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The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (the Department) provides a wide range of consular services from over 200 Embassies, High Commissions and Consulates ("Posts") worldwide. In 2004-05 the Department published travel advice for more than 200 countries, issued 465,000 British passports and provided assistance to 84,000 British nationals overseas. The Department also prepares for, and responds to, major overseas crises which involve, or are likely to have involved, British nationals.
To address the challenges faced by a rising demand for consular services, the Department has looked at ways of reducing calls for consular assistance by influencing the behaviour of British Nationals travelling overseas. The take-up of country-specific information and general travel advice has been variable, and changing the behaviour of those groups of travellers who are most at risk while overseas is a major challenge.
The Department recognises that its consular work is a service delivery business, and should be run as such. It has looked at more resource-efficient ways of responding to customer requirements, including securing representation through the use of honorary consuls and partnership arrangements. The Department's Consular Guide, to be published in February 2006, is intended to address the expectation gap that currently exists between the consular services it can provide, and the services the public expects.
In 2001, the Department procured a casework management system at a cost to date of £3.3 million. As yet, this system has not been successfully embedded across the organisation, and so has not yet produced the management information the Department needs to manage its consular business effectively.
The Department's current arrangements for issuing passports at over 100 Posts are costly to Britons living overseas, and it is difficult for the Department to manage consistent standards of security against fraudulent applications. These difficulties are likely to increase with the move to the next generation of biometric passports unless the Department makes major changes to its passport issuing network.
Responding to crises overseas is a high profile aspect of the Department's work. The Department has improved its crisis management capabilities since 2001, although there has been slow progress in updating and testing emergency plans at Posts. The Indian Ocean Tsunami presented an extreme challenge for consular services; their call centres were overwhelmed and they were unable to assist British nationals in some affected areas as soon as they would have wished.
On the basis of a Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General,[1] the Committee took evidence from the Department on three main issues: their progress in influencing British nationals travelling overseas; developing consular services as a responsive service; and reacting to consular crises.
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