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Nigel Farage today stoked a Tory rebellion by calling for the foreign aid budget to be dramatically slashed.

The UKIP leader said the £11 billion budget should be hacked by up to 80 per cent to help pay off the deficit.

It comes as Tory MPs today prepared to scupper a plan, backed by David Cameron, to lock future government’s into spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on aid.

This week it emerged that the existing voluntary target of spending 0.7 per cent will force the UK to divert an extra £1 billion to aid over the next two years.

As the row over today’s foreign aid debate grew, Mr Cameron appeared to concede the plan to enshrine spending in law was faltering.

Speaking on LBC radio this morning Mr Farage said: “Of the £11 billion a year that we spend on foreign aid, only £2 billion of it is spent on genuine humanitarian [things], you know, inoculation or clean water.

“So I’d cut £9 billion from that because frankly it’s just being used as an arm of foreign policy.”

The Commons will today debate a Lib Dem MP’s private member’s bill which would make spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on overseas development a legal requirement.

The Conservative commitment to the law was included in the party’s 2010 manifesto and the coalition agreement.

But it has since been undermined by Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond describing it as a “bizarre idea”.

Meanwhile Tory rebels complain the move is unjustified as the Government makes the case for future spending cuts.

The Office for Budget Responsibility revealed this week that due to changes to the way GDP is calculated, the Treasury will have to divert £1 billion more this year and next to meet the 0.7 per cent target.

In London yesterday Mr Cameron said he thought the plan to enshrine the target in law would only “probably” make it onto the statute book.

He said: “We will continue to meet the promise that we made to the poorest people of the world that we would make this aid pledge and meet this aid pledge and we’ve done that.

“But I think the meeting of it is much more important than the legislation about it.

“It is a private member’s bill but nonetheless there will be support for that bill which I’m confident will probably go ahead.”