Consular Services to British Nationals

Executive Summary

National Audit Office Value for Money Report

1. Consular services are provided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and are a vital source of support to British nationals abroad. Services are provided in four main areas: giving travel advice, issuing passports and other documentary services, assisting travellers who are in difficulty or distress, and dealing with major emergencies such as terrorist attacks or natural disasters. The Preface gives more detail on these areas. The total cost of providing consular services in 2004-05 was nearly 80 million.
    
2. Consular services are delivered by nearly 1,900 staff, most of whom are based at over 200 Embassies, High Commissions and Consulates (commonly called Posts) worldwide. A core of 180 staff based in London provide advice and support to those working overseas, and deal with authorities and family members in the United Kingdom. Although the FCO provides consular services overseas, its work requires good links to other governmental bodies, including the United Kingdom Passport Service, the Police forces, the Home Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the National Health Service, and the Department for Constitutional Affairs.
    
3. The FCO faces changing and increasing demand for consular services. Some 13 million British nationals now live abroad. The rise in low cost air travel has meant that United Kingdom residents are making more frequent and casual trips abroad, and to an increasingly diverse range of destinations (Figure 5). Easier travel has encouraged trips by higher risk groups such as the elderly and children, and by independent travellers not supported by tour operators. The type of consular assistance is also changing. For example, increased terrorist activity such as atrocities in New York, Bali and Egypt, is creating additional demands for intensive and rapid consular assistance. And the diverse and changing nature of British society has also led to new consular services, such as support for Britons undertaking the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, and work to protect victims of forced marriages. The FCO has also faced rising expectations from individuals about the level of support or intervention they can expect, fuelled further by intense media interest. This can in turn lead to pressure on the FCO to provide services which would not normally be within its remit. All of these factors lead to heavier demand for consular assistance, (Figure 6 overleaf), which may prove to be unrealistic or unrealisable when considered against the FCOs duty of care to its own staff and its limited resources for this work. The FCO aims to provide a high quality and efficient consular service within this challenging environment.
    
4. Against the background of the complexities of providing assistance, we conclude that the range of services carried out by the FCO is comparable to that of other developed countries, with the United Kingdom being at the forefront of innovative developments in service delivery in some areas. The FCO has taken a number of important steps to respond to the growing challenges facing consular services and to improve the delivery of its consular services. It is working to better define the level of service provided through a highly consultative approach, and has improved its professionalism to deliver a more diverse and more effective service. But there are still areas in which improvements could be made, particularly in influencing and changing the behaviour of travellers, enhancing the consistency of frontline services, and in equipping the FCO to meet emerging challenges. This includes making clear the limits of the FCOs assistance, and explaining that the appropriate level of assistance varies according to conditions in different countries. Figure 7 shows how the conclusions are presented in the main body of the report. We set out the key challenges for the FCO, together with high level recommendations that have the potential to build on the FCOs existing actions and to improve further the delivery of its consular services. These are supported by more detailed recommendations and the desired outcomes and benefits arising from these, set out at Appendix 1. Of course, consular work is funded largely from fee income and FCO will need to consider how best to implement the changes we suggest within its funding constraints. We note that cross-subsidisation has meant that Consular Directorate has, until this financial year, not been able to spend the full amount received from its consular premium on assistance work (paragraph 5.8). Our methodology is described in detail at Appendix 2.

KEY CHALLENGES AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Challenge: Influencing and changing behaviours of travellers

The FCO has improved the content and consistency of its messages to travellers in recent years, and now needs to ensure that it reaches and influences more targeted groups of travellers.

1. There is further scope to better understand the root causes of assistance cases, and to target hard hitting messages at traveller groups which do not prepare adequately, or those which have historically required more consular assistance.
   
   
2. In developing a consular customer guide for assistance work, the FCO should consider the key criteria it should use to establish levels of assistance which are appropriate for the country and individual circumstance. This will be important in addressing rising public expectations, establishing and publicising the responsibility of individuals and using limited resources to best effect.
   
   Challenge: Moving towards a more consistent frontline service to individuals
   
   Although the overall standard of service appears generally high, at present British nationals can experience a different level and nature of consular service depending on where they are in the world. Some but not all of this can be explained by the variable levels of risk in different environments. There are also improvements which the FCO could make to improve the overall delivery of the service, such as through training.
   
3. Both increasing the breadth and depth of coverage of the Post review system, and collecting fuller management information would assist the FCO in ensuring that Posts provide a consistent level of service, appropriate for the country circumstance.
   
   
4. The FCO should continue to work on ensuring that crisis management and emergency planning at Posts is robust, and should complete its action plan arising from the lessons learned from the Indian Ocean tsunami.
   
   
5. The FCO should seek to maximise the benefits from improving existing, and forging new, working partnerships with others to provide a more effective end-to-end service to British nationals, in crisis and non-crisis situations.
   
   
6. The FCO has made good progress in enhancing the professionalism of its consular staff but still needs to use training and innovative approaches to further improve the quality of its service.
   
   
7. Passport applicants overseas should be given greater choice to obtain their passports from the United Kingdom or from the FCO, subject to meeting basic security requirements.
   
   Challenge: Equipping consular services to meet emerging change
   
   There are a number of challenges to the future delivery of consular services. These include the need to develop increasingly complex and secure passports, and the need to better target existing resources to meet increasing demand.
   
8. Given the radical changes required for the passport operation, the FCO should change its current business model for issuing passports overseas.
   
   
9. The FCO should ensure that existing consular information technology systems are fully utilised and new systems are developed to enable it to allocate its resources where they are most needed.
   
   
10. The FCO should, in conjunction with HM Treasury, regularly review the current basis of funding for consular assistance work, and should reconsider the range of consular activities covered by its internal and external targets.