Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how much and what proportion of the Official Development Assistance budget has been reallocated to meet asylum-related costs since July 2024.

The Home Secretary is committed to ensuring that asylum costs fall and has already acted. The Government has taken measures to reduce the asylum backlog and reform the asylum accommodation system to end the use of expensive accommodation in the next Spending Review period to ensure more of our Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget is spent on our development priorities overseas.

The aid spent in the UK on refugee and asylum costs fell by a third last year and the Home Office is working to bring it down further. The provisional Statistics on International Development show that in 2024, £2.8 billion was spent on support to refugees or asylum seekers in the UK, a £1.4 billion or one third reduction on the previous year. This reduces the share of ODA spent on asylum costs in the UK to 20 per cent, down from 28 per cent.

We report on ODA spend annually as part of the Statistics on International Development publication. Provisional figures for 2025 will be available in spring 2026.