‘More than a third of UK's future aid budget could go on migrants

BRITAIN blows 2.5 times more of its foreign aid budget on asylum seekers here on home soil than any other G7 nation in what experts called a "deeply dishonest" use of the cash.

- By David Williamson

The bill totalled £4.2billion in 2023 while the cost per arrival to the overseas development pot rocketed from £8,000 in 2018 to an estimated £54,000 last year. Now a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research and Centre for Global Development think tanks warns it could swallow over a third of the overall pot in future if left unchecked.

It urged Chancellor Rachel Reeves to end the Home Office's "free ride" on the UK's foreign aid budget, slashed this week from 0.5% to 0.3% of national income by 2027.

The report says the "very high spend has not led to better results for asylum seekers" and "much of the cost is on very expensive contracts for poor quality hotel accommodation".

Former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell said: "Under the Tories the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave us £2.5billion to soften these costs. But Labour ministers are not only unwilling to do what their Tory predecessors have done but have made the position incomparably worse.