Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I shall pick up that point. It is perfectly obvious to me as a former president of the Family Division that it does not matter which piece of legislation it is as long as the work done in relation to female genital mutilation is allocated to the single family court and heard either by High Court judges or circuit judges who are ticketed to try family cases. This is really not for the ordinary civil judges in what was the county court.

I am interested by this talk about the High Court or the county court. We should actually be talking about—I say this respectfully to the Government—the single family court. It does not matter whether it goes into the Family Law Act as is suggested in the excellent opposition amendments, which I largely support. What matters is who actually tries it. Just as with forced marriages and every other child protection issue, we have here issues of crime, but we know perfectly well that there has not yet been a single conviction of anyone who has done this. It is a question of culture, too. One has to train people in this country that this is not an acceptable practice. The Government are to be enormously congratulated for working on that—as were the previous Government when introducing the 2003 Act—but nothing has gone far enough.

I totally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lester. I would like to see what is good in each set of amendments put together. Therefore, I hope that the Opposition and the Government will get together after Report and thrash out what would be the best of everything and get that into one list that could go into Third Reading. I do not think that the Government go quite far enough. A great deal of what the Opposition are saying is exactly what we need, but it all needs to be put together. Certainly, the most important thing is that it should go to the single family court and be tried by High Court or circuit judges who have specialist family experience.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the noble and learned Baroness. In doing so, I ask the Minister to give thought to taking away the government amendment to come back at Third Reading with a composite amendment that deals with the two issues that my noble friend related in moving the amendment. The issue of definition is as important as the issue of where this matter is located in law. There is concern out there that the definition that we have may not comply with the World Health Organization definition; even if it does, the way in which it was formulated in the 2003 Act, because of where we were then, is not clear enough to the whole range of professionals. As my noble friend identified, a number of health bodies, even in their own guidance, are telling their practitioners that reinfibulation does not come within the definition of female genital mutilation in the current Act. That has to be dealt with. I welcome the Government’s approach to looking further at what we need to do in the Bill. We have an opportunity here to ensure that we get things right, and the definition is one important issue.