved more quickly to charter flights and were therefore able to repatriate their citizens more quickly than the UK.

• Many commercial airlines increased their prices during the outbreak, while others were slow to offer refunds when flights were cancelled.
• Many travellers had difficulties in travelling to the airports due to strict local lockdown rules, making commercial options unfeasible.
• The FCO had interest-free emergency loans available to help UK-resident British nationals cover their living costs or flights home, but take up was low.

We recognise the hard work of many FCO staff and diplomats who often worked around the clock and did an excellent job helping UK citizens get home. However, some posts performed more effectively than others and there were areas where efforts fell short and improvements are still needed. Here are our recommendations for the FCO:

• By running a small number of chartered repatriation flights in parallel to the commercial options, the FCO could have successfully brought home the travellers in the most vulnerable situations.
• The FCO needed to do more to provide advice to those staying in remote areas, and to provide options for travel to airports.
• The FCO should have done more to provide financial support for those stranded abroad and to publicise that emergency loans were available.

Our survey highlighted the need for better communication, improved quality of information and more access to help for the most vulnerable travellers.

The FCO successfully scaled up their operation during the crisis, but this was a slow process which left many unable to access help when they needed it the most. Here are our recommendations for the FCO:

• The FCO should develop contingency plans to ensure it can scale up its response more quickly should a situation like this occur again in the future.
• Whilst we welcome the shift to communicating general messages via social media, this should not be at the expense of offering bespoke communication and advice. Those with medical conditions and those stuck in remote areas were particularly disadvantaged by this approach as they were unable to access the advice tailored to their current circumstances.
• It is important that people are also told what will happen on arrival to the UK. A lack of information on the situation in the UK caused many travellers a great deal of anxiety. Advice from the FCO on the situation on the ground in the UK, would have gone a long way to alleviate these worries.

We have included a series of quotes from those who responded to our survey. We acknowledge that the responses are from a self-selecting group of people who had particular experiences that motivated them to respond and so may not be representative of all experiences.

The Government must now respond to our report

Our report 'Flying Home: The FCO's Consular Response to the COVID-19' was published on 28 July 2020.

Detailed information from our inquiry can be found on our website.

If you’re interested in our work, you can find out more on the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee website. You can also follow our work on Twitter.

The Foreign Affairs Committee is a cross-party committee of MPs that examines the expenditure, administration and policy of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and other bodies associated with the Foreign Office and within the Committee's remit, including the British Council.