The U.K. is housing so many asylum seekers that more than half the foreign aid budget earmarked for poor countries is now being spent in Britain, new figures suggest. The Telegraph has the story.
In 2023, the U.K. spent £9.9 billion in bilateral aid – yet 54% of this was used domestically, according to the Centre for Global Development (CGD), which analysed data released by the Foreign Office data on Wednesday. This was an increase from 48% the previous year.
Britain’s bilateral aid money is supposed to be spent on helping poorer nations alleviate poverty and respond to humanitarian disasters.
However, in recent years, an increasing proportion has been spent within Britain itself to support the rising number of refugees entering the country.
The cost of housing asylum seekers in hotels alone is £8 million a day, according to Home Office data.
Sarah Champion, Chairman of the International Development Committee, said the rising trend in spending foreign aid domestically was limiting what could be allocated overseas and was “deeply worrying”.
“We [the committee] have expressed our concerns and ministers are still not listening,” the Labour MP said.
The Foreign Office’s latest figures show that the amount of financial aid given bilaterally to poorer nations in 2023 fell by nearly 10%, dropping to £4.1 billion from £4.6 billion in 2022.
The largest cuts were made to aid spending in Asia, which received £619 million from Britain in 2023, down from £925 million the previous year.
Gideon Rabinowitz, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Bond, a U.K. network of NGOs, said the figures demonstrated that “the Government seems to have lost its grip on U.K. aid spending”.
Worth reading in full.
Perhaps this explains why the Government seems so relaxed about the enormous and growing cost of housing asylum seekers. If hosting asylum seekers is a handy way of being allowed to spend the bloated foreign aid budget within Britain, it’s not hard to see why it would appeal to a Government that wants to shore up its ‘foreign aid’ credentials while keeping the money in the U.K. And hang the consequences for communities and public services.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.