Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

Remittances are indeed very important. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has met the head of Barclays to discuss the issue, with the aim of ensuring that remittances can be sent back to a country when they have the potential to increase that country’s GDP.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

7. What steps her Department is taking to end aid dependency through jobs and economic development.

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Justine Greening)]

I am ramping up my Department’s economic development efforts to ensure that we adopt a more systematic and structured approach in order to unlock more trade and investment. That includes embarking on a new relationship with the CBI, meeting representatives of the extractive industries and engineering companies, and starting to work with United Kingdom retailers to drive up standards.

[Andrew Jones]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that poverty can only be reduced in the long run through economic development, and that DFID can play a major role in helping companies to grow and get people into work so that they can raise their own tax revenues to fund their own services?

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. United Kingdom companies also have a key role to play, and companies in his own constituency, such as Taylors of Harrogate, demonstrate how that can be done.