Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, with reference to paragraph 30 of the Third Report of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Flying Home: The FCO’s consular response to the COVID-19 pandemic, HC 643, what plans he has to establish a logging system to record the location and contact details of UK citizens abroad.

As the FCDO set out in the response to the Third Report of the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC), asking British nationals to log their location and contact details in advance of a crisis is ineffective. We agree with the FAC that British nationals may be more willing to share information proactively during times of crisis, when there is a service which HMG is offering, or might offer in future. The FCDO has therefore further developed the "express an interest in a flight" service on GOV.UK which we used in April and collected 14,000 registrations across 20 countries. It allows FCDO to create a form for British nationals to register relevant details and inform FCDO they need to travel home urgently. If needed, the form can now be published within three hours and can be configured for individual countries.