WAKE OF THE TSUNAMI: Tony Blair will today set out the latest British death toll from the Asian tsunami disaster. The Prime Minister will use a statement to the House of Commons to update MPs on the growing number of British deaths.

The Foreign Office has confirmed 50 Britons died and a further 391 are highly likely to have been killed in the disaster. A further 2,000 are still unaccounted for.

Mr Blair said: "I hope I will be able to give some new figures tomorrow.

"Since Jack Straw gave those figures a couple of days ago they haven't moved a great deal, which should give us some hope that we are beginning to reach the peak of the numbers. But we just can't be sure."

Speaking on BBC1's Breakfast with Frost, Mr Blair said the number of people unaccounted for was continually falling.

He said the 2,000 figure had already fallen by 300-400.

"It is just an immensely difficult job to get absolutely accurate figures. All countries are struggling with this," he added.

Mr Blair has promised hundreds of millions of pounds in aid for the countries hit by the tsunami.

He said the £50 million originally allocated from the Department for International Development was now "well on the way" to being spent.

He said the exact allocation could not be clarified until the World Bank had completed its assessment of the needs of the countries.

Within the next few weeks a clearer picture would emerge of the long-term costs of the reconstruction, he said.

The Prime Minister rejected suggestions of a special tax, similar to the one in Germany at the time of reunification, to raise further funds.

"I don't think we will need to do that," he said.

Mr Blair insisted the aid would not be diverted from other vital programmes in Africa.

"It certainly won't," he said. "We have got a big agenda coming up on Africa.

"There is the equivalent of the numbers who have lost their lives in the tsunami dying every week, or certainly every month, in Africa, preventably from conflict or famine or disease."

Mr Blair also said he had commissioned work to look at possible early-warning systems in case of further tsunamis.