Asked by: Jane Stevenson (Conservative - Wolverhampton North East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help Indian nationals who are ordinarily resident in the UK to return from India during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Nigel Adams
Helping British travellers who need and want to return to the UK is one of the Government's highest priorities. Since the outbreak in Wuhan, we estimate that over 1.3 million people have returned to the UK via commercial routes - the majority supported by our work to keep vital routes open.
As of 19 May, we have bought back over 14,600 British travellers from India on 64 flights since 8 April. We do not have any further charter flights planned, though we continue to keep this under review. Our objective remains to bring home British travellers who want to return to the UK, as soon as possible. From the outset, our priority for the charter flight programme has been getting British travellers home. But after we launched the charter flight programme, it became clear that there are people with indefinite leave to remain (ILR) who normally reside in the UK, and want to get back, particularly in India and Pakistan. Where possible, we are working to help vulnerable UK residents with ILR provided that they have lived in the UK within the last year. This is beyond the scope of our standard consular assistance, which is usually just for UK nationals, but these are exceptional times.