MINISTERS were accused today of taking a “woefully inadequate and wilfully opaque” approach to aid spending, amid concerns that funding is being diverted to other departments to cover ballooning refugee costs.

MPs accused ministers of behaving in a way “incompatible with the spirit” of global aid rules by spending around £1 billion of the aid budget on refugees inside Britain in 2021.

In a report by the international development committee, members said the government had overseen a trebling of per capita costs to support refugees, taking aim at what they claimed was “unwarranted largesse by the Home Office at the expense of both UK taxpayers and people living in the world’s poorest countries.”