Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of (1) the prevalence of, and (2) regional disparities in (a) child stunting, and (b) malnutrition in the general population, in the United Kingdom.

In England, the prevalence of childhood stunting was 1.5% for children aged four years olds in 2021/22, defined by having a height for age below minus two standard deviations from the median of the World Health Organisation (WHO) child growth standard. Regional data for England has not been published.

The Welsh Government has published data from its Child Measurement Programme on the proportion of children aged between four and five years old with low height, defined as height less than the second centile of the British 1990 (UK90) growth reference. The following table shows this data including breakdown by health boards:

Source: Welsh Governmant Child Measurement Programme

Note: This is not directly comparable to the England data as the England data uses the WHO child growth standard to classify child height.

Data on stunting for children is not published for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The prevalence of malnutrition was 7.3% for children aged four years old in England in 2021/22, defined by having a weight for height greater than two or less than two standard deviations from the median of the WHO child growth standards. Regional data for England has not been published. Data on malnutrition for children is not published for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, whilst data on malnutrition for adults is not published for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.