Officials have defended British taxpayer-funded cash handouts to people in Pakistan as a senior Tory MP called for a review of the programme which he compared to "exporting the dole".

The Department for International Development (DfID) said the programme was helping the poorest families in Pakistan and was an efficient and effective way to make sure they had the support they need.

But MP Nigel Evans, a former Commons deputy speaker and member of the International Development Select Committee, warned that cash transfers were "clearly open to fraud".

The UK aid budget helps fund the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), which offers cash amounting to just over £10 a month to some of the poorest families in a country where 60 million people live on less than £1 a day.

UK backing for the Pakistan government's BISP led to cash support for more than 235,000 families across the country in 2012, which could potentially increase to 441,000 families by 2020.