British Citizens Abroad: FCO Help to Return Home

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

The hon. Gentleman makes some important points, and we certainly want to give as much reassurance and as much advice as possible, but he will know—he has worked on the international brief for a while—that we have in this country a great tradition of travelling abroad, and that even if we take expats out of the equation we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people at any one time. Given the national restrictions that are being imposed, at pace and sometimes without notice, it is very difficult to give cast-iron guarantees about the situation. What we can do is lead internationally, in the way I described, with the G7, which we are doing tomorrow, and work as hard as we can with all our international partners.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the progress in securing the return home of UK nationals; I can tell him that we have already repatriated more than 1,000 British nationals, and also 254 non-British nationals, where we have had capacity, from 26 countries—places as far-flung as Wuhan over to Cuba.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Morocco in particular. We have facilitated the return of thousands of British nationals via commercial routes, with 49 commercial flights bringing 8,500 passengers home—in fact, it is even more than that now.

The hon. Gentleman is right that we cannot do it alone, which is why I am spending any moment that I am not in this House talking to Members hitting the phones, talking to Foreign Ministers and working our way through the problems. We have talked to the Peruvian Foreign Minister, as I mentioned, and I spoke to the Singaporean Foreign Minister first thing this morning.

The hon. Gentleman rightly raised the issue of accommodation, because where people are travelling for two to three weeks, that is ultimately the issue for them. In Spain, where a large number of Britain nationals are holidaying, the original Government decision in Madrid was to close all hotels today. I spoke to the Foreign Minister of Spain and we secured the flexibility whereby they would not be kicked out on to the streets, as the hon. Gentleman suggested. We have also secured flexibility to ensure that the airlines can come in and, given the large number of Brits in Spain, we can secure those flights home. On the detail of the travel advice to which he referred, we have given that advice based on the rapid rate of new restrictions that Governments and jurisdictions are placing, sometimes on internal travel, which will inhibit people’s ability to get to the airport, but more often on external flights coming in and out.

The hon. Gentleman also asked, rightly, about cruise ships. To the best of my understanding, on the basis of advice from the Department for Transport, no further cruise ships are hitting the water, so we are dealing with the stock of existing ships. We have successfully returned 684 people, including 669 British nationals, from the Braemar cruise ship, which was in the Caribbean, struggling to find a port of entry. We did that via Cuba. That is a good example of reaching out to—[Interruption.] I thought that would get the Leader of the Opposition excited.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

You did say it.

[Dominic Raab]

I am happy to say that we work with all our partners across the world; we would not allow dogma to get in the way of securing the rights of British nationals. I am proud that we have that flexibility and I am grateful to the Cuban Foreign Minister for arranging it. We also had close to 3,000 British nationals on the Azura, docked in Bridgetown, and they arrived back in the UK over the weekend without incident. We had 355 British nationals on the Norwegian Spirit, and they took a flight back to the UK on 23 March. That is the progress we have made, but the hon. Gentleman is right to highlight cruise ships that were travelling after we changed the travel advice for such ships. We have a specific eye and focus on making sure that Brits on board those cruise ships get back safe and sound.