To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs pursuant to the answer of 21 January 2008, Official Report, column 1610W, on the diplomatic service: EU nationals, how many times non-UK EU citizens have received services from British embassies under Article 20 of the Treaty Establishing the European Community, broken down by (a) year and (b) nationality since 1998; and if he will make a statement. (182391)

From 2003 onwards, as part of our annual survey of consular operations overseas, we have collected information from overseas posts on the number of unrepresented EU nationals who have received assistance from consular services (not including general inquiries and requests for advice). We do not break this information down by nationality.

We are unable to provide figures before 2003, as between 1996 and 2002 figures for EU and Commonwealth nationals were collated together.

The following table shows the number of these assistance cases where support was given to EU nationals with comparative figures against UK missions globally.