Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill [Lords]

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Members will know that this is a private Member’s Bill, so I will start by putting on the record my thanks to the Government and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), for giving it Government time and for their broader efforts to help tackle the scourge of FGM and to protect those at risk of it. The Bill has passed through the other place and received cross-party support in its Second Reading Committee a fortnight ago and again last week in Committee, and I put on the record again my thanks to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) for her words in Committee and for the cross-party manner in which the issue was tackled.

The Bill was initiated by Cross-Bench peer Lord Berkeley, who became aware of an omission in existing child protection law whereby family courts do not have the power to compel the involvement of a local authority in an interim care order relating to FGM. He decided to act and piloted this simple, two-clause Bill through the other place with passion, clarity and decency, and I am grateful to him. It has been my pleasure to work with the Government to attempt to get the Bill through this place, notwithstanding one or two hurdles earlier on.

I also want to place on the record my thanks to the FGM survivor and extraordinarily effective campaigner, Nimco Ali, who will be known to many Members. She is probably this country’s best-known FGM campaigner, and using every opportunity at her disposal to push the issue right to the top of the political agenda. It was wonderful just three days ago to see on Twitter a picture of her standing in No. 10 next to the Prime Minister. Nimco has taken the issue literally to the heart of Government.

Nimco Ali’s work has extended well beyond what she has achieved in this country. She famously persuaded all three contenders in the 2017 Somaliland presidential election to commit to legislating against FGM, and I do not think that many people thought that she had the slightest chance of succeeding. The election was won by President Muse and, good to his word, he introduced the legislation as soon as he took office. Incidentally, the vote itself was a model election, the first in the world in which iris-recognition technology was used to avoid electoral fraud. In one of the most troubled parts of the planet, we had the extraordinary scene of the contenders shaking hands and accepting the result without any fuss whatsoever—something that we could perhaps learn as we discuss ongoing Brexit problems.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend for his work on this matter. Given Nimco Ali’s great powers of persuasion and advocacy, maybe a role in the Whips Office might be of use as we approach difficult times.

[Zac Goldsmith]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Nimco is effectively my Whip. Most of what I do in this place in relation to FGM is down to her wagging finger telling me exactly what and what not to do. At a recent event with her, someone described me as “Nimco’s intern”, but it is a great honour to be her intern. She is an extraordinary campaigner, and if I can help her in any way, it is an honour to do so.

Members will be familiar with the horrors of FGM, but I think they bear repeating to remind us why this issue matters so much and why it should matter to everyone here. According to the World Health Organisation, female genital mutilation includes

“all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”

FGM is almost always carried out on very young children, rarely by medical professionals and rarely with pain relief.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

My hon. Friend says “very young children” and the information I have read—I do not know whether this is the case—says that FGM is, in some cases, carried out very soon after birth. Has he heard that?

[Zac Goldsmith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I believe that the average age is five, which implies that girls are subjected to FGM at a very, very young age. FGM is a practice that has absolutely no basis in medicine.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

FGM is completely shocking, and it is not something I knew anything about until it was raised up the political spectrum a couple of years ago. The House recently talked about sex and relationships education. Will FGM be a central part of that so that people in this country are educated about what is actually happening?

[Zac Goldsmith]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Had we been having this debate two weeks ago, I would have said that I hope so. There have been subsequent announcements—I think we had an announcement from the Department for Education on the day the Bill was in Committee—that that is exactly what will happen, with education being introduced at the appropriate level so that children, both boys and girls, know that FGM is a practice we should not tolerate.

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

My hon. Friend describes the horrors of FGM vividly. Does he agree that, in a way, it is a form of child abuse?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I could not agree more vehemently with my hon. Friend. FGM is not just a kind of child abuse; it is child abuse by any definition or metric.

I said earlier that FGM has no basis in medicine and, despite what we are often told, nor does it have any basis in any religion. The practice is often wrongly blamed on Islam—this can particularly be seen on social media—both by extremists who want to justify or, in some cases, even advocate FGM and by others who wish to use FGM as a stick with which to bash the religion itself. In fact, the practice predates Islam, and the Koran neither advocates nor justifies it in any way at all.

The consequences of FGM can be extreme. It can lead to severe pain, excessive bleeding, infection, menstrual problems, pain during sex and childbirth, and deep, long-lasting psychological trauma. In fact, the effects of FGM can, and often do, last for the duration of a person’s life. It is estimated that, around the world, at least 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone FGM. In England and Wales, shockingly, the figure is around 137,000, although not all of them were subjected to FGM in either England or Wales.

