Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit

Virendra Sharma Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

I look forward to contributing under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) on securing this timely debate, and on his brilliant contribution.

As an officer of the all-party parliamentary group on population, development and reproductive health, and as a member of the Select Committee on International Development, I have always had a passion for this subject. I will join my colleagues next week at the summit online; we will be there from the IDC.

Next week, this Government have the opportunity to continue the work that they have done promoting good nutrition. In 2013, this Government led the world at the first Nutrition for Growth summit, and we can do it again. Truly it is an opportunity to fundamentally change the lives of the poorest in the world for the better. This is possibly the most important time to tackle malnutrition since the 1983 to 1985 famine in Ethiopia.

Covid-19 has ripped through the most deprived parts of the world in ways inconceivable to us. It has left swathes of already vulnerable children on the very edge of starvation. This year, 225 more children will die every day because of malnutrition. An additional 3.6 million children are predicted to become stunted, and 13.6 million children are predicted to become wasted by 2022 because of malnutrition arising from covid-19. This is not intangible. It is real children whose lives are blighted.

Nutrition is the single simplest, most effective way to improve lives across the globe, yet this year we are turning our backs on the malnourished. This Christmas— supposedly a time of good will—while the aid budget as a whole is facing a cut of roughly a third, ODA for nutrition is set to be slashed by 70%, despite the relative affordability of nutrition, the efficiency of spending it represents, and the impact it has. Nutrition cuts across every single target the FCDO has. It meets targets and it changes lives. Money spent on nutrition delivers an average return of 16 times the investment and supports future generations; it does not have a one-off impact.

With this in mind, and with the legacy of the first Nutrition for Growth summit as a role model, I hope the Minister will answer the following questions. There might be some repetition of other Members’ suggestions; I tried to cut it out, but then I thought, “I must add my voice to theirs, and endorse and support what they said.” Will the Minister attend the Nutrition for Growth summit, make an ambitious pledge there, and commit to renewing the commitment to reaching 50 million children, women and adolescent girls with nutrition programmes by 2025? Will the Minister commit to adding nutrition indicators to roughly £680 million of aid in other areas, to maximise the effectiveness of the aid budget? What work is the Minister’s Department doing to ensure that other Government Departments and other Governments around the world take nutrition seriously? Finally, will she commit to reading the International Coalition for Advocacy on Nutrition’s latest document, “Time for Action”, and respond to its recommendations?

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mundell]

Absolutely. If we had video facilities in Westminster Hall, I would be able to show the hon. Gentleman when I joined Mary’s Meals volunteers in not only making a healthy porridge but having a good old singsong about it as well. He is right. Many similar organisations do a really important job.

The hon. Member for Ealing South always takes an important interest in these matters. I was pleased to hear that he would be participating, through the IDC, in the summit. It is important that it is not only governmental, and that interested and relevant parties play a part. Obviously, I did not agree with everything that the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) said: I sort of agreed with the start and the end. The contribution of the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), was thoughtful and underpinned the core asks that we put to the Minister. I was pleased that the Minister was able to confirm at least one of those asks, and I think everyone following the debate will be pleased that the OECD policy markers will be adopted at an early stage. The other issues that everyone raised are as relevant, and we hope to see a positive response to them.

[Mr Sharma]

This is just a correction. My constituency is Ealing, Southall, not Ealing South.

[David Mundell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. I am not as familiar with the geography of London as I might otherwise be.

To return to the point I was making, it is clear what the asks are. I hope that the Government will look favourably on them. As I said when I met the Prime Minister, to come back to the initial point, this represents the best value of any intervention or spend that the UK Government could make. The summit is an opportunity to reaffirm global leadership, and I hope that that opportunity is seized.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the 2021 Tokyo Nutrition for Growth summit.