Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for bringing this important issue before your Lordships’ House today. As ever, the breadth and quality of contributions never ceases to amaze, such that by this stage in the debate there is very little to add. Maybe in summing up on behalf of these Benches I can add emphasis to some of the key points.

This issue is at the heart of successful delivery of the sustainable development goals, which owe their very existence in no small part to the leadership of development professionals within DfID. Let us face it: we can put a multitude of excellent questions to the Minister, to which she will no doubt give reassuring responses, but all good intentions pale into insignificance if the Prime Minister is determined to pursue his aim of abolishing DfID. I join my noble friend Lady Featherstone and the noble Baroness, Lady Nye, in stressing the importance of maintaining a fully functioning department for development, one that is already firing on all cylinders and which has the necessary structures, processes and global networks to pull together the threads that weave success on the global stage—something that the Prime Minister is so keen to achieve.

One thing that we know for sure is that there is a good reason why we have 17 SDGs, together with 169 targets and 232 indicators. It is because a transformative, interlinked agenda cannot be delivered without a holistic vision—one that leaves no one behind. But that vision needs to be informed and tempered by experience. Experience tells us very clearly that, to deliver our vision for better health, people need better jobs, and better jobs are dependent on better education. With better education, we can have better sanitation and hygiene, which completes the cycle back to better health. All development goals are interlinked and interdependent. It is a no-brainer that, in order to have healthy, educated people with good jobs, they must have good, nutritious food.

The Government have rightly identified the education of girls as being a crucial factor in successful delivery of the SDGs. We know that investing in girls’ education, enabling access to contraception and reproductive health care and giving women the power to decide when and how often to have a baby, will have the biggest possible impact, not least on the size of families, a point eloquently made by my noble friend—I hope I can call her my noble friend—Lady Tonge.

However, while the Government’s commitment to girls’ education is commendable, I hope they accept that a nutrient-rich diet which provides not only the calories but also the vitamins and minerals needed for healthy development is a necessary prerequisite.

We have heard some shocking statistics on the impact of malnutrition, but the one on stunting shocks me the most: 149 million children are malnourished enough to be classified as stunted. That is a shocking 21.9% of all children—more than one in five. What does it mean to be stunted? Stunting refers to children with a height considerably below the average for their age, as we heard from my noble friend Lady Featherstone, but modern neuroscience shows it also takes its toll on children’s brain development. Health and education outcomes for stunted children are poor and its consequences are irreversible. Without intervention we are building in inequality from birth—and sometimes before birth because stunting can occur in the womb of malnourished mothers-to-be.

We know that intervention works. For example, we know that encouraging breastfeeding is the single most effective way to reduce child mortality in countries with high burdens of malnutrition, and I hope the Minister will agree that bearing down on the marketing of breast-milk substitutes is essential. Hand in hand with that goes adequate nutrition for breastfeeding mothers.

Sometimes there is no alternative but to give micro- nutrient supplementation, fortification and biofortification —they work, as do ready-to-use therapeutic foods. We know they work because we have made it work before. The first Nutrition for Growth summit was hosted by the UK in 2013, mobilising $17 billion over seven years, as a result of which 12 million fewer children suffer from stunted growth and millions of lives have been saved. The next summit takes place this year in Tokyo in December, with a springboard event in July. DfID’s early leadership will encourage donors and high-burden countries to step up and pull in the same direction.

The International Coalition for Advocacy on Nutrition is asking for a pledge from Her Majesty’s Government of £800 million per year for 2021 to 2025. Is the Minister able to say whether that ask will be met in a timely manner for maximum impact?