The UK is now spending more of its aid budget at home than in poorer countries, development experts have said.
That is because a large proportion of the pot – some £3bn – is being spent on housing refugees, mainly from Ukraine, according to the Centre for Global Development (CGD).
The UK aid budget is around £11bn, with some £4bn going to multilateral institutions including the World Bank.
Of the remaining £7bn, which is administered by the UK directly, more than half will be spent domestically this year, including some £3bn on housing refugees, according to CGD’s analysis.
While the UK is allowed to count refugee-hosting costs as official development assistance (ODA) under internationally agreed rules, it is one of only a few countries – and the only one in the G7 – to fund all the costs of Ukrainian refugees from its existing aid budget, the Washington and London-based think tank said.
Rishi Sunak was criticised for cutting the budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of national…
