British Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Steven Bak­er has re­spond­ed to crit­i­cisms lev­elled against him by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Ear­li­er this week in the UK Par­lia­ment, Bak­er had ap­pealed to the T&T Gov­ern­ment to repa­tri­ate its cit­i­zens strand­ed in the UK. He said there are cur­rent­ly T&T cit­i­zens in his con­stituen­cy who have been burn­ing through their sav­ings as they des­per­ate­ly await repa­tri­a­tion.

How­ev­er, on Thurs­day night, Row­ley hit back at the British MP

dur­ing a PNM post-Bud­get meet­ing in Bel­mont, de­scrib­ing Bak­er as an “itin­er­ant UK MP,” whom he said the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress had found to raise the is­sue in the UK Par­lia­ment.

Row­ley said he ex­pressed his con­cern about the mat­ter when he met with the new­ly-ap­point­ed British High Com­mis­sion Har­ri­et Cross on Tues­day.

The PM ar­gued that if Bak­er was re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in T&T, he should “try to get back the mon­ey that they (the UNC) thief.”

He added that the Con­ser­v­a­tive MP will “get cor­re­spon­dence from me per­son­al­ly” seek­ing his as­sis­tance to find state funds now be­lieved to be hid­den in the UK.

Bak­er, the Con­ser­v­a­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Wycombe, did not re­fer to PM Row­ley by name in a Face­book post yes­ter­day, but said, "I would nev­er have imag­ined that show­ing some sim­ple com­pas­sion for peo­ple stuck away from home would gen­er­ate so much con­tro­ver­sy. God bless you all."