Over half of the foreign aid budget is spent in the UK.
This is misleading. It is based on a think tank estimate that the amount of UK foreign aid spent in the UK itself accounted for half of bilateral aid spending in 2023. This would equate to around a third of total UK foreign aid spending.
A Daily Telegraph article reporting on newly released figures for UK foreign aid spending is headlined “Half of foreign aid spent in UK owing to asylum claims”.
The article also appears online under the headline “UK houses so many asylum seekers that over half the foreign aid budget is spent in Britain”.
These headlines are misleading. They’re based on a think tank estimate that the amount of UK foreign aid spent in the UK itself accounted for half of bilateral aid spending in 2023, rather than all foreign aid spending. This distinction is made clearer later in the Telegraph article. The amount of foreign aid spent in the UK would actually equate to around a third of the total.
Headline-writers should ensure headlines are accurate and support the body of the article. If headlines are inaccurate or don’t reflect the body of the article, it is possible that people will be misled. We’ve contacted the Daily Telegraph for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.
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There are two types of foreign aid: bilateral and multilateral. Bilateral aid refers to aid given by one country directly to another country, while multilateral aid refers to money provided by countries to international agencies (for example, UN agencies) for spending on their development programmes.
Recently published provisional data from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) shows that in 2023 the UK provided a total of £15.4 billion of Official Development Assistance (ODA).
Of this, 64.1% (approximately £9.9 billion) was bilateral aid, with the remaining 35.9% (approximately £5.5 billion) multilateral aid.
The claim that “half of foreign aid” was spent in the UK is actually based on a think tank estimate for the percentage of bilateral aid spent in the UK.
This is explained in the Telegraph article, which states: “Of the £5.3 billion estimated to have been spent out of the bilateral aid budget in the UK last year, the vast majority of this (£4.3 billion) was used for domestic refugee costs, [Center for Global Development] researchers said.”
The Center for Global Development told us the £5.3 billion figure is based on analysis of data which found that in 2022 approximately £1 billion of bilateral aid was spent in the UK in addition to in-donor refugee costs (support for refugees in the UK). This included money spent on administrative costs, students and development awareness.
The provisional FCDO figures published this week show that £4.3 billion of ODA was spent specifically on support for refugees, accounting for about 43% of UK bilateral aid, and around 28% of all UK foreign aid in 2023.
The Center for Global Development said that assuming the additional £1 billion spending remained at roughly the same level in 2023, the total estimated amount of bilateral aid spent in the UK would be around £5.3 billion (essentially combining the £1 billion figure from 2022 with the £4.3 billion from 2023), or 54% of all bilateral aid spending (about 34% of total UK foreign aid spending).
This data does not include figures for other types of bilateral aid spending within the UK. These figures will be published in the final data later this year.
Image courtesy of FCDO
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