Government efforts to chop overseas assist spent on asylum seekers stall | EUROtoday

The authorities is struggling to chop the amount of cash from the overseas assist finances it spends on asylum seekers within the UK, new figures present.

Home Office figures present the division expects to spend £2.2bn of abroad growth help (ODA) this monetary yr, of which £2.1bn is anticipated to be spent on asylum assist. The predictions for this yr are solely barely lower than the £2.4bn spent in 2024/25.

Official growth help (ODA) – which was slashed earlier this yr to 0.3 per cent of GDP to pay for a lift to defence spending – is used to advertise the financial growth and welfare in growing nations world wide.

A portion of this cash is handed to the house workplace to assist asylum seekers after they arrive within the UK, most of which works in the direction of their lodging.

But the federal government’s failure to chop again on this spending has led assist organisations to accuse ministers of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, claiming they’re in peril of a “reckless repeat of decisions taken by the previous Conservative government.”

Figures printed in March revealed that the variety of asylum seekers housed in expensive lodges has elevated by greater than 8,000 because the normal election, with 38,079 migrants being housed in lodges on the finish of December.

It comes regardless of Sir Keir Starmer beforehand saying a Labour authorities wouldn’t use the overseas assist finances to pay for asylum seekers’ resort prices – however admitted that the federal government wouldn’t be capable of cease doing so instantly.

“I’m not going to pretend to you we can do that in the first 24 hours”, he mentioned in May 2024.

Meanwhile, Labour’s election manifesto vowed to “end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds”.

Gideon Rabinowitz, director of coverage on the Bond community of growth organisations, warned that “cutting the UK aid budget while using it to prop up Home Office costs is a reckless repeat of decisions taken by the previous Conservative government.”

“Diverting £2.2bn of UK aid to cover asylum accommodation in the UK is unsustainable, poor value for money, and comes at the expense of vital development and humanitarian programmes tackling the root causes of poverty, conflict and displacement.

“It is important that we assist refugees and asylum seekers within the UK, however the authorities shouldn’t be robbing Peter to pay Paul”, he informed the BBC.

Meanwhile, Sarah Champion, chair of the International Development Committee, mentioned: “Aid is meant to help the poorest and most vulnerable across the world: to alleviate poverty, improve life chances and reduce the risk of conflict.

“Allowing the Home Office to spend it within the UK makes this activity even tougher.”

“The authorities should get a grip on spending assist within the UK. The Spending Review must lastly draw a line underneath this perverse use of taxpayer cash designed to maintain everybody secure and affluent in their very own properties, not funding inappropriate, costly lodging right here.”

The Home Office told the BBC it is committed to ending asylum hotels and is speeding up asylum decisions to save taxpayers’ money.

The department also said it had reduced overall asylum support costs by half a billion pounds in the last financial year, saving £200m in ODA which had been passed back to the Treasury.

In April, The Independent revealed that the government had awarded a contract which allows for hotels and barges to house asylum seekers up until September 2027, despite Labour vowing to end the practice.

The contract, advertised ahead of the election, was awarded by the Cabinet Office in October 2024 – just months after Labour won a historic landslide election victory – and runs up until September 2027.

In June, the home secretary admitted she was “involved concerning the stage of cash” being spent on asylum seekers’ accommodation, adding: “We want to finish asylum lodges altogether.”

A Home Office spokesperson mentioned: “We inherited an asylum system under exceptional pressure, and are urgently taking action to restore order, and reduce costs. This will ultimately reduce the amount of Official Development Assistance spent to support asylum seekers and refugees in the UK.

“We are immediately speeding up decisions and increasing returns so that we can end the use of hotels and save the taxpayer £4 billion by 2026. The Rwanda Scheme also wasted £700m to remove just four volunteers – instead, we have surged removals to nearly 30,000 since the election, are giving law enforcement new counter-terror style powers, and increasing intelligence sharing through our Border Security Command to tackle the heart of the issue, vile people-smuggling gangs.”