Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what estimate he has made of the level of therapeutic food procured through UK Overseas Development Assistance (a) directly by the Government and (b) by third party partners, in the latest year for which information is available.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) does not directly procure therapeutic foods and does not currently hold data on the quantity of therapeutic foods procured by third-party partners using FCDO funds.

Therapeutic foods are primarily procured as part of nutrition-related humanitarian programming. Expenditure on nutrition-related humanitarian programming is captured in the FCDO's annual nutrition accountability reports, which are published 18 months in arrears. The most recent report covers spend from 2022, totalling £238.5 million. This figure which includes funding for food assistance and therapeutic foods, should be viewed as a proxy indicator of the level of investment in such products, rather than a direct measure of procurement. Data on nutrition-related spend for 2023 will be published in Autumn 2025.