Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of providing emergency travel documents from UK embassies in each of the last five years.

In line with HM Treasury (HMT) guidelines, we are required to recover the full cost of providing all of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's (FCO) consular services, including the provision of Emergency Travel Documents (ETDs). Fees introduced in April 2016 took account, for the first time, of the full cost of providing consular services and forecast income over the Spending Review period. Consular services are funded through income received from the Consular premium (£14.93 on each standard passport issued) and fees charged for specific services provided to British nationals abroad (for example, the issue of ETDs) and legalisation services provided in the UK. Fees are differentiated between types of service. The fee for providing any individual service is the same throughout the overseas network.

We conduct an annual review of consular fees to ensure that the fees charged are appropriate and reflect the costs of providing consular services. The costs attributed to providing consular services fluctuate from year to year depending on the overall cost to Government of operating the overseas network and how these are shared amongst the different Government Departments and FCO services using the platform. The Consular Fees Model then further allocates costs across four categories of service (providing assistance, ETDs, notarial acts and legalisation of documents). For example, the increased cost in 2017-18 reflects changes to how the Consular Fees Model makes use of staff activity recording which should allow for more consistency in future, but does make comparison with prior years less relevant.