Terrorist Attacks (Paris)

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

It is no surprise to anyone in the House that the Deputy Prime Minister and I have a different opinion on communications data and the Communications Data Bill. I believe it is important that we maintain those capabilities, and I reiterate that the Bill is not a snoopers charter.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does the Home Secretary agree that while there cannot be a scintilla of an excuse for the psychopathic slaughter that we saw in Paris last week, and that security measures must be paramount, in the long run one thing that will make us safe is to reach out to marginalised communities in this country that mirror those from which the killers came? We must ensure, whether by addressing education or employment, that those communities cannot become fishing grounds for people who pedal violence, hatred, and nihilism.

[Mrs May]

As I indicated earlier, the reasons why people become radicalised are various and often complex, and it is important that we try to understand those reasons. It is also important that in any community in our country we look at the issues that matter to people. For everybody around the country, those are things such as the availability of jobs and the education and public services they receive, and we consider those matters for everybody.

Child Abuse Inquiry

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. and learned Friend has made a practical suggestion about the operation of the panel inquiry, and it is certainly one that I will take on board.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary will be aware that very many survivors of sex abuse were genuinely frightened and upset at the notion of Fiona Woolf chairing the panel. Mr Alex Wheatle, who experienced child abuse in the Shirley Oaks home in Croydon, wrote in The Independent to that effect, so it is for the best that she has now withdrawn. On the question of security services, if the security services refuse to supply information, or if they supply information that is so heavily redacted that it is worse than useless, what recourse will the chair of the inquiry have?

[Mrs May]

As I said when I made the statement in July and as I have repeated here today, I have been very clear to all the agencies involved that it is the expectation and the intention that they should make evidence available to the inquiry. Of course, as has been mentioned, the chair will have to consider whether this is a non-statutory or a statutory inquiry with the powers to compel witnesses that a statutory inquiry would have. I wish to reiterate that, across the whole of Government, we have an opportunity to address this issue, find out what happened in the past, find out the failings and ensure that we learn the lessons for the future, and that is what I expect every part of Government to do.

Refugees and Migrants (Search and Rescue Operation)

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the work of the Foreign Affairs Committee in looking at the pressures in north Africa and across the region. We have a keen focus on and interest in the Committee’s reports and recommendations. On identifying and rescuing boats at sea, clearly if vessels are in the territorial waters of a particular country I would expect the normal rules of the sea to apply. That is why Frontex, with its mission to protect the security of the external European border, will focus on the 30-mile limit off the Italian coast.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that, for many British people, including those who share his concern about protecting our borders, the decision on search and rescue represents a new low? Of course the solution to those problems lies in north Africa, and of course there must be a regional solution, but consciously pursuing a policy that will allow people to drown should play no part in protecting Europe’s borders. Some of us are reminded of nothing more than the Exodus, the boat that, at the end of the second world war, tried to take Jewish refugees to Palestine and was turned away by the British Government on precisely the kind of realpolitik grounds the Minister has advanced this morning. Just as people look back in shame at what we did in relation to the Exodus and the fleeing Jewish refugees, we will look back in shame on the decision he is trying to defend today.

[James Brokenshire]

I respect the hon. Lady’s passion and that of other hon. Members, but the harsh reality is that more people are dying in the Mediterranean following the introduction of Mare Nostrum and the emergency measures. If we want solutions that save lives, we need to examine different options and alternatives. Not just the UK Government but 28 other EU member states have come to that same conclusion. The measure cannot therefore be characterised as a specific action of the UK Government. There has been an EU-wide recognition that things are simply not working and not saving lives. The very thing that the hon. Lady wants achieved is what we want: we want fewer lives lost and to ensure that fewer people head out to sea in dangerous boats. That is why I make the points about going after organised traffickers, and about finding a regional solution in north Africa and elsewhere.

UK Drugs Policy

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley). We are both old lags in this debate and were both mentioned in the drugs report of 2002.

I am more optimistic than I have been during the past 27 years in which I have made 28 speeches on this matter in this House. At one time we had an annual debate, which was an amazing ritual. The Government, whoever they were, said how wonderfully and successfully things were going, and the Opposition would say, “Yes, we agree.” One moment I prize was when, about half way through, both Front-Bench speakers had to leave the Chamber for a fix—they were both chain smokers. They saw nothing wrong in denouncing young people and then going off to any of the 16 bars in this place and having a whisky and a cigarette. They would have a couple of paracetamol in their pockets for the headaches they were going to have the next morning. They could not see any contradiction between that and laying down laws for young people.

The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) talked about the myth that the use of drugs has gone down because of Government action. There is absolutely no correlation. Let us look at the past 43 years. When the Drugs Misuse Act 1971 was passed with the support of all parties—always a worrying thing—there were fewer than 1,000 heroin and cocaine addicts in the whole country. The last figure I saw was 320,000. There has been a steady increase over the years. The reason there has now been a decline in cannabis use and other activities by young people is that they have a new addiction. They have an almost universal addiction to their Tablets and iPhones—that is where their attention is going. It is all to do with fashion. Drug taking might be cool one year and naff the following year. It all depends on that.

The hon. Lady made a point about Portugal, which is a great success story. It changed its policy in 2001. Within a very short time the number of deaths went down by 50%,and it does not have the cost of prosecutions and so on. It has been a continuing success. The change in the Czech Republic is relatively recent and we have yet to see the results, but there are encouraging signs.

I have to apologise to the Minister. I was so ungracious as to believe that he was going to follow the path of all the other Ministers with responsibility for drugs, including some very distinguished ones. I remember when the beloved Mo Mowlam was in charge of drugs. Her letters would comprise the civil service reply and a little note on the top, written by her, saying, “See you in the Strangers Bar to tell you what I really think.” [Laughter.] When the current Minister came before the Home Affairs Committee, I asked him whether he had had the compulsory lobotomy to become a Minister with responsibility for drugs in exchange for his red box. It was not true! The Minister stuck to his views, and here we have the first ever intelligent document on drugs from Government in 43 years—the only one that is evidence-based. We have had evidence-free, prejudice-rich policies for years from politicians who were cowardly. They would not take on the tabloids. Some years ago, the Liberal Democrats decided that they were going to pursue the policy that we are encouraging today and they were denounced by The Sun for going to pot.

There is cowardice because of prejudice, but we know that public opinion is way ahead of us. The public know the stupidity and impotence of our drugs policy. I regularly ask how many prisons in Britain are drug free. I always get the answer that there are none. If we cannot keep hard drugs out of prisons, how on earth can we keep them out of schools, clubs or anywhere else? It is a pretence.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Women go into prisons like Holloway drug-free and come out with a drug habit, such are the difficulties of keeping drugs out of prison.

[Paul Flynn]

There is a splendid book called “Invisible Women” about Holloway prison, which I commend to everyone. It tells the terrible story of what is going on there.

Another point about prison is that one medicine that was given to young women who had been badly treated and were mutilating themselves was largactil. There was a name for them in prison: they were called muppets. This was a drug for those who had serious mental health problems. The whole sorry story of drugs in prison is one of abuse by many medicinal drugs. A blind eye was turned to cannabis use because it kept a lid on things. If prisoners were on alcohol they were aggressive, but if they were on cannabis they would give everyone a hug. That is how the prisons liked it. The prison policies pursued by all parties are completely hypocritical and they illustrate the futility of prohibition.

I received a call before I came to the House from someone talking about the use of medicinal cannabis, which I have supported for a very long time. It is not that I want to use it. I have never used any illegal drug and I have no plans to use cannabis. The point is the irrationality of the Government’s stand. Cannabis in its natural form is one of the oldest drugs in the world. It has been used on all continents for 5,000 years. Now, because we are nervous and it is an illegal drug, we allow people to have only little bits of cannabis. Dronabinol, nabilone or TAC are available, but they contain only a small number of ingredients from the hundreds in any natural substance.