I apologise to those of a sensitive nature, but during a recent urgent question on this issue, after the Bill was blocked by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), a number of colleagues raised concerns about male circumcision as if there were some kind of comparison between the two. Whatever our views on male circumcision, it must be obvious that it does not compare to FGM. The male equivalent of FGM would not be circumcision; it would be the removal of the entire head of the penis and much of the shaft, too.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

We often hear this argument comparing the two, but male circumcision, in my experience, is rarely, if ever, done to subjugate the boy, whereas FGM is very clearly done to end women’s sexual pleasure.

[Zac Goldsmith]

The hon. Lady is exactly right, and I thank her for her intervention. It is also worth saying that, were a culture to experiment with such an extreme form of male circumcision on a comparable level to what young girls are experiencing around the world, I suspect it would not last more than a single generation, and it certainly would not require legislation and a campaign of the sort that Nimco Ali and her colleagues have waged.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that such horrendous abuse and its lifelong effects cannot possibly be justified on the basis of cultural practice?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I could not agree more strongly. In fact, partly on the instruction of Nimco Ali, I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on female genital mutilation. Early on, the APPG took evidence from a wide group of people, all of whom had been through different degrees of FGM themselves, and it was clear talking to them that their lives have, in many respects, been defined by what they went through. They were all committed to campaigning to stamp out this practice, and none of them would have any truck with the argument that this is a cultural practice and that it would be insensitive for the British Parliament to try to legislate against it or for the Department for International Development to commit funds to try to prevent the practice.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the huge amount of leadership he has shown on addressing this hideous crime. This is a busy night in British politics, but does he agree that the fact so many of us are present this evening is a real sign that this House says every single action must be taken to rule out this crime in our country?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I could not agree more, and I am grateful to colleagues for being here to take part in this debate. I do not want to jinx it, but I hope this simple Bill will go through without a Division, which makes the presence of so many Members even more valued.

The anti-FGM legislation in the UK is not insubstantial—we have actually done a fair bit. FGM has been illegal here since the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985, which was replaced by the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 that made it illegal to assist someone performing FGM or to commit FGM abroad. The Serious Crime Act 2015 amended the 2003 Act to introduce mandatory reporting of FGM and to create the FGM protection orders that courts can issue to protect girls who have been or may become victims of FGM, which could include, for example, forcing the surrender of a passport to prevent travel abroad.

In addition to those laws, we can collectively be proud that we have taken a lead globally. The UK was the first country in the world to create a dedicated anti-FGM aid programme, with an initial tranche of £35 million pledged in 2013. Only a few weeks ago, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development committed a further £50 million, which has yet to be allocated, for the one purpose of helping countries around the world, but mostly in Africa.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is right to emphasise the international nature of FGM, but does he agree that the Government have committed some £100 million-worth of funding to the ending violence against women and girls strategy in this country, too? We must ramp up these efforts.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I could not agree more, and I am glad my hon. Friend has raised that point. FGM is a form of extreme violence against women and girls.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

On the issue of young girls being taken abroad to go through the horrific experience of FGM, did my hon. Friend see the article by the campaigner Leyla Hussein in The Sunday Times over the weekend in which she described what happened to her aged seven? Does my hon. Friend think this extraordinary, powerful article is something that should be shared widely among other parliamentarians?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing that to the House’s attention. I know Leyla relatively well. In fact, she was one of the first people to give evidence to the all-party group, and we have had meetings subsequently. I have not read the article, but I can imagine how powerful it must be given the experience she has been through and given her advocacy on this issue. She is an extraordinarily powerful campaigner.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the work that he and this Government have done, but does he agree that the Home Office still has work to do on having a joined-up approach? I raised the case of my constituent Lola Ilesanmi on the Floor of the House, as her daughter was under threat of FGM. My constituent’s violent ex-partner was trying to coerce her into going back to Nigeria to have her daughter cut, and the UK Government were unwilling to give her leave to remain. She has had her stay extended, but she still does not have indefinite leave to remain and there is still a threat to her daughter. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that more joined-up working is still required?

