Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Collins, on securing this debate and take the opportunity to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Rea, back to the Chamber after such a long illness.

We have heard from the Nutrition for Growth APPG that in 2018 it was estimated that 149 million children in the world were malnourished, and so became stunted in physical and mental growth and more susceptible to illness. Those features used to be seen among poor communities not so long ago—in Victorian times, in this country. Looking at that figure from the family and mother’s perspective, it is interesting that there are 220 million women in the world without any access to family planning services, who suffer ill health and poor nutrition themselves because they have large families with no means of feeding them properly. There must be some correlation there, surely. Malnutrition will never be solved while the world’s population goes on growing. This must be taken into account when nutrition is discussed at the Tokyo conference.

Our Government have a good record on family planning. Smaller families mean more food and better nutrition for everyone in the family, and that women must have access to family planning services. I make no apology for raising this over and again, because it is well accepted now by international bodies. The World Economic Forum in particular says, in my favourite quote, that there is a massive pay-off for promoting contraception for these women—voluntary contraception, I may add—at an estimated cost of $3.6 billion per annum. It would mean far fewer newborn and maternal deaths, and mothers more able to feed and educate the children in their smaller families, leading to economic benefit for their country estimated by the WEF at $288 billion per annum. In other words, $1 spent on family planning yields $120 in benefits. That is an awful lot of money to spend on food and good nutrition. I repeat that those are not my figures; they come from the World Economic Forum.

Someone implied during the debate that DfID has not paid enough attention to nutrition, but in my experience this is not strictly true. NGOs and DfID are constantly looking at what foods are available to a particular population and how best to supplement them. I was in South Sudan years ago during the famine in Bahr el-Ghazal, like the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone. At that time, I saw reports from workers on the ground going back to DfID, not only saying what aid was being received but checking what nuts, berries and other natural foods were available in that area. The department has always been conscious of this problem.

It was interesting that so many Members promoted breastfeeding. It should be promoted—no woman doctor would not promote breastfeeding—but the problem is that if you are in an area where there is high malnutrition, mothers are often the most malnourished of the population. They feed the men and the children first; Mum comes last. In the time of rationing, when I was a little girl, my mother always ate less than we did. My father and the children always got the lion’s share. We must take that into account when we are promoting breastfeeding. Breastfeeding mothers need food.

Poor nutrition is often caused by conflict or the political actions of Governments. Briefs from NGOs say that 60% of Burundian children are irreversibly stunted, yet this is not so in neighbouring Rwanda, where they are tackling this problem, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. Good governance means less malnutrition, and healthier and happier populations. The people of Gaza cannot afford food. They have been blockaded for 10 years and, apart from malnourishment and severe anaemia among the mothers, after 10 years of blockade, now 10% of the children there are stunted. We could do something about that. In Yemen and Syria, children are starving. All this is due to conflict, lack of action and poor foreign policy by our Government and their allies.

Finally, I endorse the calls for more attention and money to be spent on nutrition, but it must be in conjunction with other needs, such as family planning. All aid should be co-ordinated across the needs of a population, not confined to vertical delivery lines, as it has been in the past. I hope the Minister can assure us that these points will be raised at the Tokyo conference, especially family planning.