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[Ms Abbott]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that politicians might just be behind public opinion on this question? A major tabloid paper reports today that it has polled its readers, who believe there should be a review of the legislation.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, as I said in an intervention. Politicians are behind, at least in what they are prepared to say. Another survey two years ago—I cannot remember which paper ran it—showed that 77% of MPs thought we should have reform, as long as they knew they would not be named in the survey and asked to introduce it. Politicians should have the courage of their convictions, and the public’s convictions, and take action.

I shall pick up the point made by the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who chairs the Health Committee. We have indeed seen a reduction in the raw numbers—she is absolutely right—but I think that is largely because people are taking new psychoactive substances. We are seeing a huge increase in people taking legal alternatives, rather than illegal substances. The perversity of that is that we have pushed people to take substances whose safety we know less about. We know less about the harms and we are probably increasing the risk to those people very substantially. We should also look at the system. Smoking tobacco is more harmful than chewing khat, but why would we make the dangerous one legal and the not-so-dangerous one illegal? It seems like a very strange thing to do.

As a member of the Home Affairs Committee, I was delighted that the Chair, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who is sadly not in his place, agreed when I kept insisting that we should have a look at this issue. We undertook a detailed study and we heard from experts around the world. We concluded, on a cross-party basis, a key objective:

“The principal aim of Government drugs policy should be first and foremost to minimise the damage caused to the victims of drug-related crime, drug users and others.”

That is a call to completely rethink how we do drugs policy: to focus on reducing the harm, not on how many people do things that we badge as illegal.

The Home Secretary of course rejected the report’s findings and just carried on with business as usual, but we had one key victory. We secured agreement for an international comparators study, which has been worked on by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne) and, now, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Prevention. That is what has come out today, and although there is a serious gap where some of the conclusions ought to be—one feels that one is being led towards something, only to find a missing paragraph saying what one should do—it is very clear. The fundamental point is that sounding tough does not matter. The rhetoric does not make any difference; it is about outcomes. The study says:

“Looking across different countries, there is no apparent correlation between the ‘toughness’ of a country's approach and the prevalence of…drug use.”

That is key. If being tough actually reduced drug use around the world, we would have to look again, but it simply does not work. It creates extra harms, so the argument falls down.

What does work? There have been lots of academic studies. The thing that most reduces drug use is having a more equal society. Solving that may be beyond the scope of this debate, and certainly beyond my scope in the time I have left, but that is what will work—not tough laws, but a more equal society. Yet we continue with the tough approach. Every year we spend millions of pounds jailing something like 1,000 people for no offence other than possession. We are not talking about people who have burgled; we are talking about simple possession offences. They are not dealers; they are not doing worse things. Jailing them does not help them to deal with their addiction; if anything, it makes things worse for them and takes money that we could spend helping them instead of punishing them.

It is therefore really good progress that we now see acceptance from the Government that a tough drugs policy does not reduce usage. Contrary to what the Home Secretary said to the Home Affairs Committee, the Government have finally accepted that in Portugal decriminalisation and a focus on treatment have not led to more drug use.

We have the Minister on board, but we need to get the Home Secretary to agree to go ahead. We spend vast amounts of money on a drugs policy. Estimates vary between £3 billion and £10 billion a year, depending on which costs are included. Times are tight, so we should spend that money effectively. We should use police resources effectively, too. If police are kept busy dealing with simple possession offences, that is time and effort that they cannot use to settle violent or acquisitive crime, or indeed the gang crime that our war on drugs is fuelling. That is why so many police officers have spoken out.

The chief constable of Durham, Mike Barton, has argued for the decriminalisation of class A drugs, highlighting the fact that prohibition has put billions of pounds into the hands of the criminals he is supposed to be fighting. Many others say the same, including Chief Constable Tom Lloyd, my own former chief constable:

“Drug dealers all over the world are laughing at law enforcement…I want the end of prohibition and the start of control and regulation so we don’t have dealers on the street.”

He has also highlighted the harm done to young people, because for a huge proportion of them, their first contact with the law comes from being stopped and searched for drugs offences. When someone is convicted, according to Tom Lloyd:

“It seems hypocritical to saddle a young person with a criminal conviction that could blight their lives”.

Such people often have problems getting jobs and travelling in the future. This causes huge problems. Because of our criminalised system, we have no control over what drugs are cut with—and these cutting agents are often worse than the drugs themselves.

We also have huge problems with discrimination. For black and minority ethnic groups, the use of harder drugs is lower, but arrests are higher and they are twice as likely to proceed to court than white people. That is not right; we should not be doing that. With more than half of stop and searches being for possession, even the Home Secretary has acknowledged the problems that can result from that.

We need a new system, focusing on treatment, education and rehabilitation and dealing with the harms caused by drugs. How we pay for that is a challenge. The answer is to take money from the criminal justice system. We need to divert the money from spending on policing and prison towards spending on helping people to break their addiction. My party has called for exactly that, continuing to spearhead those calls. At our party conference in October this year, we had a new crime policy paper, which picked up on this issue. It called for a transfer of powers from the Home Office to the Department of Health, saying that drug addiction is a health problem and should be seen as such. We should make sure that people are not sent to prison for personal possession; we should move towards decriminalisation. We propose having a royal commission to take an overall view of what we do and to keep an eye on what is happening with cannabis in the US and Uruguay. I agree with the hon. Member for Totnes that it is too early to be certain about the outcomes; we need to keep an eye open.

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[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw. He made a compelling speech, in which he rightly identified an immense problem that goes to the heart of the issue with which our drugs policy must deal.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing the debate. I recall having a conversation with one of her co-signatories, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), when I was the criminal justice Minister responsible for the prison and probation services. The right hon. Gentleman, having at one time been the Minister responsible for drugs policy in the Home Office, is yet another convert to the more enlightened and intelligent policy that is proposed in the motion and implicitly recommended in the study report that the Government have just published.

On that occasion, the right hon. Gentleman and I, as Minister, cooked up a plan for him to ask me a question so that we could begin to arrive at some estimate of the actual cost of our drugs policy to the criminal justice system. However, even as the Minister answering the question, I found it impossible to beat out of the Department information that would have enabled me to give a proper answer to the right hon. Gentleman, and eventually, having tried to do so several times, I gave up.

This is the central point that I want to make. Given the number of global leaders who have had responsibility for policy in this area—Kofi Annan, the former Presidents of Brazil, Switzerland, Colombia, Portugal, Mexico and Chile, George Papandreou; the list goes on and on, and includes, of course, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East—we ought to start drawing some conclusions. Members who know that they will not get the political kicking that our current Administration plainly feel they will get if they begin to open up an intelligent policy discussion of this issue should now collectively begin to push harder and harder. I share the optimism of the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), who for many decades has occasionally been a lone and vilified voice. His courage is an object lesson to us all.

[Ms Abbott]

The hon. Gentleman referred to the international context. Does he agree that it is significant that at least one American state—Colorado—has decriminalised marijuana? Is that not a sign that the tide is turning in regard to the efficacy of the war on drugs?

[Crispin Blunt]

I agree with the hon. Lady. There are examples all over the world of much more enlightened policies on drugs. Portugal and the Czech Republic have already been cited, and a number of American states have changed their policies on cannabis.

This is what I find modestly depressing. A bright young new Member of Parliament is elected in 2001, and is appointed to the Home Affairs Committee. He is then party to a report which invites another really good report from the Home Affairs Committee, whose members, as Members of Parliament, sit down and consider the issues properly. He is then party to a recommendation in 2002. He is holding to that position even in 2005, when he is competing for the Conservative party leadership. And here we are now. I found myself becoming one of his Ministers in 2010.

I shall now do what I should not do, and reveal a collective internal political discussion between Ministers who had some responsibility for justice and those from the Home Office. Of course, we did not dare to raise this issue. I pushed as hard as I could for us at least to get to where we are today, and I congratulate the Minister and his predecessor on having pushed so hard to secure the report that has just been published. It is a big step forward for us to persuade the Government even to specify the international comparators. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) was right to point out that the conclusions appear to be missing from the report. Joking apart, however, we all need to understand the political difficulty of carrying this debate with us. We have been frightened of the tabloid press, and we have seen what they did to the Liberal Democrat party as a result of some of its policies in this area.

