Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, with reference to her Department's press release, UK calls for global action to protect vital money transfers, published on 22 May 2020, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that remittance service providers reduce fees for people making payments during the covid-19 pandemic.

The UK has launched, along with Switzerland and with support from the World Bank and UN agencies, a global Call to Action on remittances, which calls on policymakers, regulators and remittance service providers round the world to take action to ensure that diaspora communities can continue to transfer money to their relatives during the crisis.

This Call to Action specifically calls on remittance service providers to explore measures such as reducing remittance transaction costs. We are committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals target of reducing the global average costs of remittances to 3% by 2030, from the current level of around 6.8%.

The World Bank is conducting regular surveys of remittance costs in a number of corridors during the crisis. These surveys show that for most of the corridors surveyed that start in the UK, remittance costs are lower now than before the crisis.