The damning truth about foreign aid

Instead of providing food, medicine and shelter in camps, much of our aid money is going on administration, overheads and staff costs.

And a UK official in the region told investigators the UN relief effort was ‘at best mediocre’.

Britain has given £1billion to help Syrians fleeing the twin menace of Islamic State and dictator Bashar Al-Assad. Dwarfing the donations of other European countries, it is the UK’s biggest ever response to a refugee crisis.

Around £600million has been handed to three UN bodies – the World Food Programme, children’s fund Unicef and refugee agency UNHCR.

But much of the cash is not accounted for, with Unicef failing even to give a breakdown. Shockingly, the UNHCR has spent £7million on its press office.

The BBC exposé is a blow to David Cameron who has been criticised for diverting 0.7 per cent of national income abroad.

And ministers have often highlighted the value of the camps in stopping refugees making the perilous journey to Europe.

‘It seems extraordinary amounts of money are being siphoned off for bureaucracy and overheads,’ said Andrew Rosindell, a Tory MP on the Commons foreign affairs committee. ‘If this is the case, it is very disappointing and we need to find out why this has been allowed to happen.’

The investigation by Radio 4’s File on Four programme found that a lack of financial transparency at the UN made it extremely difficult to discover how much was being spent and on what.

But in some instances, UNHCR projects received only around half of the money paid out by the Government. The rest went on staff, infrastucture, vehicles and hired contractors. The agency often contracts charities and other groups to carry out work on its behalf. These groups may then employ a local contractor.

Kilian Kleinschmidt, who ran the UNHCR Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan until a year ago, said aid money moved along a chain, starting with a major UN agency.

‘It’s possible even up to 50 per cent may go in that chain of transfer of funding,’ he said.

‘This is maybe acceptable and should be acceptable in times of emergencies – this is when you have to move fast.

‘But as fast as possible we have to change that to think how would you run, for instance, the water system in a city of 100,000 people. You don’t have these different layers – you would have a water company or a water provider.’

The UNHCR received £116million from the UK and the World Food Programme £227million.

But the only detailed WFP project budget available was a £16million breakdown for food vouchers for three months in 2012. It showed that 7 per cent, or about £1million, went on management fees for officials at WFP headquarters in Rome while another £2million went on staff costs.

(dailymail.co.uk)