William Hague

Around The World there are thousands of Brits who come desperate to get home. And many are stranded.

airports were closed and the borders are closed. Cities were in lockdown. Many are trapped in the hotels, often with money and food running out.

sit on The Phone to airlines or tour operators to get on hold for hours or, failing that, to at all phone. To you by E-Mail, phone calls and messaging with The Local British Embassy, often without success.

In hundreds of posts and videos on Social Media , you will not be done at an early stage of your frustration from all corners of The World and ask - is why, to help you?

Now, here is why.

no one knows how many British People travelling abroad at any time. The UK is not a Police State , and not ask to register its citizens, each and every time when you leave. Foreign Minister Dominic Raab told MPs recently, it could be anything between 300,000 and A Million People at any time.

These travellers are not on any list are scattered to The Four winds. Many are not in the main cities, but is limited rather by local curfews in provincial cities. Some are in places that are easy to reach. Others are in places where there are no direct flights to the UK, even in normal times.

Always these figures home with an unprecedented, historic task to be solved by the questions, British Airways agree on a couple of flights.

The Federal cartel office is largely a diplomatic machine, designed to develop and implement The Foreign policy and promoting British interests overseas. There is a consular arm has, of course, to help the British People in difficulty overseas, but it is not designed to deal with anything of this scale.

The Crisis Center in the bowels of King Charles Street was established in the year 2012, so that the FCO could two incidents handle in different places at the same time as an earthquake and a tsunami. It was not designed to be a global consular crisis with many thousands of British, who twisted at the same time around The World .

To give you an idea of the context, according to the latest FCO accounts, 2018/19, helped The Department to More Than 22,000 Britons in new consular cases around The World , and the ongoing support to 7,700 existing cases. You are now done with hundreds of thousands at the same time.

So as a result of the FCO, the reconfiguration itself is in the middle of The Crisis . Entire departments were closed and Staff redeployed to help deal with The Crisis .

After the year 2017 hurricanes, the FCO trained 20% of the employees approximately 550 People will be able to respond to crises. Now, all the FCO was almost retasked.

The Foreign office has thin very. It has 280 posts in 168 countries and 10 territories. But it has only About 2,000 actual diplomatic positions abroad. You will be supported by local Staff in each country. But the numbers vary.

And some embassies and high commissions can be a lot less than you think. You may have some calls but not to absorb any enough People by the hundreds or thousands of People phoning in.

The Foreign office spending cuts for years And One of their biggest costs suffered are the wages of the employees. William Hague famously noted, when foreign Minister, that the FCO had a smaller budget than that of Kent County Council.

If you don't ring up a message and get through, or it is a weekend, you will be provided with reasonable security by the Federal cartel office, the Central consular advice.

These are, perhaps surprisingly, in Malaga and in Ottawa. They were to help in 2011, simple queries, so that embassies and high commissions could focus on more important cases.

In the whole of the financial year 2018/19, these two call Center received 350,000 calls. The vast majority have been sorted out, the rooms of hotel booking without the appropriate Embassy for an answer.

In contrast to this, in One Day recently, Malaga 28,000 calls handled alone. As a result, the FCO has Centers in The Last few days, tripled the capacity of call.

governments have closed their airports for a reason. They are petrified, the Corona could spread the Virus. You know that if you make an exception for the United Kingdom, many other countries are going to demand an exception.

As British diplomats are using to call, to lift in grace to convince counterparts of the block temporarily. As The Foreign spoken Minister to More Than 30 attempts, foreign Minister in The Last days, in order to open up their airspace.

business is done. In some countries, help each other, bring their nationals back, trading places on flights. But this diplomacy is hard and it takes time.

as well as speeches for the Minister and officials, British diplomats are also negotiating to have with the military chiefs, who are often responsible for national airports.

as soon As the UK has prompted a country to open its airports, which then has to persuade, the airlines, on some commercial flights. This is easier said than done.

airlines are businesses, and they need to be convinced and paid, they put on flights. That is, you have to pay a clear sense of the passenger, and that can be hard to confirm. Governments will not force airlines to lower their prices.

like It was sitting a lot of planes on the ground at airports around The World . But the airline industry is highly regulated and you can get the correct permissions, and slots takes time.

Oh, and The Royal Air Force does not have enough transport aircraft to the solution of The Crisis , in case you were wondering.

For all the many difficulties that some British nationals experience, many others are About to get home.

According to the FCO, More Than 200 000 Britons have been helped to Return Home from Spain, because The Authorities have announced travel restrictions.

Since March 16, when Egypt first began to the suspension of flights from Cairo Embassy helped More Than 12,000 British, and Return Home on 53 flights.

in The Last couple of weeks, The Ambassador in Morocco, Tom Reilly , and his team have to 8,500 British nationals home contributed to 49 commercial flights, in spite of the travel restrictions.

More Than 1,900 Britons were brought back on special charter flights cruise ships docking in Japan, California, and Cuba.

About 1,400 have come back to FCO Charter of Peru and China. About 4,000 were helped back from Jamaica.

Around 500 left Bali to FCO unlock visa complications helped.

And the Federal cartel office has moved, Qatar Airlines, open your route from Australia, the provision of 3,500 places for the British every day since Last Friday .

Source of news: bbc.com