Ministers are struggling to cut the amount of foreign aid it spends on hotels for asylum seekers, official figures reveal.
The Government plans to spend £2.2 billion of overseas development assistance (ODA) this financial year.
But this is only a fraction less than the £2.3 billion the Home Office spent in 2024/25, according to BBC News.
Labour promised at the last general election to "end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds".
Foreign aid is mostly supposed to be spent on development assistance and humanitarian aid to alleviate poverty overseas.
However, millions of taxpayers’ money is still being spent accommodating migrants, many of whom are waiting for their claims to be proceeded.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: "Labour promised in their manifesto to end the use of asylum hotels for illegal immigrants. But the truth is there are now thousands more illegal migrants being housed in hotels under Labour.
"Now these documents reveal that Labour are using foreign aid to pay for asylum hotel accommodation – yet another promise broken."
Gideon Rabinowitz, director of policy at Bond, a network for organisations working in international development, said spending billions to cover asylum hotels was "unsustainable".
He argued it was "poor value for money… at the expense of vital development and humanitarian programmes tackling the root causes of poverty, conflict and displacement".
There are up to 32,000 asylum seekers residing in hotels and private accommodation in the UK, recent Home Office figures suggest.
Yet another promise broken
That is around 15 per cent less than the end of December, when the total was more than 38,000, and 6 per cent lower than the 34,500 at the same point 12 months earlier.
A Home Office spokesman said: "We inherited an asylum system under exceptional pressure, and continue to take action, restoring order, and reduce costs.
"This will ultimately reduce the amount of Official Development Assistance spent to support asylum seekers and refugees in the UK.
"We are immediately speeding up decisions and increasing returns so that we can end the use of hotels and save the taxpayer £4bn by 2026."
Meanwhile, Downing Street is “very closely” examining proposals by the Labour Together think-tank to issue every adult with a digital ID.
The “BritCard” would be used to check on an individual’s right to live and work in Britain in an attempt to crack down on illegal migration.
