Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential impact on international food insecurity of the cuts to the Government's aid budget.

Conflict, climate change and now Covid-19 have caused food insecurity and acute hunger to reach record levels and has worst affected the poorest and most vulnerable. As well as providing humanitarian aid we are investing in building resilience to future crises and supporting sustainable recovery across Africa and Asia.

We have strengthened our food security and agriculture development programmes and investments. We are also working with international partners to strengthen global food security monitoring and analysis to better understand the challenge and further enhance the impact of our work. For example, through our Commercial Agriculture for Smallholders and Agribusiness (CASA) programme and the UK co-chaired multilateral Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme (GAFSP). We are also ensuring better coherence between life-saving humanitarian response and livelihoods-saving early action and a greener recovery, through the G7, our bilateral partners, with UN agencies and development banks.

UK initiatives and announcements at COP26 were supportive of sustainable agriculture, food systems, land governance and natural resource use. For example, a new UK-led multi-stakeholder commitment to support secure land tenure and forestry rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) with a related financial pledge of $1.7billion, including the UK's new £105million Land Facility Programme. Commitments were also made for agricultural research and to support greener policy reforms in agriculture.