Latest news: thousands of locals and holidaymakers affected by fires as heatwave continues
Mitchell has claimed it is not the moment to “spend too much time” on whether the UK government should have acted sooner in providing support to people on holiday on Rhodes.
Asked about reports that Conservative chairman of the Foreign Affairs committee Alicia Kearns said ministers should have acted sooner, Mitchell has told LBC radio:
I think now probably is not the time to spend too much time on this. The important thing today is to make sure that we do everything we can to support those poor Brits who have been caught up in this. But Alicia is doing her job … we must always be held to account in a transparent way in government.
We deployed immediately a rapid forward team of six experts from the British Foreign Office, as well as four Red Cross operators as well.
They are based at the airport. As of last night, they’d had 20 people come to them for support, all of whom we have been able to support. But we are monitoring the situation hour by hour.