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and I agree with it, as this is a cross-cutting issue. A colleague suggested earlier that this should form part of personal, social, health and economic education in this country, which it now will, but it is a Home Office issue and a health issue, too. It covers a lot of different Departments. If there is anything at all that I or the all-party group and my colleagues on it can do to help in the case the hon. Lady has just raised, we are at her service and will do what we can.

Despite the laws we have in place and the injection of funds to campaigning on this issue around the world, clearly there are gaps in the law and the problem has not gone away. In 2016-17, the NHS reported 9,179 cases of FGM, of which 5,391 were newly recorded cases. As hon. Members will know, there has been only one successful prosecution for FGM, after numerous failed attempts; this came to an end last week with a 37-year-old woman being sentenced to 11 years.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend look to the record in France, the approach the French take in dealing with FGM and their success as a source of ideas that we could follow to help cut down on FGM in the UK?

[Zac Goldsmith]

We have looked at that in the all-party group. The French engage in a much more interventionist approach, with, for example, inspections of young girls. Most of the people who have given evidence to our group feel that it would not fit this country; they feel it would be stepping over a line. However, another area where the French have been more robust than we have in this country has been in trying to identify people at risk. Certain people are at risk and others are not. Where someone has not been subjected to FGM and their parents were not either, the likelihood of their going on to subject their own child to it is very small, although it is not zero. In other families where it passes from generation to generation, a newborn girl clearly is at risk. The French are much more robust than we have been in this country on that.

[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and to his work on this, as well as that of our mutual friend Nimco Ali, who has championed this from the start. Does he agree that FGM has little to do with religious or racial sensitivities, and is straight-up child abuse and should be called out as such? Does he welcome the first successful prosecution of someone for FGM in this country only two weeks ago, the length of the sentence and the deterrent it can be in some of our communities, where some people will feel that there is no point reporting this because it will not be prosecuted? Does he agree that the length of the sentence sends a message and is encouraging in this fight against FGM?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend on that. Indeed, I am going to take this opportunity to quote from what was said in response to the conviction by the National Police Chiefs Council lead on FGM, Commander Ivan Balhatchet:

“Female genital mutilation is a barbaric and violent crime—a violation of human rights—often with lifelong consequences, committed by the people children should be able to trust the most.”

He continued:

“Today’s sentencing will act as a deterrent and a warning that our society will not accept this child abuse, but prosecutions alone will not solve this problem.”

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend’s work on the all-party group and with campaigners reveal a reluctance on this among groups of people to whom children are presented, for whatever reason? We are all familiar in our constituencies with what happens when a child is discovered to have bruising or possible signs of maltreatment. Following cases such as that of Victoria Climbié, there is almost a lurch in the other direction to immediately assume that there is a child abuse problem, but perhaps that has not happened enough in respect of FGM. Is he confident that legislation such as this is going to make it increasingly easy for those cases to be presented as child abuse?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I cannot give him a scientific answer, but I can tell him that the evidence the all-party group received from those people who have been through FGM absolutely concurs with what he has just said: there are parts of the establishment and social services, and people within the education system, who are very nervous indeed about pointing the finger on FGM. There is a concern about trampling on cultural sensitivities. The view of the people we talked to, like my view and, I suspect, that of many in the House today, is that those sensitivities should be pushed to one side. This is a very direct form of child abuse; child abuse is child abuse, and it is our responsibility as adults and the authorities to stamp it out at every opportunity. That message has been unambiguous, in all the evidence we have taken from those people who have been through FGM.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I wonder how we can convince people who think this barbaric practice is decent, such as the families involved, that it is not. How do we get to those families? Does the all-party group have any answer as to how we stop mothers and fathers taking their children and allowing this sort of thing to happen?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I know, because the evidence shows, that a shift is happening. I mentioned Nimco Ali’s campaign in Somaliland. It is not one where she is having to bash her head against a brick wall. Every member of the newly elected Somaliland Government is on board in a mission to eradicate FGM. In Hargeisa, the capital, huge posters have been put up and paid for by government, although they were designed by the campaign groups at the grassroots, telling people that FGM is not only illegal but unethical and immoral, and without any basis whatsoever in religion—this could not be clearer. I realise I did not answer an earlier intervention on that point.

