Government departments are “struggling” to spend all of the overseas aid money they have been allocated, the spending watchdog has said, prompting fresh demands for the foreign aid target to be scrapped.

A National Audit Office (NAO) report raised concerns that money is being wasted because of the "rush" by civil servants to hit the legal requirement of spending 0.7 per cent of the nation’s income on overseas aid.

Tory MPs accused the Government of needlessly spending money to meet "artificial targets” after the report revealed five out of 11 departments spent more than half their annual aid budget in the last few weeks of the year to meet financial deadlines.