The Home Affairs Select Committee’s recommendation in 2012 for a royal commission was absolutely right. That will get the matter out of the political space, so that the work on international comparators that has been put into the report can be considered. The royal commission will then be able to put forward the kind of difficult and far-reaching conclusions that I believe would be appropriate to take us in the direction of regulation and away from the utterly disastrous policy of prohibition.

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[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on bringing forward the debate, and thank the Backbench Business Committee for making it possible. I was a Member of the House before that Committee came into existence and I cannot stress enough to Members who arrived in 2010 how much it has done in making this sort of debate possible—debates that perhaps neither Front-Bench team wanted to happen, but on issues that the public want debated.

I agree about the importance of having a thoroughgoing review on UK drugs policy. First, we must put this in its international context. Most of the leaders of some of the countries that have been at the heart of the international war on drugs would say now that it is not working. More people are taking drugs than before. The harms caused by drugs in some countries—in South America, the Caribbean, Afghanistan—have got worse, so there is an international context, in which people are recognising that an essentially punitive and criminalising approach to drugs is not working. As I said in an intervention, individual American states are moving towards decriminalisation, notably Colorado. Given that the decriminalisation in Colorado has boosted its tourism trade, I put it to the House that it will not be the only US state that goes down that road.

On the question of decriminalisation, I am by nature a libertarian, but I have always taken seriously the arguments of good friends and people with whom I work in Hackney. Their argument has always been that the skunk that young people smoke nowadays is a much more serious matter than the marijuana that some of us may have come across when we were young, and that it is one thing for a fully grown adult, such as a student, to smoke a spliff at a party at a weekend, but when pre-pubescent children smoke skunk, hour after hour when they are out of school, it must, of necessity, have an effect on their growth, educational development and so forth. There was also some concerning research about the links between marijuana and schizophrenia. Therefore, although I have had libertarian instincts since I was a student, as in inner-city MP I take seriously some of the arguments about the possible harm, even of smoking marijuana, and the signal that is sent by decriminalising it.

The fact remains, however, that if we are about anything in the House, we should be about evidence-based policy. This latest report, which the Government have belatedly released, shows that there does not appear to be evidence internationally that a more punitive, criminalised response brings down levels of consumption. On this issue, Members of Parliament have been unduly timid in the past. I can remember my own Home Secretary, a wonderful man, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), who sacked his adviser because they told him something that he did not want to hear: that alcohol was a much more harmful drug than cannabis, not only physically but in terms of the social disorder, domestic violence and so on that it promotes. I am sorry to say that my right hon. Friend’s response was not to say, “Gosh, isn’t that interesting. I must look into these facts,” but to sack the man concerned. Members of Parliament have been timid and have not taken an evidence-based approach. It may well be that Members are behind the opinion of our constituents—

[Crispin Blunt]

The hon. Lady should distinguish between Members of Parliament and Ministers, who have responsibility for the positions of their party. I think she will find that when Members of Parliament have looked at this properly, as the Home Affairs Committee has done repeatedly, they have been properly courageous.

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[Ms Abbott]

I stand corrected on that. Certainly Ministers in the two major parties have been increasingly behind the opinion of their constituents, who, after all, could be eminently respectable figures but might just possibly in their youth have been in a room with someone who was smoking cannabis. They will know that young people growing up in London today cannot lead a life where they never come across, never see or never hear of people smoking cannabis. Our constituents may be more realistic about these issues than some Ministers have been able to be in the past and even now.

This has been a difficult issue for MPs and Ministers, but speaking as someone who represents a constituency that sees the very worst of drug harms, and on the basis of the evidence, past reports and today’s Home Office report, there is an unanswerable case for a review of UK drugs policy.

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[Diana Johnson]

I recognise that it is important for the House to have these debates, and it is good that the Backbench Business Committee granted this one, but I think that the hon. Gentleman is right and that the Government perhaps need to ensure that such issues are debated in Government time, with clear options for what they feel should be taken forward.

[Ms Abbott]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Diana Johnson]

I will give way one last time.

[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, for whom I have the utmost respect, but when she says that the status quo is not failing, I do not understand what world she is living in. It is failing young people in London. I think that her faith in the statistics on access to treatment is misplaced, because young people in the east end of London have great difficulty accessing treatment. The status quo is failing. Young people of all classes—not just the underclass—are continuing to suffer from drug harm because Members of this House are too frightened to look at the recent evidence.

[Diana Johnson]

I am not frightened to look at the evidence, but we need to look at what is happening today in the round; we must not cherry-pick. I have the same concerns as my hon. Friend about treatment now, because of the Government’s misguided reforms of the NHS. There is fragmentation in the treatment services across the country, which is something that many people are genuinely concerned about. [Interruption.]

Child Sex Abuse (Rotherham)

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I have already made the point, as my hon. Friend has, that cultural concerns can never be an excuse for failing to bring the perpetrators of these appalling crimes to justice. I commend the work done by the former Member of this House Ann Cryer, who did stand up on a number of issues, often in the face of her own party, and raised issues of very real concern. But the message from the whole House is very clear today: cultural concerns cannot get in the way of dealing with the perpetrators of these appalling crimes.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

As the Home Secretary will accept, I am very glad that my Front-Bench team has taken the steps it has on this matter, because the historical fact is that it is children and communities such as these that the Labour party was set up to protect. That is why it is important that we have taken the steps we have. I am afraid I do not accept that political correctness alone is responsible for those girls being abused. In the end, people at the top of the local state in Rotherham thought those girls were worthless and did not care enough to read the reports, to go to the seminars and to act. It is long past time that the Government looked at the employment arrangements for heads of social services, because all the way back to Victoria Climbié and the Laming report there has been a concern that terrible things happen to children and the most senior people paid to protect them do not seem to pay any price and, worse, go on to other senior jobs.

Child Abuse

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes some very important points. She raises issues that we are looking at in order to ensure that the best form of support is available. I would like to take this opportunity to commend my hon. Friend for the courage she has shown, which will have given great confidence and comfort to other victims.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

All child sex abuse is horrific, but the Home Secretary will be aware that for many parents, online child sex abuse is particularly frightening because the technology is developing at warp speed, so many children have smartphones, and parents do not feel equipped to protect their children. It is good to work with the industry, but does the Home Secretary appreciate that parents want to know that progress is being made on tackling online child sex abuse—not at the rate that suits the industry, but at the rate that will bring reassurance to parents and families and protection to our children?

[Mrs May]

Of course we want to ensure that we make progress in a way that can give confidence to parents, who rightly worry about what is happening online. The fact that somebody living thousands of miles away could effectively be in a child’s bedroom through the internet, persuading that child to undertake certain horrific acts is obviously a matter of very real concern. It is right for us to work with the industry, however, which has been responsive on this matter and sees its importance to the public.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (Business of the House)

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I want to speak to the timetable motion rather than to the content of the Bill, because it is an insult to the intelligence of the House. The whole House will know that guillotine motions are always undesirable, although increasingly common in recent decades, but to ram through legislation of this significance in a day must be wrong. We have had a Session with a light legislative programme, and for Ministers to come to the House and say, “We’ve only got a day to debate it”, when weeks have passed when we could have given it ample time is, I repeat, an insult to the intelligence of MPs.

The other point that I am afraid is not very pleasant about the way Ministers are handling this matter is their bringing the Bill forward a week before the Session ends. They know perfectly well that the Lords will be disinclined to keep sending it back if it means extending the Session when they will have made their own arrangements, and I believe—I hate to say this because they are all nice people—that those on the Opposition Front Bench have been rolled. All Ministers had to do was to raise in front of them the spectre of being an irresponsible Opposition, and that children will die if they do not vote for the Bill on this timetable, and they succumbed.

