Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether the UK is on target to reach UN Sustainable Development Goal 10C of reducing the transaction costs of migrant remittances to less than three per cent by 2030.

Since 2017, the cost of sending remittances from the UK decreased by 1 percentage points, from 7.43% in 2017 to 6.44% in Q4 2020, according to World Bank Group data. Transfer costs vary considerably depending on the recipient country and payment instrument. For example, the cost of sending £120 from the UK by bank account transfer or via debit/credit card was half (4.88%) of the cost of using cash (9.54%) in 2020.

There remain significant barriers to reaching the global SDG target by 2030, including a lack of access to suitable banking services for senders, receivers and Money Transfer Operators, a preference for cash transfers over digital, insufficient price transparency, and illicit finance concerns. The UK's collaborative work across Government and internationally is designed to address constraints both here and in recipient countries.