Nimco is not the only person who has that kind of electrifying impact in individual countries. Another such person is Jaha Dukureh, who was originally from the Gambia, moved to New York and then went back to the Gambia. Like Nimco, she persuaded the Government not only to legislate against FGM, but to put resources into those people at the grassroots who are campaigning to change hearts and minds. By all accounts, she is succeeding on an extraordinary scale. I am going to come to this a little later when I wrap up, but there is such an important role for the Department for International Development to play. We can be proud of what we have done, but we have to make sure the next raft of money, the £50 million that has been pledged, is invested in the right groups and the right campaigns.

[Hannah Bardell]

The hon. Gentleman mentions the Gambia. A friend of mine was, unfortunately, forced to move back there, having done a lot of work in Scotland on FGM and having helped to co-ordinate the FGM strategy in Scotland. She has now set up an NGO called Women in Liberation and Leadership, and she is supporting a young woman called Binta—that is not her real name, because we are trying to protect her—who was subjected to FGM, was raped by an older man, and has been subjected to terrible persecution by her own family and been cast out by them. We are now raising funds to try to get her into a safe house. Does the hon. Gentleman think that she is the kind of person we could do more to support and more to reach out to?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I absolutely do, and I strongly encourage the hon. Lady to link her friend up with Jaha, who is now a high-profile and significant figure in the Gambia. She is one of the world’s most important FGM campaigners. Indeed, she was nominated for the Nobel prize last year. Again, I would be happy to talk about that after this sitting, to see whether I can do something to link the hon. Lady’s friend up with the right people.

Clearly, there is more to be done, both here and abroad, but this Bill is part of that. I am not going to pretend that it will stop FGM—it will not—but it does provide another potentially crucial legal tool in the fight against it. I want to explain briefly what the Bill does and why it matters. First, let me point out that it has just two clauses, the second of which provides only for the Bill’s extent, commencement and short title. I therefore wish to focus on the first clause, which is the only substantive one.

At present, the Children Act 1989 allows courts to make an interim care order—an instruction to a local authority to share parental responsibility for a child. Such an order can last up to eight weeks and it can be renewed, but that can be done only if there is a belief that the child in question is suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm. The local authority would then be part of any decisions relating to where the child should live or how their welfare should be maintained. I do not think anyone would argue that a girl who has undergone or is likely to undergo FGM is not suffering or likely to suffer significant harm, but the 1989 Act does not currently allow interim care orders to be issued for FGM. A court may only direct an interim care order to be made in “family proceedings”. Section 8 of that Act defines what is meant by “family proceedings” for the purposes of the Act. It contains various statutes relating to domestic violence, forced marriage and so on, but it does not include proceedings under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. The effect of that is that it is not open to a judge to issue an interim care order for FGM. Clearly, that is an omission in law—I do not think this is deliberate—but it means that our courts do not have the full suite of powers that they need to protect girls who are at risk.

As Lord Berkeley pointed out when he introduced the Bill in the other place, that means that although a family court can protect a girl who is at risk of forced marriage or domestic abuse, it cannot protect a girl who is at risk of FGM. That needs to change. David Maddison, the family lawyer who raised this issue with Lord Berkeley, has pointed out that this is not an academic or abstract concern; it is a practical one. There have been occasions when the police have sought an FGM protection order in the family court and the judge has wanted to employ the powers of the local authority in an order but has not been able to. The Bill will grant the power that has been missing.

All the Bill does is to insert the proceedings for FGM protection orders from the 2003 Act in the section of the 1989 Act that defines which family proceedings constitute grounds for an interim care order to be made. To be clear, it inserts that part of the 2003 Act that relates to FGM protection orders in section 8 of the 1989 Act. That makes FGM a family proceeding for the purpose of issuing care orders under the 1989 Act. I hope the House agrees that this is a simple and uncontentious change. If the Bill passes, it is unlikely to lead to the issuing of a huge number of new care orders—they are rarely used—but it is important that judges have all the power we can give them to protect girls who are at risk. Currently, that is simply not the case.

I have no doubt that when some Members speak they will argue that the Bill is not enough to stop FGM entirely. I am not going to argue with that. Those Members are right that we need better support, particularly mental health support, for survivors. We need better education so that girls and boys grow up knowing that FGM is wrong. We need to get better at identifying at-risk girls, as in France where they do it better than we do.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who is making such a powerful speech. He mentioned the important role of education, and it is of course about education not only in the UK but internationally. On this Commonwealth Day, will he pay tribute to the work of the Commonwealth and the Department for International Development in ensuring that education is really having an impact worldwide?

