Home Office contributions to Britain’s foreign aid budget totalling £362 million a year are mostly spent on illegal migrants and asylum seekers in the UK.

The enormous sum, equivalent to almost one million pounds sterling every day, makes up part of an even larger total spend, legally enshrined at 0.7 per cent of GDP by the David Cameron administration and estimated to stand at some £13.3 billion as of 2016.

The money, the “majority” of which is spent on covering accommodation, meals, and other expenses for asylum seekers in Britain — most of whom arrive in the country illegally — could have been used to provide the cash-strapped National Health Service (NHS) with an extra 17,000 qualified staff nurses, reports the Daily Express.

Responding to the revelations, UK Independence Party home affairs spokesman Jane Collins MEP pointed out that “the job of the Home Office is to protect our borders, not to fund those who illegally slip through them”.

She added: “This money should be spent on beefing up our Border Force not on polishing our halos. [Home Secretary] Amber Rudd has to explain how looking after illegal immigrants in the UK can be described as international aid.”

Watchdog: No Evidence Foreign Aid Budget Improving Lives https://t.co/HWFerPLyRw pic.twitter.com/I9JOjr1Ssh — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 29, 2016

The foreign aid budget has been endlessly controversial, with scant evidence that the Department for International Development’s private investment arm actually makes a lasting difference to people’s lives, and frequent accusations that money is misspent or misappropriated.

For example, the government was left with egg on its face in 2016 after it was discovered that the Palestinian Authority was using roughly half of the foreign aid money it receives to reward terrorists and their families. It was further embarrassed te following year, when it was forced to defend its decision to increase foreign aid to the Communist dictatorship in North Korea by some 167 per cent.

More questionable decisions have included the much-mocked decision to spend millions of pounds on the ‘Ethiopian Spice Girls’, and esoteric projects including a university course on Tibetan verbs and a campaign to reduce smoking among migrant workers in the People’s Republic of China — a country with an economy for larger than Britain’s, as well as its own nuclear and space programmes.

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery