Cabinet Office figures reveal that hundreds of bodies are repatriated every day to other countries

Thousands of corpses awaiting repatriation to their homelands would pile up across the country in the event of a no-deal Brexit, according to Cabinet Office projections.

Senior Whitehall officials are concerned that any disruption to the free flow of goods, planes and ships would have a knock-on effect on the ability to repatriate the bodies of non-UK nationals who die in Britain.

Cabinet Office figures seen by this newspaper reveal that hundreds of bodies are sent every day to other countries from ports and airports, particularly Heathrow.

A Cabinet Office source said one of the key pressures faced by the government during the Icelandic volcanic ash crisis in 2010, when much of European air space was closed for six days, was a backlog of bodies