Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what additional support her Department is providing to countries in the Global South at risk of acute food insecurity as a result of the covid-19 pandemic.

The UK is repurposing programmes in agriculture, social protection and humanitarian assistance to tackle the factors driving COVID-19 induced food insecurity. We are a major funder of existing multilateral programmes in these areas, including the recent Food and Agriculture Organisation £7.5 million contribution to fight the locust plague in East Africa. We have committed £15 million to the World Food Programme’s recent urgent appeals. In all of these we continue to put the poorest and most marginalised at the heart of our programmes to address the underlying causes of chronic hunger.