As for the Lib Dems—I do not want to sound naive, but their brand has always been that they are the defenders of the nation’s liberties, yet they are colluding with the Government on this guillotine motion. Whatever we think of the content of the Bill, the timetable motion has no justification after an exceptionally light Session and must bring the legislation into disrepute with the wider public, so I will be voting against it this afternoon.

Stop-and-Search

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The testimony of that young man really brought home to me both the extent to which the misuse of stop-and-search can alienate people, and the problems that people from particular communities, such as that young black man, have experienced over the years. What was distressing was his assumption that, “It will happen to me because I am black.” That is appalling and must not be the case, which is why the reforms are so important.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary will be aware that concern about stop-and-search in urban communities goes all the way back to the 1980s and the original Brixton riots. Given that successive Governments have failed to act, she gets some credit from some of us for taking things as far as she has, but there is no single issue that poisons relationships between urban communities and the police more than stop-and-search. We all heard her say that unless the ratio between stops and arrests gets better, there will need to be legislation. She must be aware that she will be held to that.

[Mrs May]

I have absolutely no doubt that the hon. Lady and others in this House will do just that.

Female Genital Mutilation

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is right. We are concerned that despite the action plan—welcome though it was; it provided a framework for prosecutions—there have still been no prosecutions. One of the witnesses for our inquiry will be the new DPP, Alison Saunders. Unless we find out the reasons why there have not been prosecutions for FGM here when there have been prosecutions for it in other countries, we will not be able to find those who are responsible for it here and bring them to justice.

The three figures that I gave the House—140 million girls worldwide now, 66,000 women resident in England and Wales in 2001 and 24,000 girls at risk in the UK today—are only estimates, and we must show caution when we cite them. Indeed, high-profile figures from the communities affected by FGM have cast doubt on some of them. Today in The Guardian, Nadifa Mohamed, the famous Somali novelist, suggested that the estimates are “crude” and

“based on unreliable data…several years out of date”.

We rely on the estimates because they are the only ones we have, but we need to ensure that we are cautious about how we use them. What we are trying to do in Westminster Hall today, and what I hope the Select Committee will attempt to do in its hearings, is to get to the facts, so that we have some accurate way of knowing who and how many people are at risk. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said, every Member in Westminster Hall today knows that there have been no prosecutions for FGM, and I am sure that they will repeat that fact in their contributions. We need to find out why.

I also commend the work of Leyla Hussein. Her documentary “The Cruel Cut” went a long way towards raising awareness of this issue. The Home Affairs Committee is due to view it shortly as part of its inquiry and Leyla Hussein will be giving evidence to us tomorrow. The issue of awareness, exemplified by the number of people who signed the petition, is extremely important. If people are not aware, they cannot be concerned; if they are not concerned, we cannot catch those responsible.

I am pleased that the Minister for Crime Prevention is in Westminster Hall today, because he has been very clear about this issue. He is a special Minister because he says what he thinks, does not read from a script and is not one of those robotic Ministers who will accept everything that the civil servants say. He makes up his own mind—he is going red, but I think that is true—and is pretty blunt. He was very blunt when he said that he is not prepared to worry about cultural sensitivities and that if a crime is being committed, it needs to be investigated.

This will be one of those rare debates in which every single speaker agrees that something needs to be done, although, of course, we need to await the outcome of the Home Affairs Committee inquiry and the other reviews before we find out precisely what needs to be done.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend’s Select Committee is to be congratulated on its important inquiry. However, is not one of the challenges in securing prosecutions the natural unwillingness of young girls to inform on their families?

[Keith Vaz]

Yes. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She is a distinguished Member—a former shadow Public Health Minister and a campaigner. She is viewed with huge respect in the community, and she is right to raise this issue. It is not just about one community; it is generally about families, and there is the reluctance that she mentioned. Somehow we need to approach the families, and I think we will develop that idea further in our contributions today.

Children should not need to give evidence against their parents. That is the sensitivity; it is not a cultural sensitivity. The issue is to do with how the prosecuting authorities need to approach the subject, but that should not be used as an excuse—I am sure my hon. Friend would not want it to be—for why there have been no prosecutions.

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[Lorely Burt]

One would think so, but that is often not the case. Indeed, I was going to explain that FGM in particular is usually perpetrated by the female extended family. Shocking though that is, the film shows a woman who, because it is part of the culture, does these barbaric acts on children. She says, “The children will not grow up strong. No one will want to marry this girl if she does not have this done.” It is doubly shocking that the mother could be the willing participant in something as awful as that.

This issue is about very basic rights. We have done work in Afghanistan, and we can see the number of girls there who can now go to school. Malala Yousafzai has so strongly raised the right of young girls to go to school, and that has gone all over the world.

[Ms Abbott]

It is absolutely correct to say that more often than not it is mothers and grandmothers who insist on FGM, but let us not forget that these women think they are doing their best for their children. We are talking about cultures that are very invested in FGM, and we need to be careful that we do not sound too judgmental about those women, who are often not very well educated. They genuinely think that FGM is best for their daughters.

[Lorely Burt]

I am grateful for that intervention, but the right hon. Lady gets to the crux of the matter. She says that we should not be too judgmental, but in this country that is exactly what we must be. We must be judgmental about the families who perpetrate the practice. Culture is no excuse for that kind of abuse.

[Ms Abbott]

I am the last person in the world to use culture as an excuse. The fact that we have had no prosecutions is a disgrace, and if I catch the Chair’s eye, I will speak on that issue. None the less, we have to remember that these women think they are genuinely doing the best for their children.

[Lorely Burt]

I take the hon. Lady’s point. Another issue is simply the autonomy of women. The film features an Egyptian lady who is not permitted to drive or to go out unless she is accompanied by a male guardian. Although I catch the hon. Lady’s drift, there should be no room for tolerance of FGM in this country. Even if it is a cultural thing, it cannot be acceptable.

I will briefly address the erudite comments of the right hon. Member for Leicester East on what we need to do in this country. The Government have already done some encouraging things, such as the day of zero tolerance that we had in February and the fact that it is now compulsory in hospitals to report FGM if its perpetration on a patient is detected.

What worries me a lot—it has been discussed a lot—is the spiriting away of children to other countries to have FGM perpetrated on them or to have arranged marriages, with children as young as 10 being married off. The Home Office has managed to obtain £100,000 from the European Commission for community engagement work on FGM, and British charities can bid for up to £10,000 to carry out that work. The Government have appointed a consortium of leading anti-FGM campaigners to deliver a global campaign to end the practice.

We must take affirmative action, and I look forward to the outcome of the inquiry that the Home Affairs Committee is about to undertake. There is so much more that we must do. We in this country are taking the lead, which is entirely appropriate not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because a third of a million people took the trouble to sign the petition for today’s debate. Imagine what else we can do with that kind of groundswell of support behind us.

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[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the organisers of the petition. I will deal with the allegation that, in some sense, I was preaching tolerance of FGM. I had a different point. In some ways, perhaps we have been too tolerant in the past. We need prosecutions, partly because of the exemplary nature of the process, and we need the duty to report.

I believe that—this is quite controversial—we need routine medical examinations and we certainly need to raise consciousness among health and education professionals. We also need to support the victims of FGM with more units such as those in Newham. I repeat, however, that unless we understand why people who consider themselves conscientious family members would collude with this process, we cannot eradicate it. I would like this country to be an FGM-free zone: a place of safety for young children. However, along with all that I have set out, we also need to have some understanding of how embedded it is in culture.

People are talking about FGM as if it is a brand-new issue. It is not; it has been spoken about since the ’60s. Those of us of a literary turn of mind will remember the American novelist Alice Walker’s 1992 novel, “Possessing the Secret of Joy”, which is about FGM. We also remember that whenever FGM has been raised, whether by women on the continent, writers overseas or health professionals, it has been met with a ferocious defence from those countries and communities. Jomo Kenyatta, who was otherwise a much respected liberator and leader in Kenya—he was the first Prime Minister—was a great defender of FGM.

