£9m tsunami aid 'unspent'

More than £9m of nearly £53m British aid that was sent to the victims of last year's Asian tsunami was sitting unspent in bank accounts 16 months after the disaster, MPs said yesterday.

Ministers were told to seek audited accounts from aid agencies and the UN to demonstrate the money has been used to help millions of people affected by the disaster. Members of the all-party Commons Public Accounts Committee urged the Department for International Development (DfID) to claw back any cash remaining unspent.

The DfID denied the £9m was unspent, insisting much of it was either being used to pay for ongoing projects or had been transferred to longer term aid projects. A spokeswoman said £2.5m had already been clawed back. She said: "We dispute the £9m has not been identified. Some £2.5m of under-spent money has been returned and we have agreed with some programmes that under-spent money can be reallocated to longer term development."

The committee congratulated ministers and officials for their "swift and impressive" response to the disaster and praised the "exceptionally generous" donations by the public.