Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, with reference to the Government’s response to the Fifth Report of the International Development Committee, HC246 of Session 2014-15 on Strengthening Health Systems in Developing Countries, when his Department plans to publish its position paper on health systems strengthening.

Our support for low-income countries to scale up quality health services and achieve universal health coverage is central to the UK government's manifesto commitment to ending the preventable deaths of mothers, newborn babies and children by 2030. We expect to publish a health systems strengthening position paper in 2021. This will be a central part of the government's wider approach to ending preventable deaths and will take account of the lessons learnt from the response to COVID-19 in order to build resilient systems.