As a British citizen Dale Nord would have travelled to Indonesia in the expectation that were any serious illness to afflict him, he would have survived.

Instead, he died an awful death. His relatives claim he was left unconscious for 12 hours and that his girlfriend was forced on a frantic quest to raise the comparatively small sum of money that could have kept him alive.

Eric Illsley, the Barnsley Central MP, was right to raise Mr Nord's case in the House of Commons. The dead man's family will
want to know whether $1,700 could have been
the difference between life and death, what diagnosis was made by doctors in Jakarta and what exactly consular officials did to help him.

Bill Rammell, the Foreign Office Minister, recognised that Mr Nord's family are "distressed" by what they have been told so far but insists that Mr Nord was treated throughout the night and even before an embassy official arrived at the hospital.

Mr Rammell argues that the Government cannot pay for the medical costs of Britons hospitalised abroad but Mr Nord's condition was not like the less serious illnesses and injuries routinely pick up by holidaymakers. It was a genuine emergency borne out of circumstances that few could have foreseen. Embassies are established around the world for exactly this type of situation.

The British coroner will look into whether Mr Nord's life could have been saved. Any answers provided by an inquest will come too late for Mr Nord but could change the way embassies treat Britons abroad.