International development secretary Penny Mordaunt has sought to downplay fears that the Department for International Development (DFID) will be merged with the Foreign Office.

After giving a speech to the Bond international development conference in London Ms Mordaunt was asked whether there were plans to merge the two departments.

“There are no plans at all for DFID to be hoovered up into another government department or turned into something else,” she said. “People just need to calm down and chill out about that.”

The proposal has been mooted at various points over recent years with former foreign secretary Boris Johnson telling the Financial Times in January that the two government departments should be merged.

He said: “If ‘Global Britain’ is going to achieve its full and massive potential then we must bring back DFID to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We can’t keep spending huge sums of British taxpayers’ money as though we were some independent Scandinavian NGO."

Last week, Esther McVey, another would-be Conservative leadership contender, called for Britain to scrap its 0.7 per cent aid commitment completely and spend the money fighting domestic knife crime instead.

But Ms Mordaunt slapped both down, saying people should "chill out" about the government dropping the 0.7 per cent aid target.