The UK international development secretary told a House of Commons committee the process was "inefficient" and "appalling".

Ms Short said money that had previously gone to the poorest countries in the world, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, was increasingly being targeted towards relatively affluent Mediterranean states.

This meant aid had become "skewed quite dreadfully against the poorest countries", she said.

In the past decade, the proportion of aid spent on sub-Saharan African has dropped from almost two-thirds to only slightly more than a third.

EU spending on southern African has decreased in the past decade

Ms Short said: "These are pretty shocking figures."

A recent meeting of EU development ministers had reached the same conclusion, she said.

"Everyone said they were shocking and terrible. None can gainsay the argument. It's just too strong. But we won't know if we've won until we win."

She added: "This wasn't done as a conspiracy against the poor. It came about as a series of political decisions. Money is thrown in to express political concern and it's often used ineffectively.

"This happens so much in development. The rhetoric of development is always about the poor but a lot of the spending is about other purposes - political, self-interest of individual countries.

"The net effect is this very unprincipled allocation."

The UK currently pays about 15% of the EU's aid budget, which accounts for nearly 30$ of the Department for International Development's budget.

Ms Short told the International Development Select Committee she would be arguing for "constraint" in future.

"You can't keep throwing money and people into an inefficient organisation," she said.