Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential effect of the recent decision to reduce the Official Development Assistance budget on trends in the number of (a) economic migrants and (b) asylum seekers.

The Spending Review settlement provides £459.5 million in Official Development Assistance (ODA) resource funding to support and protect vulnerable people in the asylum system, to deliver refugee resettlement, and to support victims of modern slavery.

However, the final allocations by departments has yet to be settled owing to the ongoing review into how ODA is allocated against the government’s priorities. The full impact assessment will not be known until this has concluded.