Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce in-donor refugee costs charged to the Overseas Development Assistance budget.

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 (SR) 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.

In addition to this, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office's (FCDO) budgets will no longer be exposed to the volatility of GNI fluctuations or ODA spending by other departments, including changes in asylum costs, providing greater predictability in our budgets.