Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many UK passport holders and others with permission to travel to the UK have registered their interest in seeking to return to the UK following Taliban forces taking control of Kabul on 15 August 2021 with UK Embassies in (a) Pakistan, (b) Iran, (c) Tajikistan, (d) Turkmenistan and (e) Uzbekistan; and what support is being provided by consular staff to help those people to return to the UK.

The current situation is very fluid and numbers are changing all the time and so it is hard to give an exact figure on how many British nationals and other qualifying individuals are left in country. We have evacuated over 8,300 British nationals to date. Several hundred have left the country independently, since we advised UK nationals to leave on 6 August. Rapid Deployment Teams (RDT) have been sent to Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to reinforce our Embassy staff to process arrivals from Afghanistan, including British Nationals and the Afghans who supported us. An RDT also deployed to Dubai to help those in transit. We are working, in collaboration with the Home Office, to support their return to the UK through assistance on border movement, travel documentation and transport.