Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether he plans to reduce in-donor refugee costs to meet Official Development Assistance budget allocations for (a) 2026-27 and (b) 2027-28.

The Government is committed to ensuring that asylum costs fall and has already acted. The Government has taken measures to reduce the asylum backlog, reform the asylum accommodation system to help end the use of expensive accommodation in the next Spending Review (SR) period and increase detention capacity to facilitate more asylum removals. Whilst there will always be volatility in asylum forecasts, we expect these decisions to drive down overall in-donor refugee costs over the next multi-year SR (2026/27- 2028/2029).

Departmental Official Development Assistance allocations will be confirmed at the next Spending Review.