Let me remind the House about the incidence of FGM in particular countries. The countries with the highest level of FGM according to UNICEF are as follows. In Somalia, 98% of women are affected; in Guinea, it is 96% of women; in Djibouti, it is 93%; in Egypt, it is 91%; in Eritrea, it is 89%; in Mali, it is 89%; in Sierra Leone, it is 88%; and in Sudan, it is 88%.

I put it to the House that, despite the fact that we have known for perhaps 50 years of the medical harms and the problems associated with FGM, incidence of FGM in those countries remains very high. That is a clue that, on their own, knowledge, education and consciousness raising will not bear down on the practice. As I have said, communities are invested in the process. Very often mothers and grandmothers collude to have the FGM done. In some societies, such as Sierra Leone, the people who do the cutting are women. They belong to some secret cult, and despite the fact that, I believe, FGM is illegal in Sierra Leone, those women will march to defend their right to cut children. Unless we understand that kind of thing, we will just be talking. It is a difficult and complex subject, which is not new. People have been fighting against it for half a century. It is not simply a function of ignorance, as I say. In those countries, it is against the law, and there are education programmes, yet still relatively sophisticated people have FGM performed on their female children.

For 29 years, Britain has specifically banned the practice of FGM. At this point, it might be helpful to put on the record what FGM is. FGM can range from the removal of the clitoris to the sewing up of the vagina, leaving only a small aperture for urination. It is not necessary to be a doctor or medical expert to understand the medical problems that can arise for someone who has had their vagina sewn up—perhaps in adolescence—opened up again so their husband can consummate the marriage, sewn back up and then opened up again to have a baby. It is the most extraordinarily cruel procedure. The medical problems are obvious, and have been so for decades.

I was reading about the subject at the weekend in preparation for this debate. Quite often, FGM is done with a knife or razor blade. I have read narratives from young women who have been held down by family members, and their blood has spurted from between their legs on to the face of the cutter. Those women bear those memories for a lifetime. I hope no one is accusing me of preaching tolerance of a brutal and ultimately profoundly sexist practice. What is FGM about? It is partly about controlling women—controlling their sexuality and controlling them in their society.

Even though a new law was passed in 2003 that made it illegal for British-based parents to send girls abroad to be cut, no prosecutions have resulted. That is shameful. I would not necessarily use France as an example of best community relations, but on this question the French have performed rather better than we have in the UK. In the past 34 years there have been 29 trials, in which 100 people—both parents and cutters—have been convicted. The most recent was in Nevers in central France 18 months ago, in which a father and mother of a small girl were jailed for two years and 18 months respectively. Now, one would not want to put children’s mothers and fathers in prison, but that can happen in the context of other dreadful crimes. I believe that unless people know that there is some possibility of prosecution, efforts to bear down on FGM will just be talk. People have to know that when it comes to it, either the cutter or the family members will bear the full sanction of the law.

Some people have said to me, “If you simply prosecute people, that on its own is not going to do it.” Of course it will not do it on its own, but in this society we use the law to signal our abhorrence of certain practices. The law should be used at the very least to signal our abhorrence of FGM and to protect not hundreds but thousands of young girls in this city who might be in danger of FGM even as we speak.

Another thing that happens in France is systematic examination of girls for signs of FGM during health checks. We have to look at that. If the possibility for prosecution rests on asking young girls who are already in a patriarchal family structure to inform on their parents, it seems to me that our levels of prosecution are going to remain low to zero.

Of course it is important to change attitudes—that is what the campaign in The Guardian and some of the local campaigns are doing—and to support victims and to try to get the information out there. But as I have said, if we look at the countries where FGM is an issue, they have had that information. They have made it illegal and they have raised consciousness and had poster campaigns, yet levels of FGM remain very high.

In my short-lived career as a public health spokesperson, one of the things I learned was that in public health matters, although we of course want to change people’s personal understanding and practices, the most effective measures are those taken upstream. Nothing has done more to bring down levels of smoking in this country than banning smoking in pubs and clubs. That brought down levels not only of smoking but of adult and childhood asthma. I believe that if we deem FGM to be a public health issue, we need upstream measures on it, such as prosecutions and looking at the question of medical examinations. Of course we want to change hearts and minds but if people are contemplating having FGM done to their daughter or are thinking that they can send their daughter home in the school holidays to have it done, they need to know that they are courting prosecution.

We need always to be careful about how we talk about communities and cultures. It does no good to try to imply that the mothers of the young girls affected are in some sense monsters. It is important to understand the cultural context, and to understand that it is because of that cultural context that mere exhortation of people to stop doing FGM to their female children has failed in country after country. I am clear: it is a disgrace and a shame that in 2014 we cannot protect those young girls in London and other big cities. We do not need simply consciousness raising and educational information. It is not even a question of the units that we are now getting, thankfully, in places such as Newham. We have to face up to the need for prosecution and for routine medical examination.

FGM is a practice to which some of the British authorities have turned a blind eye for too long. It is long overdue that we, as a political class, take serious action on FGM. I am therefore grateful to the people who organised the petition and made the debate possible.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) on securing the debate. As my right hon. Friend reminded us, it has been a long time since we debated FGM in this House—far too long. The debate today has shown both the strength of feeling among Members of all parties and the vast reserves of knowledge among those who have spoken.

I also want to congratulate the campaigners who have done so much to raise the profile of this issue, including Daughters of Eve and Equality Now, but particularly Leyla Hussein and Fahma Mohamed, who represent the best of our young women. They have dared to confront and to speak out on an issue that many of us find it difficult to grapple with and would often prefer to ignore, and their courage ought to be commended. They are right to remind us of the terrible failure for which Governments of all colours have been responsible for 28 years. We must face up to that and accept the responsibility. We have failed British girls who are subject to this horrific abuse, and because of that failure, a child somewhere will be crying as they are cut, and a woman somewhere will be forced to endure almost unbearable pain in childbirth or sexual intercourse, or will suffer from depression or post-traumatic stress because of what has been done to her.

The report from the royal colleges, “Tackling FGM in the UK”, estimates—it is an estimate, as every hon. Member who has spoken today has said—that about 66,000 women in England and Wales have undergone this mutilation and are now living with the resulting pain and complications, and that about 24,000 girls under 15 are at risk. Yet no one has been brought to justice for what is an appalling crime. Despite the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985 and its successor, the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, no one has faced a court. If people were being mutilated by someone wielding a knife in the street, there would be an outcry demanding justice for the victim. Yet the victims of FGM are mutilated in private. They are subjected to the most horrific form of child abuse and violence against women, which is so bad that it is classified by the UN as torture. Yet their perpetrators are not brought to justice.

[Ms Abbott]

Does my hon. Friend agree that a difficulty with these sorts of statutory sexual crimes is that they sometimes involve one person’s word against another’s, or that they happened a long time ago? With FGM, the physical consequences are very clear and last a lifetime, which makes the failure to prosecute even worse.

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I will come to how we might gather evidence. She is right. It is simply incredible that no one has yet been prosecuted. The law is fairly clear, although it is worth considering proposals from various places to look at offences preparatory to the offence of FGM and at how the law could apply when the cutter is a foreign national who then leaves the country. I hope the Minister will say whether the Government are prepared to consider that. If they are prepared to introduce proposals, we will facilitate putting them on to the statute book.

For all sorts of reasons, the existing law is not being implemented and Parliament must make it clear that it must be implemented and the necessary steps must be taken to do so. As several hon. Members have acknowledged, including my hon. Friends the Members for West Ham (Lyn Brown) and for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), this is an extraordinarily difficult area. Many girls are too young when they are cut to be able to speak about what has happened to them. When they are older, many do not wish to bring shame or trouble on their families. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington is right to say that families may believe that if they do not carry out this mutilation, they could be excluded by their community, or their daughters may find it difficult to make a decent marriage and so on.

