Ukraine war: Only third of UK's £220m humanitarian aid delivered by 1 April

Ministers have been criticised for how quickly humanitarian aid is being sent to Ukraine, with less than a third of the £220m promised having been handed out by the start of this month.

Commons international development committee chairwoman Sarah Champion said she was "shocked and disappointed" that less than £60m had been disbursed.

She said people needed "help now".

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told the committee on 1 April that the delivery of aid was being scaled up "at speed".

Ms Truss said her department was "working tirelessly to disburse our funding quickly and effectively" while ensuring that all aid was targeted effectively.

Latest figures have not been yet made available on how much the situation has moved on in the 18 days since she made that statement to the committee.

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But in a newly-issued statement Labour's Ms Champion said she had previously urged the prime minister to make sure the UK's pledges were distributed quickly and said it was "shameful" that she was having to repeat the urgent appeal.

The Rotherham MP said she was "extremely disappointed" that support for Ukraine was coming from an aid budget which had been cut from 0.7% of national income to 0.5%, which she said would mean "cruel cuts" to aid programmes around the world.

"Given these circumstances the government should be less rigid in sticking to the 0.5% target for aid spending," she said, adding this would allow the UK to respond to the crisis in Ukraine without taking resources away from other communities suffering from other conflicts or extreme poverty.

She said more than 12 million people in Ukraine needed humanitarian support, as well as four million who had fled the country.

Ms Champion said she was sure the British people who had "given so quickly and generously" to the separate Ukraine appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee would be "astounded" by the lack of speed of the government's aid delivery.

A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said the UK had been "at the forefront of the humanitarian response".

They added: "We have dispersed millions of items of food and medical supplies to people in need across the country."

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