Minister won’t say when UK aid spending on hosting refugees will end

The United Kingdom will continue raiding its aid budget to pay the huge costs of hosting refugees until its chaotic asylum system is working effectively, its development minister has told Devex. Labour’s Anneliese Dodds declined to set a deadline for ending the controversial practice, despite her party criticizing it in the past — and despite it being blamed for an imminent fall in aid spending on international programs to a 17-year low. Instead, Dodds suggested the diversion of aid — amounting to £4.3 billion ($5.8 billion), or 27.9% of Official Development Assistance in 2023 — would have to continue indefinitely without Labour’s plan to strengthen border controls and cut the number of arrivals. “It’s really important for people to understand that, without that kind of a plan, we would not be seeing any reduction at any point in those figures. And that ultimately is what we need to see,” the minister argued. In fact, it is a voluntary policy choice for the U.K. to dip into its aid budget on a scale far greater than any other donor nation, despite pressure from the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee to change course. In the interview, Dodds also declined to identify any specific weaknesses within the merged Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, or FCDO — though such concerns have recently prompted a review to beef up its development “capability.” Minouche Shafik, the former top civil servant at the axed Department for International Development is reviewing FCDO’s performance, but with the remit to “maximise the impact” of the “integrated development diplomacy model,” rather than question the merger itself. Dodds was asked to pinpoint any failings she has observed in 12 weeks in office, but said only that there are “concerns about whether there has been a reduction in capacity.” FCDO is also reviewing previously announced bilateral aid allocations for the 2024-25 financial year, but — halfway through that year — Dodds declined to say exactly when decisions will be made, saying that will be “in due course.” Pressure is growing on the U.K. to rein in the diversion of aid for domestic asylum bills after a Center for Global Development analysis found the per-head cost is a staggering 150% higher than in any other major economy. Dodds, who was a surprise pick for the development brief after Labour won July’s general election, linked any policy change to the success of that month’s announcement of new measures to clamp down on people traffickers sending asylum seekers across the English Channel in small boats. Labour has also begun processing asylum claims that were frozen by the previous Conservative government, a situation that the party compared to the Eagles song “Hotel California” — saying “people arrive in the asylum system and they never leave.” Dodds was asked if the raiding of the aid budget might end in “one year, two years, three years?”. She replied: “What we’ve got now is a plan to deal with this. We did not have a plan. Now the Home Secretary has set out, on July 22, the concrete measures that she is taking to deal with this.” However, success is far from assured. The backlog of asylum seekers stood at 118,882 people at the end of June — and the number of claimants arriving on boats across the English Channel has been rising.