Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that his Department's education programmes include objectives on nutrition.

Helping poor countries provide 12 years of good quality education, particularly for girls, is a top priority for this Government. When children get all the basic nutrients they need in the first 1000 days of life, they do better in school and earn more as adults.

DFID’s 2018 education policy commits us to delivering early education and nutrition interventions together, where possible. We are pursuing this by building the evidence base through the new ‘Thrive’ early childhood development research programme and through investments in early education in Rwanda and our funding to the Global Partnership for Education.

The UK Government is a global leader on nutrition; we have reached 60.3 million people with nutrition services in 25 countries since 2015.