Foreign Aid - Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

 The government insists the UK remains one of the largest global aid donors.

The experts calculate the UK will spend only about £3bn in aid money - known as official development assistance or ODA - this year on direct bilateral payments for development and humanitarian projects in poor countries. A further sum, bringing the budget up to a total of roughly £11bn, is given to multi-nation institutions that organise aid efforts around the world.

The government is now spending more of the UK's foreign aid budget at home than on direct help for poor countries overseas, development experts say. More than £4bn meant for development aid will be spent in Britain this year, largely to support rising numbers of asylum seekers and refugees. Under international rules, countries are allowed to spend foreign aid on the domestic costs of asylum seekers and refugees - but only for the first year after their arrival. This means less money can be spent elsewhere because the total budget is capped at 0.5% of national income.

The assessment of how much is being spent at home comes from two of Britain's leading development experts: Stefan Dercon, former chief economist at the Department of International Development and Ranil Dissanayake, policy fellow at the Center for Global Development think tank.

Prof Dercon, said: "Within the fixed 0.5 ODA budget, the UK is now spending more of its development budget inside the UK than inside poor developing countries. One area in which ODA costs are soaring are the refugee and asylum seekers costs, mainly for Ukraine.

"It means much of what is left will be more cuts to humanitarian spending for African and Asian crises..."

 Ranil Dissanayake said: "Though the government is making it very difficult to actually look at the numbers, it's extremely likely that refugee spending in the UK alone is already higher than the UK's country specific aid to low and lower-middle income countries."

Romilly Greenhill, UK Director of the charity ONE Campaign, explained: "This is a discreet, further squeeze to the aid budget. Spending money on refugees from Ukraine is vital, but the way UK aid is managed means that low-income countries are effectively footing the bill." 

She added the UK's actual budget available to spend overseas is closer to 0.3% of national income than 0.5%.

UK foreign aid being spent in Britain passes £4bn mark, experts say - BBC News