LONDON: Almost a third of UK’s total overseas aid budget was spent to meet the cost of hosting refugees and asylum-seekers in Britain in 2023, new figures show. Last year £4.3 billion (28%) of UK’s £15.4 billion overseas aid budget was spent on supporting refugees in Britain, an increase of £600 million on 2022, when it was £3.7 billion, statistics show.
Of the £4.3 billion, £2.9 billion was spent by the home office mostly on housing refugees and asylum-seekers in UK hotels, at a cost of £8.2 million per day, an increase of 23% on 2022.
The amount spent out of the aid budget on UK-based refugees has increased by a staggering 950% from £410 million in 2016 due to the surge in small boat arrivals and the UK’s Ukraine and Afghanistan resettlement schemes.
Under OECD rules, the costs of hosting refugees in UK can count towards the foreign aid budget for the first 12 months refugees are in the UK.
Yet soaring costs for UK-based refugees have caused major disruption to govt’s aid programme, which is meant to be spent on helping developing countries alleviate poverty and deal with disasters. There is now less money spent on bilateral aid than on asylum seekers in Britain as more aid spent by the home office means less available to the foreign office to spend in developing countries.
Aid given bilaterally to poorer nations in 2023 fell by nearly 10%, from £4.6 billion in 2022 to £4.1 billion in 2023. The largest cuts were made to Asia which saw its UK bilateral aid fall by 33%. Spending on bilateral aid for humanitarian assistance also fell by 20% in 2023 to £888 million from £1.1 billion in 2022.