Performance on this essential service is assessed by PSA 9 (Consular performance indicators) – please see part 3 of this report.

“The child abduction conference in Dubai in April 2007 proved to be very worthwhile. It enabled Reunite to build links in the United Arab Emirates with the police, the courts and other non-governmental organisations. It also strengthened our working relationship with the FCO consular directorate’s child abduction team, who are doing important work in a very difficult area.”
Denise Carter OBE, Director, Reunite
(Reunite is a UK charity specialising in cases where children have been abducted and taken abroad by their parent.)

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The FCO’s consular services are the part of our work that the public know best. Every year, about nine million people read our travel advice, over 400,000 get passports through our offices overseas, and thousands turn to us for help after suffering crime or illness abroad. Around the world, consular staff are ready to respond not just to individual problems, but to help UK citizens caught up in natural disasters and political unrest. I am proud of the energy and commitment of our nearly 2,000 consular staff. They make a real difference to people at difficult times in their lives.

I am confident that our consular services are amongst the best in the world, supporting the increased travel for leisure and business that helps enrich our society and increase our prosperity. Each year sees new innovations and improvements, which ensure a high quality and responsive service for our customers.

Meg Munn
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State

Supporting British nationals abroad

In 2006/07, the last year for which full figures are available,  FCO staff:

• dealt with 2,888,996 enquiries from British nationals
• helped 34,874 people in serious distress (including about 4,500 deaths, 4,000 hospitalisations and 6,500 detentions) and
• issued 416,731 standard British passports, 11,138 emergency passports and 3,279 temporary passports.

In a single week our Thailand Embassy dealt with one rape, five deaths, three arrests, one assault, one hospitalisation, one missing person report, and 29 lost passports.

The FCO supported 164 British families affected by new cases of international child abduction. The joint Home Office–FCO Forced Marriage Unit handled over 300 cases, 207 of them overseas.

We steered the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act through Parliament, which will fully come into effect in autumn 2008, and produced Survivor’s Handbook and guidelines for social workers on the subject. In October 2007 we hosted a major EU conference, attended by FCO and Home Office ministers, Meg Munn and Vernon Coaker.

In April 2007, the FCO hosted a conference in Dubai on child abduction and forced marriage. The aim of this conference was to raise awareness among consular officers and strengthen contacts with local authorities. Depending on political conditions, we will hold a child abduction conference in Pakistan in 2008, which will bring together British and Pakistani judges, lawyers, police and non-governmental organisations.

There are about 2,500 British nationals in prison abroad at any one time. Nine British prisoners were on death row as at March 2008 and a further nine face charges that carry the death penalty. The FCO’s dedicated human rights lawyer follows these cases closely and we make strong representations against the death penalty.

This year, Kenny Richey was released and returned to his family in Scotland, after 21 years on death row in the USA. In 2007, a British national awaiting trial in Sierra Leone on charges carrying the death penalty was released.

We dealt with the kidnappings of 19 British people in countries including Iraq, Nigeria and Somalia, providing support and information for the families (see Counter-terrorism).

Responding to crises and planning ahead

The FCO’s rapid deployment teams (RDTs) based in London, Hong Kong and the US provide crisis support around the world. This year, they were called into action five times, including to Hurricanes Dean (August 2007) and Felix (September 2007) in the Caribbean, and plane crashes in Cameroon (May 2007) and Thailand (September 2007). The FCO also sent small resilience teams to support posts in the Dominican Republic, where hundreds of British nationals were victims of a viral outbreak (August 2007), and in Kenya following unrest after the elections (January 2008).

Since November 2006 the FCO’s crisis centre has provided space and facilities to manage crises from one central point. Staff from around the office – including consular and political officers – worked together on the unrest in Burma and Kenya, the Phuket air crash and Hurricanes Dean and Felix.

This year, the development of ‘triggers matrices’ improved our ability to anticipate and handle crises. These matrices basically plot likely political, economic and security developments against the numbers of British nationals travelling to a country.

Our Beijing Embassy – supported by staff in London – has begun preparations for the 2008 Olympics. We expect about 30,000 British nationals to attend. Basing our approach on a comprehensive risk assessment, we are preparing for the Games by working closely with the Chinese and British security authorities and through training and emergency planning exercises.

Innovating and improving our service

As well as an extensive programme of strategic change (see Change in the FCO in Part 2), the FCO is constantly finding new ways to improve our consular services.

The FCO’s ‘Know Before You Go’ campaign continues to provide up-to-date, clear and accurate travel safety messages to target audiences, and as such has set a high standard for other government information campaigns. At a cost of £80,000 – and in just six months – our TV filler ‘Danny’ (available for download from the Know Before You Go campaign page) generated over £500,000 worth of coverage on terrestrial and satellite stations (Central Office of Information).

During the year, nearly nine million people read FCO online travel advice (Travel Advice page usage statistics). In times of crisis, for example in Kenya and Pakistan, we continually update travel advice several times a day, providing essential and reliable information.