The Government must work with those communities to improve understanding, to change people’s minds and to encourage them to come together to eradicate FGM. One family alone cannot stand against it, but a community with the right leadership can act. I recognise that, but saying that something is thought to be right or a cultural norm does not make it right. Alongside the effort to try to change attitudes, there must be an effort to enforce the law. That effort must begin by training professionals to recognise girls at risk of FGM to ensure that they are protected, and to report it when they encounter it.

I hope the Government will accept unreservedly the recommendations of the report by the royal colleges. FGM must be treated as child abuse with no ifs, no buts and no maybes, and front-line professionals, whether in health, teaching or social work, must be empowered to protect girls at risk and be assessed on the outcomes. That requires early identification of those who may be subject to FGM, even from babyhood, and especially those who are born to mothers who have themselves undergone FGM. Their children are at high risk, and should be referred for a proper safeguarding plan to be put in place for them.

Teachers are also in the front line and are often the first people a child looks to for protection. Yet a YouGov poll for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham mentioned, showed that 83% of the teachers surveyed said they had not been given any training about FGM. I know that the Secretary of State for Education has finally written to schools drawing attention to the practice following the inspiring campaign led by Fahma Mohamed and other young women in Bristol, but it is not enough by itself simply to write to schools. One in six teachers said in that poll that they did not know that FGM was even illegal in this country, so there is clearly much more to do in training.

[Ms Abbott]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, sadly, teachers may have dozens of letters on their desks every week? Instead of just writing a letter, the Secretary of State should look at the whole issue of mandatory sex and relationship education in schools and, as my hon. Friend said, training. Just sending a letter to join the pile of other papers on a teacher’s desk is not enough.

[Mr Dai Havard in the Chair]

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right. I have long been an advocate of compulsory sex and relationship education in schools. It is essential for our children to grow up confident in themselves and able to form healthy relationships. She is also right about training. As the documentary programme, “The Cruel Cut”, showed, if a young child turns to a teacher for help and does not get that help, it is clear that much more must be done.

Teachers have many demands on their time, but all schools need to have safeguarding plans in place and those safeguarding plans must include dealing with female genital mutilation. Teachers must be able to recognise the signs that a child is at risk or that they have already been cut, and know what to do when that happens.

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[Helen Jones]

I am very grateful, Mr Havard. What my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East said about the project in Newham was very interesting and, if my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham permits me, I hope to be able to visit it at some point. We need to learn from such initiatives about what works and what can be done on the ground.

As well as identifying young people through the education system, such as those whose mother or elder sister has undergone FGM, and making sure that robust safeguarding plans are in place, in my view, any girl or woman who presents to the health service having undergone female genital mutilation should be treated as the victim of a crime, because that is what they are. Appropriate safeguarding measures should be put in place. They should be referred to the police and to the support services, so that a proper plan of care and support can be implemented and medical evidence can be collected. We are currently not getting that approach, despite the efforts that have been made recently, because of a lack of training for front-line professionals, a lack of a joined-up approach and what I can best describe as a peculiarly British fear of offending people’s cultural sensibilities. In my view, that is the wrong mindset. Although we need to work with communities to change attitudes, our first duty—we should be clear about this—is to protect the child. That is absolutely our first duty and there should be no wavering from that.

[Ms Abbott]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if we are to be successful in protecting all British children from this abuse, we may have to take measures that perhaps initially some communities find difficult?

[Helen Jones]

That may well be true and I shall come on to how we deal with that in a moment. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell me in his reply what the Home Office, which has lead responsibility for the issue, will do to ensure that other Departments play their part and that we have a proper system in place. In a parliamentary answer to me on 24 February, the Minister said that he had written to the Secretary of State for Education on the issue. Perhaps he can tell us what the response to that was and what is happening in schools to ensure that proper training and proper safeguarding measures are in place.

As has been said in the debate, in some countries—France is an example—there is systematic screening for female genital mutilation as part of normal health checks. In this country, that is often regarded as intrusive. It would, of course, involve screening a large amount of people who are not at risk as well. However, I suggest to the Minister that it might be worth establishing a task group, including people from the royal colleges, the NSPCC and other experts in the field, to look at how medical evidence can be sought and how the problems in this area can be dealt with sensitively and appropriately, so that we can avoid, if necessary, mass screenings of people who do not need to be screened, but also find medical evidence.

The report from the royal colleges stated that where there is a suspicion that a girl has undergone female genital mutilation, assessments and medicals are helpful and examinations need not be intrusive, but they are vital in providing evidence that leads to prosecution. That is very important, because we have heard several times in the debate about the difficulty of getting someone to give evidence against their own family. I absolutely understand that, particularly in certain cultures. It would be hard for me to give evidence against someone in my family, but when there is a system that links the family’s honour to the behaviour of others, it is extraordinarily difficult. However, there are ways through that if we accumulate medical evidence as well, which is what we should be doing.

To enforce the law requires two things. Yes, it requires education and publicity, so that people are clear about what constitutes an offence, but it also requires the deterrent effect of prosecutions, of people knowing clearly that if they flout the law, they will be brought before a court, and that if they are found guilty, they will pay the price. That is what we have failed to do. We must accept that we have got that wrong and look at ways to move forward.

In 2012, the then Director of Public Prosecutions chaired a round table to discuss why so few cases were being referred to the Crown Prosecution Service for charge and prosecution, and in September last year, the then DPP chaired a second round table to discuss progress on the FGM action plan. Following that meeting, he said that he believed that a prosecution under the 2003 Act was close. We were told that the CPS was reviewing decisions on prosecutions in four cases and considering whether to prosecute a more recent case, yet we still have not got anyone to court.

I hope that the Minister will tell us whether progress has been made on bringing charges in any case, and if not, what the evidential problems are. If the problem is, as I said, the unwillingness of victims or other members of the family to testify, we need to look at what use can be made of medical evidence and of statements from medical professionals, teachers and so on, who have all been in contact with the person who has been cut. If that by itself does not demonstrate the need for a much more joined-up, robust system of child protection, referral and recording of evidence right from the start, I do not know what does.

We simply cannot go on failing British girls like this—for these are British girls, who deserve exactly the same care and protection as any other British girl. We know this is happening. Newspapers report frequently that there is widespread knowledge of where it is happening, of where this torture is being carried out—and it is torture. I put it to hon. Members that, in all honesty, we have to ask ourselves, “If this was happening to white British girls, would we allow it to go on?” I think we know the answer to that. There would be a public outcry, and our black or brown British girls deserve no less protection and no less care. They are our responsibility. They are all our children.

We have to stop pretending that this is not happening. We have to stop turning our faces away from this appalling practice. We do not want to see it because it is so awful, but we have to see it in order to stop it. It is torture. It is child abuse. It has been illegal for over 25 years and it is still carried out with impunity. Let us call a halt now. Let us put in place the protection our girls deserve and ensure that in future, they can live their lives without undergoing this torture, and without putting up with the continuing pain that results. I say to the House: surely we owe them no less than that.

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[Norman Baker]

There we are; there is an answer to that question. Although the Home Office is the lead Department on this issue—I am very pleased to be leading on it—because of its importance, other Departments have an input into it. The reality is that if Departments do not work more closely together, across departmental boundaries, we will not get the full result that we want. It is also the case, of course, that if the Government does not work properly with councils, the voluntary sector and communities in our own country and abroad, we will not get the result that we want. An important aspect is the need for a joined-up approach, both in Government and outside.

Of course, it is also important to work with the campaigners, who have done so much. I have mentioned Leyla Hussein. It is also thanks to Nimko Ali, Lisa Zimmermann, Efua Dorkenoo, Janet Fyle, Naana Otoo-Oyortey and others that FGM now has the prominence that it does.

