Committee Chair comments on the UK's latest international development statistics

• International Development Committee

Chair Comment

Commenting on today’s release of the UK’s latest international development statistics, Sarah Champion MP, Chair of the IDC, said:  

“My Committee made clear in March that the trend of the Government allocating aid spending on refugee costs within the UK is deeply worrying. We have expressed our concerns on a number of occasions and Ministers are still not listening.

"Almost 30% of our aid is being spent on UK refugee costs - nearly five times our bilateral spend on emergency international humanitarian aid. We do not believe that UK ODA is being spent in the spirit of the OECD rules.

"The increase in ODA to 0.58% of GNI is welcome but still far short of the Government's manifesto commitment.

"We can see from the significant cuts in programming in Asia, as well as those to humanitarian assistance, that much more aid is needed internationally - there is little in these figures to celebrate.”

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