Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell MP, addresses staff at the Department for International Development, London, 13 May 2010
Hosting refugees at home drains the budget for bilateral programs abroad, MPs were told
Andrew Mitchell said “draconian”budget cuts to bilateral programs were necessary because funding had been diverted to meet the needs of refugees arriving in Britain from countries like Ukraine and Afghanistan.
He made the remarks before members of the UK Parliament’s International Development Committee on Tuesday. Mitchell was appointed minister of state for aid issues in the Foreign Office by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in October, effectively returning to the same office he held a decade ago.
An estimated £3 billion ($3.65 billion) was taken from the Official Development Assistance (ODA) coffers to pay for travel, food and accommodation for refugees this year. As a result, the aid budget ran “out of control” and had to be corrected, Mitchell told the committee.
The UK has been reducing its foreign aid spending for years. In 2021, it abandoned a pledge to keep ODA funding at 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI), reducing it by around £12 billion ($14.58 billion) to 0.5% of GNI. Aid groups are concerned that further reductions are inevitable.
By the end of the year, the UK may have recorded as many as 270,000 refugee arrivals, the largest number in decades, according to a September forecast by the think-tank Center for Global Development.
”READ FULL ARTICLE: https://www.rt.com/news/567832-uk-foreign-aid-superpower/
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