I join colleagues in thanking the media, because they have been responsible and helpful on this issue. I am thinking particularly of the Evening Standard, which has been very resolute in how it has approached this matter; and latterly there has been The Guardian as well. They are running excellent campaigns and show the value of the free press in this country. It is partly as a consequence of that and, I hope, what the Government has been doing, that data released last week revealed that the number of tip-offs to the Metropolitan police about FGM has more than doubled in the past year. That is partly down to increased publicity, but is also due to the greater understanding that there now is of what this barbaric practice involves.

[Ms Abbott]

The Minister says that the number of tip-offs has doubled. How many is that altogether?

[Norman Baker]

I do not have a figure in my notes, but if officials have got it, I will give it to the hon. Lady before the end of the debate. Actually, I do have the figure: 69 reports involving either direct allegations about FGM or other information on this practice have been received by the Met since the start of April last year, so it is still a relatively small number, although it is moving in the right direction.

Since I have joined the Home Office, my concerns about FGM have intensified. Although I have always been aware of and opposed FGM, the more I have learned about the practice, the more concerned I have become and the more determined to do something about it. It is one of my top priorities as a Minister in the Department. I agree with the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), whose speech I very much welcomed. I think that the root of this is about male control of women—as a man, I find that rather shameful—so there are reasons for men, as well as women, to be involved in addressing this matter.

What has struck me about the practice is that it is one of the most horrible and unnecessary forms of violence against women in the world. It is an extreme manifestation of patriarchal control. As everyone knows, there are severe and long-term consequences for any girls or women who undergo it. There are not simply physical consequences, although there are plenty of those; there are also psychological consequences. That needs to be dealt with.

I also agree with the hon. Lady when she says that some parents—some mothers—will believe that they are doing the right thing. I accept that. It is a tragedy, of course, because it is totally wrong; it is totally the wrong thing to do for their children. Without getting too personal, I could not bear to think of my daughter undergoing this practice. It is an abhorrent act, and we all need to ensure that we are challenging it.

A culture change is necessary, as hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have accepted this afternoon. That needs to be taken forward. As the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said, that is not simple, but it is necessary and we have to work out how best to do so. Some of the campaigners are in a better position to convince public opinion than perhaps Ministers, shadow Ministers or anyone else is, although we have our role to play, I hope, not least when it comes to the law. I will come to the issue of prosecutions and so on later.

We have to challenge the assumptions—the lazy assumptions, perhaps—that do exist in some areas, in some communities. FGM does not make women pure or clean. It does not increase fertility. It does not assure faithfulness. It is child abuse and needs to be tackled head on. I am clear that Government action to stop FGM is vital, not just to comply with our international human rights obligations—although it does do that—but, more importantly, to protect and safeguard girls and women from this hopelessly outdated and archaic practice. It has no place in the 21st century or, indeed, in any century.

I have mentioned that the Home Office has the lead responsibility on this issue, but we are working with other Departments. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), asked what was happening in that regard. I am happy to tell her. I think she may know, but just for the record I point out that on 6 February I brought Ministers from other Departments, from across Government, together for the international day of zero tolerance to female genital mutilation, and the Ministers from all the Departments who were there signed—this is probably unique or certainly very rare in Government—a document that made this statement:

“There is no justification for FGM—it is child abuse and it is illegal.

This government is absolutely committed to preventing and ending this extremely harmful form of violence.

The government is clear that political or cultural sensitivities must not get in the way of uncovering and stopping this terrible form of abuse. The law in this country applies to absolutely everyone.”

In the document, we go on to make a number of statements that I am sure hon. Members would agree with. Let me say for the record that it was not signed simply by me on behalf of the Home Office—it was also signed by the Under-Secretary of State for Health; the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who is responsible for public health; the Solicitor-General; my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for International Development; the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who is responsible for children and families; and the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims.

Subsequently, the document was signed by a senior Minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and by a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government. It was also signed by the DPP. We are determined to work cross-departmentally on this matter and we take it very seriously.

[Norman Baker]

I will give, I hope, reasonably full answers to all those questions as I work through my response. We have plenty of time. This is a serious issue, and I will address those points as I come to them, including how we will deal with the matter within Government, which is also important. I am delighted that the Minister responsible for public health has joined us for this debate.

On Saturday, we published the updated “Violence against Women and Girls Action Plan”, which contains more than 100 actions that different Departments have agreed to carry out to tackle violence against women and girls. Every three months, the Home Secretary chairs an inter-ministerial group on violence against women and girls, which I attend as a relevant Minister, to monitor progress on the action plan. This year’s action plan has a strong focus on FGM and will be the vehicle for the Home Office to drive the work forward. I also chair separate, specific cross-Government meetings on FGM, in recognition of the need to work together.

Declarations and cross-departmental working can take us only so far, however. My colleague the Minister with responsibility for public health, who did so much to raise the profile of FGM in her role as chair of the all-party group on female genital mutilation, announced that all acute hospitals would report information about the prevalence of FGM among their patient population each month. The full report from that data return will be available from the autumn. That is an enormous step forward in understanding the extent of FGM in this country.

Linked to that, the Home Office is part-funding a prevalence study on FGM, which is designed to update the figures from the 2007 study. Even the new study based on 2011 census data will provide only an estimate of prevalence, but the data from the NHS will give us a real insight into the incidence and distribution of FGM. Those data will provide local areas with the information that they need to prioritise tackling FGM, and in time they will give us a benchmark against which to monitor the effectiveness of our actions and interventions.

[Ms Abbott]

Does the Minister accept that the prevalence data based on census data are particularly unreliable for establishing the prevalence of something among ethnic minority communities? Apart from the problem of getting people to respond to the census, there is the issue of people who are British, and who correctly describe themselves as such, but who come from the countries that I listed earlier as having a high prevalence of FGM.

[Norman Baker]

That is a fair point, which I am sure the NHS and my colleague the Minister with responsibility for public health will take on board. That is only one element of the work being done by the Department of Health to improve how the NHS responds to, follows up and supports the prevention of FGM.

The Department also liaises closely with other Departments and agencies, such as the royal colleges, voluntary organisations, arm’s-length bodies and others, to make sure that they get a comprehensive take on the matter across the NHS. NHS bodies have a duty to assist and provide information in support of child protection inquiries under section 47 of the Children Act 1989. The Government recognises that for the existing legislative framework to succeed, health professionals must report both actual and suspected cases of FGM.

A lot of the debate has focused on prosecution. We all feel deep frustration that 28 years on there has not been a successful prosecution. Nobody welcomes that fact, and we must try to understand why it is and what we can do to change it. There are many barriers to prosecution if we rely solely on a victim’s testimony for evidence, as hon. Members have said. At the time of mutilation, victims may be too young and vulnerable or too afraid to report offences, or they may be reluctant to implicate family members who might be prosecuted as a consequence. Those barriers to prosecution cannot easily be overcome, so it is important to find ways of building a case that do not necessarily rely on the testimony of child victims, and that focus particularly on those who facilitate and perform FGM.

The Government strongly supports the action plan that the Director of Public Prosecutions has published with a view to bringing successful prosecutions for FGM. I am heartened and encouraged by statements from the former DPP, Keir Starmer, and his excellent successor, Alison Saunders, to the effect that it is only a matter of time before we see a prosecution. Having met the DPP on more than one occasion, I think that she is an extremely good appointment and that she is utterly committed to taking the matter forward.

The Crown Prosecution Service is currently considering, or advising the police on, 11 cases of alleged FGM. Four cases that have previously been considered, in which the police or prosecutors decided to take no further action, are being re-reviewed. The CPS is also looking at three new cases, and it has had preliminary discussions with police in relation to their investigations into four further cases that are at an early stage.

A joint CPS and police training event was held at CPS headquarters on 10 February this year, which was attended by prosecutors and police officers from across England and Wales. That was the first time such an event had been held, and it was used to raise awareness of relevant investigation and prosecution strategies by working on hypothetical case studies. It is being seen as a model for further CPS and police training events on FGM.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

There are other offences under domestic violence legislation that may be appropriate in this case, and we must not fall into the trap—an attractive one for parliamentarians—of thinking we need only to change the law to improve matters. The hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington made the point that the law has been there for 28 years. Ensuring that prosecutions are successful is about not only the law but the cultural situations that we are dealing with.

