Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he has had recent discussions with the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the cost of asylum processing backlogs to the official development assistance budget; and what recent estimate he has made of the level of other Departmental expenditure allocated to the official development assistance budget in the last 12 months.

The government is delivering the most comprehensive reform in decades to improve the asylum system, through the New Plan for Immigration. These reforms aim to make the system fair but firm, enabling us to offer support to those most in need while returning those without a genuine right to remain in the UK.

The Government set out its ODA allocations by department at the 2021 spending review.

The UK’s ODA spending is reported in the annual Statistics on International Development publication. The final publication for 2021 can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statistics-on-international-development-final-uk-aid-spend-2021.