Violence Against Women

Baroness Rendell of Babergh Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rendell of Babergh]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for introducing this debate on a subject that, sadly, is always with us. It comes at an apposite time for a new development that is taking place in the campaign against a particularly horrible type of violence against women. I speak, of course, about female genital mutilation.

Almost a decade has gone by since the passing of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, which makes it an offence to take a child abroad for mutilation and carries a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment. All of us associated with the Bill that became that Act hoped confidently for prosecutions but none has been brought. Three cases have been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service but none has made it to court. The police have tried, but a major objection has been and is that the young girls—it is usually children under 12 who are cut—are unwilling to give evidence against their parents. Another is that Horn of Africa communities maintain silence, even among themselves, on FGM issues.

Now, however, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has spoken out on the criminality of this practice and published an action plan. The 10 provisions in the plan include: gathering more robust data on allegations of FGM, so that the scale of the problem can be gauged; identifying case studies from the data to examine emerging issues as to why the police officer or doctor did not proceed; investigating what has hindered investigations and prosecutions; raising with Ministers what the existing reporting duties are for medical professionals, social care professionals and teachers in referring possible FGM cases to the police; exploring how other jurisdictions prosecute this crime; examining how these have prosecuted cases of FGM; and asking what evidence is required to support charges of conspiracy to commit, or to aid and abet, the offence.

The plan proposes that the Director of Public Prosecutions should raise with Justice Ministers whether current legislation should be reviewed. Other police tactical options might operate and the question asked as to what intelligence could be collated to support evidence-gathering for a prosecution. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service should develop a protocol for the police to refer all cases of FGM to the CPS for early advice on lines of inquiry and evidential issues, so that the police can build a strong case. Discussions will take place with the Department for Education on whether guidance on Working Together to Safeguard Children requires updating for further clarity about FGM. A steering group has been established to oversee the progress on the action points ahead of the DPP’s next FGM prosecution round table in summer 2013.

I cannot stress too strongly the pleasure and hope that learning of this action plan will bring to the many who have supported campaigns against FGM and suffered continual disappointment during the past years. In the past decade, it has appeared that whatever might be happening in other EU countries—France, Italy and Sweden, among others—the UK was to remain a safe haven for those who practised with impunity the excision of young children’s genitalia. If this action plan can set in train a real advance in prosecution and therefore a warning to those contemplating FGM, it will be a step forward that should have happened 10 years ago, but now that such a decisive plan has been formulated, it must not be allowed to founder. Its progress will be watched avidly by the dozens, by now hundreds, of groups and organisations across the United Kingdom set up over the years to oppose this particular type of child abuse.