UK taxpayers paid £1 in every £8 of the world’s entire spending on foreign aid last year — equivalent to 12.5 per cent.
Figures yesterday showed that while our contribution rocketed by nearly half a billion pounds, funding by other rich nations fell.
Britain’s bloated aid budget is more than double the global average, according to a league table of spending by the world’s 30 richest countries.
The UK was the only one of the group of seven richest nations known as the G7 to hit the UN target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income on overseas aid.
Just six other countries met the benchmark — Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Turkey and the UAE.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said that Britain spent 0.7 per cent of its national income on aid. But the average for the rest of the world was 0.31 per cent.
Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said the figures showed the need for us to slash the aid budget
We gave £14.8billion last year. The US spent just 0.17 per cent of their national income, £25.7billion, Canada £3.5billion and Japan £10.6billion.
Britain also gave a bigger share than our European counterparts.
Germany spent 0.61 per cent of their national income on foreign aid last year and France spent just 0.43 per cent.
Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said the figures showed the need for us to slash the aid budget. He said: “It seems to be an extravagant use of taxpayers’ money.
“The argument for our excessive overseas aid budget is it buys us international influence.
“That doesn’t seem to have worked in the Brexit negotiations.”
John O’Connell, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “The worst possible way to deliver value when spending taxpayers’ cash is to define the success of a policy by financial inputs rather than what the money actually achieves.”
