Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, has been told to “get a real grip” on aid spending amid questions over millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money going to China.

In a testing evidence session before MPs on the international development committee, Mordaunt was repeatedly challenged about aid spending by areas of government other than the Department for International Development (DfID).

MPs heard that £46.9 million of British money classed as official development assistance (ODA) was spent by the Foreign Office in China in 2016. Much was allocated to diplomatic activities.

Tory MP Pauline Latham said that the money was like “change down the back of the sofa” for China, but was “ a lot of money for Britain”.

Latham said some of the money given through the prosperity fund was spent on projects with “very tenuous links” to poverty reduction, including the Chinese film industry.

“I’m not going to say that the cross-government funds or spend that has been going on in other departments is good,” said Mordaunt. “We know from external scrutiny, of which there is much, that it is not where it needs to be”

“Certainly going forward, what we are currently doing in China is not where we should be.”

Latham told Mordaunt: “I think that you need to take a real grip of what other departments are doing with money that’s supposedly ODA.”

DfID does not spend aid money in China, Mordaunt said. Other departments across Whitehall do, however.

“As a general rule, not even China thinks it should be an aid recipient,” said Mordaunt.

Her evidence follows a period of intense scrutiny of DfID, and after a series of scandals that have engulfed the aid sector, including allegations of sexual abuse by development workers abroad and concern over the way charities have handled them.

Mordaunt said that while DfID did not provide aid money to China, the country remained a “key partner for us”.

“So we will continue to work with them,” she said. “We are particularly pushing them, encouraging them to do more with global health security and to lean in on the humanitarian front.

“We have a great track record with them on things like Ebola. So we want to do more. And they are a major player. And we want to ensure their development strategy is a really good one.

“I think you’ll see us and other departments continuing to work with them, but it won’t be on an aid basis.”

Mordaunt added: “We have to have a coherent strategy across Whitehall about what we are doing, with who, and why.”

Conservative MP Nigel Evans said it made him “sick to my stomach” to learn that Britain could not help people in the Caribbean after the hurricane, but that it was giving aid money to China. He suggested that ODA should only be spent by DfID.

Mordaunt said she was keen for DfID to continue to work with other government departments such as the Department of Health, which she said had made a “fantastic contribution” to global development goals on antimicrobial resistance.

“Just hoovering money back into my department is not necessarily going to be absolutely the best way to do it,” she said.

DfID had expertise on alternatives to traditional ODA spending such as “levering in private sector money, setting up ventures and social finance” that other departments did not, said Mordaunt.



She added: “In order to move other government departments, we need to give them not only the information but the training and understanding as to how they need to shape their programming in the future.”