The future of Nigerians and other foreign nationals hoping to seek asylum in the UK may be limited by the country’s latest push to cut the amount spent supporting refugees and asylum seekers.
The UK’s Foreign Office estimates that more than a quarter of the country’s last year’s overseas aid budget was spent on asylum.
Figure from the Office shows that a total of £4.3bn budgeted for foreign aid went into supporting refugees and asylum seekers ,representing 16% increase from the £3.7bn that was spent in 2022.
The new figure has been described as outrageous with some stakeholders calling for a review of UK’s policy on asylum-which could potentially limit how much refugee the country can accommodate.
Labour MP Sarah Champion, Chairperson of the International Development Committee, who expressed shock at the amount spent yearly, said the increasing spending on refugee costs in the UK was “deeply worrying”.
She said “We have expressed our concerns on a number of occasions and ministers are still not listening.
“Almost 30% of our aid is being spent on refugee costs – nearly five times our bilateral spend on emergency international humanitarian aid.”
Gideon Rabinowitz, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Bond, the UK network for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), said: “With over a quarter of the UK aid budget being spent right here in the UK, the government seems to have lost its grip on UK aid spending.
“This is weakening the UK’s ability to respond to urgent global crises and support long-term sustainable development needs in lower-income countries.
“International NGOs are once again seeing vital funding for emergency support programmes in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere being cut or held back, and we suspect this is due to escalating Home Office asylum costs taking an increasing chunk of the UK aid budget.”
