Money Transfer Accounts and Remittance Sector Debate
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Kate Green
Main Page: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)Department Debates - View all Kate Green's debates with the HM Treasury
Money Transfer Accounts and Remittance Sector
Kate Green Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Kevin Brennan
I thank my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to acknowledge everything he said, including the Somali community in Sheffield. His intervention also allows me to remind the Chamber that Cardiff—my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) is also in the room—has one of the oldest Somali communities in Britain, going back to the 19th century. The community plays a hugely important and positive role in the life of our great city. What my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) said was right, and I shall say more about aid later.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, and I apologise that I will have to leave for a few minutes in the middle of it. Does he agree that for the Ogaden Somalis—around 500 are resident in my community—the ability to remit money back to families at home is particularly important because so many of them are suffering displacement and persecution? There is a particularly strong link with not only our moral but our economic responsibilities to those communities.
Kevin Brennan
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am sure that that was why the International Development Secretary acknowledged, at least in words, the importance of the matter. Today we are seeking to poke the Government into quicker action than we have seen so far.