Climate 'underspend' to be used as Ukraine military aid

The UK's expanded £1bn commitment to military aid for Ukraine will be partly funded through underspending on climate finance, the business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has said.

- HARRY COCKBURN

Following the government's announcement it would nearly double support to Ukraine to help stave off the Russian invasion, Mr Kwarteng tweeted: "My department has contributed to the effort by surrendering climate finance and foreign aid underspends."

The admission comes a month after The Independent revealed the government failed to deliver almost a quarter of a billion pounds in green projects aimed at hitting net-zero emissions even as Boris Johnson urged governments around the world to drastically raise their investment in tackling the climate crisis.

Some £241m earmarked for cancelling out UK carbon emissions by 2050 was handed back to the Treasury in the last financial year by the business department. But it appears the underspent money now going to Ukraine may have originally been earmarked for international climate projects and could represent further underspending by the department. An official at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) told The Independent they could not provide figures for how much of the underspend would now be used by the Treasury for military assistance in Ukraine.