Downing Street Says

Asked for the Prime Minister s view on the collapse of the holiday firm XL, the Prime Minister s Spokesman (PMS) told the assembled press that the Prime Minister had enormous sympathy for both customers and employees of XL. As Ruth Kelly had made clear, she was working very closely with the CAA who had contingency plans in place. CAA were the authority on this and had experience of bringing people home when travel companies collapsed. The Government was ready to assist the CAA in those efforts.

Asked whether the Government would guarantee that all holidaymakers would be able to come back to the UK if they were stranded, the PMS replied that as he understood it, under the ATOL bonding scheme, there was already a fund to bring people home using other aircraft. There would be others who had other insurance which covered them for insolvency or who would have paid on their credit cards.

For those people who weren t covered, the CAA would look at how they were best placed to bring those people home and what costs would be involved for the customers. As with all British nationals overseas, if there were cases where people were in genuine distress, the Foreign Office had people in place who were able to provide assistance in the form of putting people in contact with relatives and enabling them to transfer money from the UK, so that they could pay for flights to return home.

Put that the Government had not put at disposal funds to bring people home, the PMS said that at the moment we were working through the ATOL bonding scheme and other arrangements such as insurance.

Asked whether Ruth Kelly was in contact with the company and its administrators, the PMS said that that was a question that people would need to ask the Department for Transport.

Asked if it was correct that people could still book tickets with XL last night when it was obvious that it was going into administration, the PMS replied that that was a question best directed towards the administrators. It was not for him to comment on the activity of the company and how they ran their business before it was taken into administration.

Asked if the Prime Minister was sufficiently concerned to have asked to be kept informed of developments, the PMS said that people would expect him to be kept informed of developments.

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» Friday, September 12, 2008

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