Foreign aid money spent on finding a mate for endangered fish

The Home Office has launched a review into how the international aid budget is spent after it was revealed that thousands of pounds were being channelled into "frivolous" projects.

An investigation by The Sun exposed that £3,400 in foreign aid money was spent on a programme to find female mates for the endangered Mangarahara cichlid fish in Madagascar.

Other expenditures included:

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• £13,888 - on a television game show in Ethiopia
• £4,735.23 - for a plaque ceremony in Panama to promote racial equality, attended by UK minister Hugo Swire
• £7,000 - for an anti-litter campaign in Jordan
• £2,042 - on tickets for children to see a production of Hamlet in Haiti
• £970 - for a project to promote the "safe and responsible" use of Facebook in Laos

"Some of those examples are frivolous to say the least," the Foreign Office admitted. "Clearly there are going to have to be some changes to tighten up the approvals and authorisation process."

But it said the "vast majority of aid spending promotes UK prosperity and broader stability" and promised a crackdown on any projects that "cannot show taxpayers' cash is being spent wisely."

Tory MP Philip Davies, a vocal critic of new legislation that requires Britain to spend 0.7 per cent of its annual income on international development, said this "nonsense" was a result of pressure to meet targets.

"Hamlet lessons for Ecuadorians and tracking down a mate for a rare fish would be funny if it wasn't taxpayers' hard-earned cash being used to fund these idiotic projects," he said.

Britain's total overseas budget last year was £12bn and the government insists international aid is used to help an estimated 1.4 billion people around the world living in poverty, says the BBC.

Countries that will receive the most aid from Britain this year:

1. Pakistan: £385.77m

2. Nigeria: £239.86m

3. Sierra Leone: £207.49m

4. Ethiopia: £202.69m

5. Tanzania: £182.27m