This year the FCO continued to find new ways of communicating our messages. We:

• won a Travel Advertising Industry Award for our TV filler ‘Options’ (available for download from the Know Before You Go campaign page), which was aimed at older travellers, and we were nominated for two European public relations awards
• placed TV safety messages in 500 major post offices with 6.4 million visitors a week (Post Office statistics),  in airports on screensavers with 1.8 million views a year and on big screens with 6 million views a year (Spectrum statistics)
• ran 16 campaigns in holiday resorts dealing with issues as varied as rape and sexual assault in the Greek Islands, hurricane awareness in America and planning for retirement in Spain
• produced specialist guides on missing persons abroad and for disabled travellers and
• published a bereavement guide to help people whose friends and relatives die abroad.

As the number of British people living and travelling abroad increases, the FCO’s posts are finding new ways to meet demand. In Spain and Portugal, for example, we:

• appointed a consular regional director for the whole of the Iberian Peninsula, as part of the FCO’s consular regional director project (see Consular strategy programme in Part 2)
• now run all visa and passport work for customers based in Spain and Portugal from Madrid in order to improve efficiency and customer service
• have forged links with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and partners across the Government (see below) such as Age Concern, the Royal British Legion and the Department for Work and Pensions, providing new support services to resident customers and
• are making it easier for customers to pay for consular services by credit or debit card.

Working with partners

The FCO works with hundreds of departments, agencies and organisations to deliver the consular services that our customers need.

For example, our consular team works with the police in a wide variety of ways:

• In crises, the police can support the FCO by providing family liaison officers, extra staff to handle telephone calls and disaster victim identification (DVI) experts. We have a new DVI agreement with the police.
• FCO staff attended family liaison training events with Devon and Cornwall Police in September 2007 and with London Metropolitan Police in November 2007.
• We work with Grampian Police to provide information and advice about kidnappings aimed at Scottish oil workers in Nigeria.

The FCO has led a new series of crisis management exercises to improve EU co-operation. The most recent was in Cairo in October 2007. These exercises help our posts in high-risk countries put into practice the recently developed EU lead state framework (this is where one EU state takes the lead during a consular crisis). This will save resources (staff and money) and improve co-ordination.

In October 2007, the FCO held a joint training exercise with the British military to practise evacuating British nationals from a crisis situation. We continue to work closely with the MoD in developing contingency plans for high-risk countries, where an incident may lead to the evacuation of British nationals.

Passports

The FCO has reduced the risk of identity theft by directing our posts to make sure that all passports reported lost or stolen overseas are registered within one working day. In May 2007 we introduced authentication by interview in priority posts for people applying for a passport for the first time. This draws on existing good practice and is in keeping with new policies being introduced in the UK by the Identity & Passport Service.

The FCO plans to introduce a modified version of authentication by interview to all posts by the end of 2008. Whenever possible, we will make effective use of all our buildings abroad, build internal and commercial partnerships and harness modern technology (for example interviews by video link) so that customers do not have to travel too far for interviews.

FCO’s work on child abduction cases

In August 2007 four-year-old Sara [*the names and details in this case have been altered to protect the identities of those involved] was taken by her mother to Pakistan on what she thought was a holiday. In fact, she was one of many children abducted from the UK every year.

Sara’s father asked the FCO to help him get her back. Our child abduction team advised him of his legal options and put him in touch with lawyers in Pakistan. Our high commission in Islamabad helped him keep in touch with the Pakistani police and Interpol. When Sara was found, high commission staff checked her welfare after asking her mother’s permission.

Because the UK judiciary signed an agreement with Pakistan in 2003, a Pakistani judge was able to rule that Sara should be sent back to the UK for a custody decision to be made there. The mother would not return Sara’s passport so the high commission issued new travel documents and helped with arrangements for Sara’s flight home.

Sara’s parents have now agreed a custody arrangement in UK courts.

Lessons learned: crisis response procedures

The FCO’s crisis response systems were tested several times this year, including by a plane crash in Phuket, hurricanes in the Caribbean and several overseas football matches. We responded well and have learned various lessons. The FCO has:

• strengthened its relationship with the police, by clarifying the FCO’s responsibilities, improving our response times and providing better briefing to the relevant police force
• improved the shift rosters for call handlers on our emergency response team, so that they can provide a round-the-clock service whenever it is needed
• recognised that putting our staff on the ground in known hurricane areas before the event worked well, and we will use this model for the next hurricane season and
• introduced new guidance on handling individual sporting fixtures overseas (chiefly football matches) which will help us match levels of consular service to the degree of risk identified for each event and encourage closer working with the Home Office’s football policing unit.

Cost benefit analysis: Know Before You Go wives and girlfriends (WAGS) guide to travel

Details: Women aged between 16 and 24 are a key target group for our travel safety messages. Research shows that this group can be resistant to official government advice but take notice of stories about celebrities and personalities who they admire.

So the FCO teamed up with celebrity Charlotte Meares to issue the WAGs Guide To Travel. Charlotte’s ‘top tips’ contained important advice for young women on staying safe while having fun abroad.

Costs: The campaign cost £2,000.

Benefits: The campaign gained wide press coverage and caused a large increase in visits to the FCO’s travel advice web pages. This coverage was worth £170,000*, which represents a return on the investment of 85:1 (the industry standard is 8:1). 

* figure based on total media buy value of the volume of coverage achieved if it had to be bought as advertising space.