LONDON — British ministers are being urged to spend the U.K.’s constrained aid budget in the world’s poorest and most vulnerable nations — rather than allocating spending to the Home Office.
A new report from the cross-party Commons international development committee of MPs hits out at the use of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) aid budget by other British departments at a time when funding for overseas development has been cut to just 0.55 percent of Gross National Income (GNI), well below an earlier government target of 0.7 percent.
The committee accuses the government of failing to provide up-to-date information on how aid in the U.K. is actually spent.
And a crunch of government figures by the group of MPs finds that a £2 billion chunk of the aid budget — known as official development assistance (ODA) — has been reallocated to the U.K.’s Home Office, with the department using some of that allowance to provide hotel accommodation for refugees.
ODA spending in this way, the committee’s report argues, is incompatible with the spirit of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s rules. The MPs contrast the U.K. with countries who use the ODA budget for spending that “promotes and specifically targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries.”
“These figures tell a story but it’s not the full picture,” said Sarah Champion, Labour chair of the international development committee. “The hemorrhaging of funds from the FCDO’s budget to the Home Office is robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
The committee argues that spending a large proportion of the ODA budget within the U.K. itself is a “political choice” which is likely to only increase the number of refugees arriving in the country.
It recommends that the Treasury ring-fences the equivalent of 0.5 percent of GNI in the ODA budget for spending on development assistance delivered outside the U.K. from April 1.
“The Home Office raid on the U.K.’s aid budget is running unchecked. It’s time to face up to ministers and say hands off the aid budget — vulnerable people in the world’s poorest countries are being short-changed,” Champion added.
An FCDO spokesperson said: “We report all aid spending in line with the OECD’s rules – which allow funding to be spent on food and shelter for asylum seekers and refugees for their first year in the U.K.”
And they added: “The U.K. government spent more than £11 billion in aid in 2021 and remains one of the largest global aid donors with most of it still going towards supporting the poorest communities around the world, helping tackle deadly diseases and getting millions of girls into school.”
