Global Malnutrition: FCDO Role

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I declare an interest because, a couple of years ago, I visited health and vaccination programmes in Ethiopia, and the visit was paid for by the advocacy group, RESULTS UK, which has helped me with some of the information for my speech today. I congratulate my good friend, the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), on his excellent introductory speech.

The context in which we meet today is an unfortunate one. The Government have recently announced that they are walking away from the legal commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development aid support, reducing it to 0.5%. Of course, it would have been 0.7% of a smaller amount, anyway, so it is a double whammy. In fact, we get a triple whammy with the abolition of the Department for International Development, which sends out completely the wrong message at this time. It is all well and good telling scare stories about aid and space programmes in India and the such like, but as my friend the hon. Member for Glasgow East said, this is about life-changing and life-critical decisions that have real-life consequences for hundreds, thousands and millions of people across the globe. As he said, the great tragedy is that the Government would have some good stories to tell if only they had the confidence to believe in the importance of development aid assistance and overseas development and if only they had the confidence to stand up to the naysayers on their own side and say, “Actually, this is the right thing to do, and we have a good story to tell.”

The UK has indeed been a global leader on nutrition since it hosted the first Nutrition for Growth summit in 2013, which raised more than £17 billion—a 33% uplift in global nutrition spending—and rates of malnutrition have steadily declined as a result. The number of children under five suffering from irreversible stunting, which has lifelong health implications, has reduced from 170 million in 2010 to 144 million in 2019, although, Mr Davies, I think you would agree that a figure of more than 100 million youngsters having lifelong conditions is horrendous. However, that does mark progress, but covid-19 threatens to undo all those hard-won gains. Many of the world’s poorest people cannot work from home and most Governments cannot support them through furlough schemes. Food prices are soaring and, for most people, the threat of hunger and malnutrition is far greater than the threat of the virus itself.

Additionally, as health systems have redeployed resources to address covid-19, other areas of health, such as nutrition, have been under-resourced. UNICEF reports a 30% reduction in the coverage of nutrition programmes. In some countries, coverage is reduced by as much as 75%. As a result, an additional 10,000 children will die from malnutrition each month this year. The number of children suffering from wasting—being dangerously underweight—is likely to increase from 47 million to 53 million and the head of the UN World Food Programme warned at the Security Council that covid-19 could lead to a famine of biblical proportions.

Although I recognise DFID’s work to tackle covid-19-induced food security, food security and nutrition are not the same thing. None of us wants to bring up a child exclusively eating carbohydrates because of the obvious health implications. Unless the Government prioritise nutrition alongside their ambitious food security work, they risk turning an immediate economic crisis into a protracted health crisis. At this critical time, not only is the coronavirus reversing years of progress on nutrition, so is the disruption to the FCDO’s work and to the nutrition for growth process as a whole.

The Tokyo Nutrition for Growth summit at which we had hoped the FCDO would renew its commitment to nutrition has been postponed by a year. The Government have carried out just a one-year spending review and announced their intention to cut the aid budget, making reliable multi-year FCDO financing of nutrition even more difficult. I understand that the Governments of Canada and Bangladesh have stepped in and are hosting an event next week and launching 2021 as a year of action for nutrition. I hope the Minister will attend and announce what action the Government intend to take in the year of action. Perhaps she can share her Department’s plans for that event when she wraps up the debate.

I am worried by the cliff edge in the FCDO’s nutrition commitments at the end of the year. Will the Minister share her predictions for what official development assistance will be for basic nutrition from the start of 2021? How will she mitigate the effects of any drop in nutrition financing and ensure it is for as short as time as possible? Does she agree that the FCDO will have to prioritise nutrition in order to meet the Government’s manifesto commitments to end preventable deaths by 2030 and ensure 12 years of quality education for every girl? Will she commit to spending £120 million on nutrition-specific interventions each year between 2021 and 2025, and will she ensure that spending of at least £680 million of the FCDO’s work in other areas includes nutrition objectives?

Will the Minister commit to reaching 50 million women, children and adolescent girls with high-impact nutrition interventions? As the hon. Member for Glasgow East said, women and girls are disproportionately adversely affected by this particular crisis. Will she develop a nutrition-sensitive investment case, and can she set percentage targets for the FCDO’s work in other areas to meet nutrition outcomes? If she cannot make any commitment in response to the debate today, I hope that at the very least she will set out a timeline by which the UK will meet these pledges.

With covid-19 wreaking havoc on health systems and economies around the world, it is more important than ever that the international community ramps up efforts on nutrition. I hope that the UK can display some of its historic leadership in this space at a time when it is needed more than ever. However, the Government are signalling that they are pedalling back on a commitment to development and aid. That is the wrong signal at absolutely the wrong time, and the consequences really are a matter of life and death for millions of people.