Labour grandees Jack Straw and Clare Short have both called for the 0.7 per cent foreign aid target to be dropped – saying the pledge has backfired.
Mr Straw, who was Foreign and Home Secretary under Tony Blair, said too much of the cash goes towards meeting the bumper salaries of white middle class people.
While Ms Short, who was appointed Britain’s first International Development Secretary in 1997, said the target has become ‘destructive’.
Their outspoken intervention will pile further pressure on Theresa May to finally ditch the target and spend the cash on boosting services and investment in the UK instead.
Clare Short and Jack Straw have both called for the 0.7% foreign aid target to be scrapped saying that it has backfired (file pictures)
Speaking to Progress magazine, Mr Straw said: ‘I don’t think protected budgets are an aid to good government.
‘Those departments don’t have to argue their corner and they get sloppy. It leads to officials in Dfid searching for projects to spend money.
‘An awful lot of money goes to spend on jobs for middle-class whites.’
Ms Short said she also has serious doubts about the target, warning that the money could be better spent in a different way.
She said: ‘I am afraid that the department has lost capacity and that 0.7 has ended up being destructive.
‘Money is useful if it is well spent, not in itself.’
The former Cabinet minister said that while the target remains a ‘good idea’ it has gone wrong in practice.
She said:’ The UK development community needs a serious debate about what has gone wrong and how to put it right.
‘It would be great to keep 0.7 and refocus, but this may not be possible.’
The 0.7 per cent target was first introduced by New Labour in 2004, when Tony Blair announced the government would try to hit the mark by 2013.
Penny Morduant, pictured leaving No10 yesterday after being appointed the new International Development Secretary after Priti Patel was forced to resign after shock revelations she had held secret meetings with Israeli PM and other high ranking officials while on holiday
But it was David Cameron who enshrined the pledge in law, meaning that while other budgets have been slashed and squeezed, Dfid has had billions to splash across the world.
The department has sparked controversy by spending money in tyrannical North Korea, handing out wads of money at cash machines in Pakistan, and for paying out some of the highest salaries in Whitehall.
As much as £300million is being lavished on a scheme in Pakistan that has been dogged by claims of corruption.
Britain is also forking out money to help the Chinese look after their elderly, while more than £100m of aid cash has been poured into shopping malls and retail chains around the world.
China’s biggest bra retailer, a cinema chain in Nigeria, fast food restaurants in Vietnam have all benefited.
Pen-pushers at the Department for International Development have an average wage of more than £53,000 a year – nearly twice that of the average worker – figures uncovered last year reveal.