[Ms Abbott]

It is a question not only of the law but of implementing the law. I do not see why we cannot prosecute someone who is an accomplice or an accessory, or who has conspired in the practice. If someone has care of a child and has knowingly sent them overseas to be cut, it is not at all clear to me why that person cannot be prosecuted.

[Norman Baker]

The DPP is looking at those sorts of issues as part of her work on the matter. That is why a training event was held to look at cases and work through scenarios to see what the problems were. In answer to the shadow Minister’s suggestion that there should be legislation on offences preparatory to FGM, we are open-minded about the matter and we will look at sensible suggestions that may help the situation. I simply made the point that we should not fall into the trap of assuming that a law will do our work for us when it has not done so in 28 years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

As I say, we will be looking very carefully and seriously at any suggestions that the Select Committee makes on the issue. As for whether there is legislative time, that is not a matter for me; it is for the Leader of the House of Commons, the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley), to allocate time. All I would say is that we are now approaching the last Session of this Parliament, which is already pretty crowded—

[Ms Abbott]

indicated dissent.

[Lyn Brown]

Hardly!

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

We will wrap up our response to that report when we look at what the Select Committee says, because I think the two are linked.

[Ms Abbott]

They are not linked.

[Norman Baker]

They are linked in terms of our overall response to dealing with FGM.

I welcome the step taken by the Secretary of State for Education—to whom I wrote—who, after meeting Fahma Mohamed, the young woman whose campaign has featured in The Guardian, committed to send to all schools guidance on keeping children safe. His Department expects to publish revised safeguarding in education guidance shortly. The statutory guidance, which replaces the 2007 guidance, will be clearer and simpler, and will direct schools to the latest expert advice on subjects such as FGM.

Over two years, the DFE is also providing more than £700,000, split between the Victoria Climbié Foundation and the Africans Unite Against Child Abuse NGO, for safeguarding work with black and minority ethnic communities. Such work of course includes FGM. Also, DFE funding for the charity Children and Families Across Borders has enabled it to produce a training app on FGM.

Along with my colleagues, the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), and the Minister for Schools, my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), I met head teacher and teaching unions in mid-January to discuss how to raise awareness in schools of FGM and gender-based violence. After a constructive meeting, we will be working further with the unions on the issue.

As has been mentioned, following a successful bid to the European Union progress funding stream, the Home Office was awarded approximately €300,000 in November 2013 for work to raise awareness of FGM in the UK. As part of that work, we are launching a communications campaign aimed at parents and carers of young girls at risk of FGM. The campaign will include online advertising and posters in changing rooms and shopping centres. Materials will also be produced and provided to communities to run their own educational events and workshops in order to open up the debate on FGM. Research is currently being undertaken to test messages and campaign materials with parents, professionals and partners.

The Government has committed to developing an e-learning tool so that all practitioners—social workers, teachers, health care professionals, police and the like—will be able to undertake an introduction to FGM. We will raise awareness of the new e-learning tool by carrying out a national outreach programme with local safeguarding children boards.

We recognise that the long-term and systematic eradication of FGM in the UK will of course require practising communities to abandon the practice themselves. We have launched a £100,000 FGM community engagement initiative. Charities have been invited to bid for up to £10,000 to carry out community work to raise awareness of FGM, and we are now assessing the bids.

The Government also recognises that religious leaders can also play a role in dispelling myths about FGM. It is important to make the point that no major religion condones or requires FGM. In January, the Under-Secretary of State for International Development and I met faith groups to look for opportunities to work together to raise awareness of FGM. I was heartened by the strength of the groups’ condemnation of FGM, across all religions. I am committed to pursuing that dialogue with them and seeking their advice on how they can help us to take the campaign forward.

Despite one or two comments to the contrary by elements of our so-called popular press, it is of course vital that we spend money overseas to tackle FGM, and that we persuade those communities that adhere to the practice to stop. In my view, that is the most effective way to influence the diaspora from such countries here in the UK. The practice is not going to end in the UK before it ends in Africa.

[Ms Abbott]

The Minister just said something striking: that the practice will not end here until it ends in Africa. Are we going to have to depend on the rate of change in other societies to protect British girls?

[Norman Baker]

No. We are going to do our very best to protect British girls. I share the hon. Lady’s objective of an FGM-free zone—she used that phrase and I absolutely agree with her. Nevertheless, it is not realistic to assume that we can reach zero while diaspora communities here are linked with communities elsewhere in the world where FGM continues. We must approach the issue from both ends—both here in the UK, as I have indicated by what we are currently doing, and through the money we spend abroad in other communities, on which DFID is leading.

Last March, DFID announced a new £35 million flagship programme to support the Africa-led movement to end FGM—such a movement is important. That is the largest donor investment in ending FGM ever, and the programme is under way. It includes support to the UN—through UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund—for targeted work with communities and leaders and for work at a national level on policies and legislation in 17 countries.

The programme will also include a global social change campaign, which has just been contracted to a consortium that includes leading anti-FGM campaigners. The campaign will work with communities to support them to abandon FGM, support national and Africa-regional initiatives, and galvanise a global movement to raise political and financial commitment. It will also include up to £1 million to support UK-based diaspora organisations for efforts to end the practice in their countries of origin.

This year, DFID will be launching the research component of the overall programme, in order to improve understanding of what works to end FGM. In addition, DFID has committed a separate £12 million for a programme to support efforts to end FGM in Sudan, working with the UN. At the weekend, the Prime Minister announced that he will be hosting a major event on 22 July to tackle forced marriage and FGM both internationally and here in the UK. He has set out his personal commitment to demand better rights for women and girls worldwide and to tackle these terrible practices.

Three or four Members referred to what happens in France. I am advised that FGM is not a specific criminal offence in France; instead, the French choose to prosecute under a range of general criminal offences, such as exercising violence against or seriously assaulting a child under the age of 15. It is true that, as Members mentioned, all girls in France undergo an annual health check that includes genital examination by a medical professional. The Minister responsible for public health is present and will have heard that Members have expressed interest in that approach.

It is also important to put it on the record that there are significant differences between the criminal justice systems in France and England and Wales. There is a lower standard of proof and less corroboration is required to support prosecutions in France than in England and Wales. In practice, an incriminating statement by the accused or a third person suffices for a conviction. That would not be sufficient to bring a criminal prosecution in England and Wales. The two legal systems are not comparable in that sense, which may explain some of the differences.

I was taken by the suggestion from the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee that I might speak to my opposite number in France. That is a good idea and I will ask my officials to take that forward.

[Ms Abbott]

The Minister said that under the British legal system, we need corroboration. If someone’s vagina is sewn up, what further corroboration does he imagine the legal system would need to say that FGM has occurred?

Oral Answers to Questions

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Norman Baker]

Yes, I wholly agree. If we are to end violence against women and girls, all front-line services have to play a crucial role. A multi-agency approach is vital, as indeed is a cross-departmental approach, and that is reflected in the updated action plan that we published at the weekend.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Ministers will be aware of how upset and repelled the community is that the self-same police force that was supposed to be finding Doreen and Neville’s son’s killers was actually engaged in spying on them to undermine their campaign. Inquiries are all very well, and reforms are all very well, but can we be given an assurance that we will know who authorised the spying on Doreen and Neville Lawrence?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady raises a very important point. I think that everybody in this House and across the country was shocked at the findings of the Ellison review, particularly at somebody from the special demonstration squad effectively being, in the terms that Mark Ellison put it, a spy in the camp around the Lawrence family. Every effort will be made to ensure that the truth comes out about that. If the hon. Lady has read the Ellison report, she will know that the record-keeping of the special demonstration squad was, to put it mildly, sadly lacking. However, every effort will be made. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has made it clear that they will want to ensure that they are providing every piece of evidence possible to the inquiries that are taking place.