Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps he is taking with (a) the Secretary of State for the Home Department and (b) other Cabinet colleagues to reduce the amount of Overseas Development Assistance spent on asylum hotels.

The Home Secretary is committed to ensuring asylum costs fall and has already taken measures to reduce the backlog and will end the use of expensive hotel accommodation. We expect these plans to create more space in the Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget to spend on our international development priorities overseas. In-donor refugee costs will be published in the provisional Statistics on International Development publication in Spring 2025. The first meeting of the re-established ODA Board, chaired by me and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, will focus on in-donor refugee costs.