Britain has handed £274million to a controversial climate change organisation and admits it doesn't even know what it was spent on.

The foreign aid donation to the Strategic Climate Fund was agreed so the Government can can meet its pledge to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid.

The fund runs projects in Haiti, Yemen and Cambodia but the United States has warned it might stop sending aid to these countries because their governments are considered among the most corrupt in the world.

The Strategic Climate Change Fund has an $8billion (£6.3billion) annual budget and Britain is among its biggest donors.

Controversial: The donation to the Strategic Climate Fund, set up by George W Bush in 2008, pictured, was agreed so the Government can can meet its pledge to spend 0.7% of national income on foreign aid

But when The Times asked The Department for International Development (DfID) how it £274million donation was spent on it responded: 'DfID does not hold the information relevant to your request'.

International Development Secretary Priti Patel, pictured, has launched an investigation into aid spending as yet revelations emerged

But critics have expressed worry that they don't know where the cash is going.

Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, told the newspaper: 'It's hard to believe they can get away with this kind of answer. Development funding in itself is highly contentious but this takes it to a different level.'

The Strategic Climate Fund was set up by President George W Bush in 2008 to help poorer nations tackle climate change but there are deep concerns in the US about the countries it is spent in. The Senate has even threatened to clock investment.

Revelations about the payouts came as it emerged that billions of pounds earmarked to help impoverished countries is being handed to wealthy consultants.

Executives are earning six-figure salaries paid in public money to complete dubious projects and reports despite Government promises to prevent misuse of aid cash.

Its insistence that payments to consultancy firms had all but stopped was rubbished as Whitehall documents revealed that the annual bill for private contractors had doubled to almost £1billion.

Some consultants are raking in more than £1,000-a-day to provide advice and guidance on how the UK should spend money that is supposed to help poor communities throughout the world.

2015: Britain's overall foreign aid budget is now so swollen it accounts for £1 in every £7 given by rich countries. A global study shows the 28 leading industrialised nations handed out £86billion between them last year

Downing Street said last week that Theresa May wanted to see an end to the lavish payments.

Her official spokesman said: ‘The Government has been very clear that we want to make sure that taxpayers’ money is being spent in the most effective and efficient way. There have already been steps taken to make sure that aid ends up where it should be – helping the world’s poorest.’

Funding: In 2014 the Department for International Development (DfiD) paid £26,000 to hire Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Muthy to host a session at a two-day aid conference in Mexico.

Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy was paid £15,000 in taxpayer cash from Britain’s foreign aid budget for just several hours’ work at a junket.

He faced embarrassment when he claimed to be unaware that the money for his trip to Mexico came from the public purse, and promised to give it back to charity.

Mr Guru-Murthy was joined at the summit by BBC News presenter Zeinab Badawi, who cost £14,000 to hire through an agency.

International Development Secretary Priti Patel has launched an investigation following the revelations, including the payment to Mr Guru-Murthy. She is considering forcing aid providers to publish all their contracts for scrutiny.

The agency through which Mr Guru-Murthy was hired charged £26,000. Both he and Miss Badawi chaired meetings attended by ministers at the two-day event in Mexico in 2014 hosted by the Global Partnership for Effective Development.

It is understood that Mr Guru-Murthy received £15,000 and paid his agent £2,250. He has promised to donate his fee to a development charity and said he would not have carried out the work if he had known it was being funded by the Department for International Development (DfiD).

Official documents state that DfiD has spent no money on consultancy payments in the past three years. It also said payments for ‘external consultancy and advisory services’ currently stood at £200,000, a reduction of almost 99 per cent in the past seven years.

But an analysis of 72,000 documents detailing financial transactions between DfiD and consultants carried out by The Times found that it paid a staggering £3.4billion between 2011 and 2015.

Britain’s huge aid budget – which now exceeds £12billion – has been mired in controversy over claims that much of the money is wasted on bureaucracy. A series of reports in the Daily Mail have also revealed numerous cases in which the cash is squandered on controversial projects.

Hundreds of businesses and other organisations providing consultancy firms are known to have benefited from the significant increase in payments.

Accounting giant PwC earned an astonishing £6.3million in fees from an aid project costing £8.5million to help Papua, Indonesia, according to The Times. It has received £168.8million from the foreign aid budget since 2011. London-based consultants Adam Smith International was paid £296million in the same period.

A DFiD spokesman said: 'Our investment helps developing countries tackle the global threat of climate change, which is firmly in the UK's national interest.