[Zac Goldsmith]

That is the very next point I was going to make, so I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I have said it twice already but I shall say it a third time: I am proud of the work that the Department for International Development does. It is a Department that is often hammered by our newspapers, but it does really important work. The £35 million that it has already spent has changed lives and saved lives, and if the £50 million that has been committed is spent properly—I am sure it will be—it will go on to save lives as well.

I mentioned Nimco’s work; I do not want to embarrass her, but I know that the amount of money that it took to get her to Somaliland to do the work that she did was so small as to barely qualify as a DFID grant. I know that the work of Jaha, whom I mentioned earlier, in the Gambia has cost so little that it would only just register or qualify as a DFID grant. There are so many people like that out there who could do with the kind of support that DFID can provide.

My hon. and learned Friend the Minister provided lots of reassurances when she spoke in Committee about what the Government are doing and how committed they are to tackling FGM. I do not know whether protocol means she will have the opportunity to repeat those reassurances later—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

indicated assent.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I see her nodding her head, so she will. I look forward to that.

If this tiny, uncontentious Bill protects just a handful of girls from undergoing the horror of FGM, we will have done something worth while and important in passing it into law. I close my speech simply by thanking all Members present for their support, which I hope the Bill will get at the end of the day. I particularly thank the Clerks, the Whips Office and the Ministry of Justice Bill team, who have been so helpful in getting us to this point. Finally, I thank Lord Berkeley again for winning the arguments next door and handing us a Bill in such good order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Lady raises an important point about specialist provision and resources. I hope that the Ministers on the Front Bench will take that point away and consider how we can ensure that very specialist resources are available to local authorities, because it will be difficult for them to have that sort of expertise in-house. The hon. Lady makes an extremely valuable point, as somebody who has campaigned vigorously and with incredible compassion on these issues.

I want to underline the important role of the Department for International Development, which other Members have referred to in interventions. We should be proud that our country is the first country to have a dedicated anti-FGM programme, working across the globe. It is important for the House to underline that the Department has supported 8,000 communities to abandon, or campaign to abandon, FGM.

The Government have supported the Girl Generation programme—the largest ever global work on the issue, with over 900 organisations working to end FGM. The work that is happening outside the UK is not only important for women in those countries, although that would be justification enough to do the work; it is also invaluable in underlining the human rights of those women in their own countries. Last but by no means least, this work helps to change attitudes that can still influence communities in the UK. The importance of DFID’s work has to be acknowledged. Those who may be naysayers about our contribution to this global world should reflect a little on their views when they consider how this work can so enormously change the lives of millions of women across the world.

This is not a debate in which we will be thinking about internal processes too much, but it would not be right not to point out at least that the reason that we are here today is because of our private Members’ Bills system, whereby an individual Member—quite unrepresentative of the majority feeling of the House—can block a Bill. This is not just a Bill that will do something very small and day to day; it is so important to women’s lives. The whole House has to acknowledge that the need for reform of our private Members’ Bills system is long overdue, and we need to find a way of giving priority to that reform of this place. If we do not, we continue to run the risk of this House being brought into disrepute by individual Members exercising what might be a very principled point of view on the procedure of this place—although I am not sure that this particular objection was as principled as that. We need to acknowledge that this place can look prehistoric from the outside. If we are going to regain the trust of people in Parliament, this sort of reform has to be given priority at some point in the parliamentary calendar.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I could not agree more strongly with my right hon. Friend on the need to reform the process. Does she agree that this kind of small, technical amendment—which is effectively what this Bill is—is exactly where the PMB comes into its own, because there is no natural legislative hook on which the Government can hang it?

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we are going to have a Parliament that works correctly, not just in a post-Brexit world—which is probably more of a challenge than we are thinking about at the moment—but in a modern, transparent and media-literate world, we have to look carefully at the way in which our systems work to enable Members to make such small but important changes in a timely manner, without the need to go through the parliamentary procedures that this Bill has had to go through simply because of the views of one individual.

I very much wish this Bill well. It is a great example of making good legislation even more effective. It will amend the Children Act 1989 to make female genital mutilation protection orders available, and to ensure that we can protect more children who find themselves in a situation where the adults around them may not have their best interests at heart, and who may be at risk of this appalling practice. This Bill should receive support from every single Member in the House.

Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to consider clause 2 stand part.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I thank hon. Members for attending. I do not think this will be a lengthy session, as, thankfully, neither of the new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole have been selected. That is not to say they do not raise valuable points, but obviously I have an interest in the Bill making a smooth transition through this place into law, and not being sent back to the House of Lords if at all possible. The Bill received cross-party support in the Second Reading Committee last week, and I am grateful to hon. Members for giving it the green light.

This is a very simple two-clause Bill that seeks to remedy an omission in existing child protection law where family courts do not have the power to compel the involvement of a local authority in an interim care order relating to FGM. Clause 1, the only substantive clause of this very short Bill, seeks to amend section 8 of the Children Act 1989 by inserting a reference to part 1 of schedule 2 to the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. I will explain very briefly what section 8 of the 1989 Act and schedule 2 to the 2003 Act do, and then, equally briefly, how the Bill is designed to allow proceedings under those Acts to be considered at the same time.

Schedule 2 to the FGM Act makes provision for female genital mutilation protection orders. Those are civil orders designed to protect girls at risk of FGM. Section 8 of the 1989 Act defines what is meant by “family proceedings” and lists several enactments that, for the purpose of that Act, are considered as family proceedings. Where an enactment is listed, section 8 allows the court, in proceedings under that enactment, to use its powers under the 1989 Act to protect children by granting child arrangements orders and other orders with respect to children. That power is not currently available to the court in FGM protection order proceedings, because the enactment under which those proceedings have commenced is not currently listed in section 8. Clause 1 of the Bill rectifies that by adding

“Part 1 of Schedule 2 to the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003”

to the list of enactments in section 8 of the 1989 Act. That will allow proceedings for FGM protection orders to be recognised as family proceedings for the purposes of that Act.

I will conclude with two small points of detail to clarify the application of clause 1. The 1989 Act only applies to England and Wales; clause 1 therefore refers specifically to

“Part 1 of Schedule 2 to the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003”,

which applies to England and Wales, to ensure that the amendments to the Act made by the Bill affect only FGM protection order proceedings that take place in England and Wales.

Finally, clause 1 excludes paragraph 3 of schedule 2 to the 2003 Act, which provides for circumstances in which FGM protection orders may be made by the court during criminal proceedings. That is to make clear that criminal proceedings are not to be defined as family proceedings for the purposes of the 1989 Act. That does not dilute the powers of the court; it simply means that criminal matters are dealt with by the criminal courts. In short, clause 1 simply inserts that part of the 2003 Act that relates to FGM protection orders into section 8 of the 1989 Act, which makes a FGM protection order proceeding a family proceeding for the purpose of issuing care orders under that Act.

Clause 2 provides for the extent of the Bill, its commencement and its short title. As I have said, the Bill extends to England and Wales only. Regarding its commencement, the provisions of the Bill come into force on the day it receives Royal Assent, which is known as early commencement. The policy and public interest justification for doing so is to ensure that if any FGM protection order proceedings are ongoing at the time of the legislation, the family court or High Court will have the power, should circumstances require, to make interim care and supervision orders or other Children Act orders in the same set of proceedings. That will reduce delay, and therefore give immediate protection to any child at risk of significant harm. I am happy to confirm that the Law Officers have agreed to the Bill coming into force in this way.

In closing, I thank all Members here for their support. I thank in particular the Clerks, the Whips Office and the Ministry of Justice’s Bill team, who have been absolutely superb and extremely helpful in getting us this far.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I welcome the opportunity to once again discuss how we can tackle this issue, which is of great significance to a number of people across the UK. What is more, it is refreshing and reassuring to do so in agreement with Members on both sides of the House. At a time when vulnerable people are at risk from the painful and harmful practice of female genital mutilation, our being able to come together in this place is a testament to the fact that those people can rely on us to protect them. Hopefully we can do just that.

Given the relatively straightforward nature of the Bill, there is little I can say that has not already been said by the hon. Member for Richmond Park. To repeat what I said during the Bill’s previous stage, amending the Children Act to allow courts to make temporary care orders in cases of FGM seems like a reasonable and sensible solution to what appears to be an oversight in current legislation. Such orders have worked in cases of molestation, violence and forced marriage; they can work for FGM too. This Bill gives courts an extra tool to use when addressing this horrendous practice, and a significantly greater ability to actively prevent FGM, rather than responding to those who have already committed this act. However, I also repeat that while the Bill is a welcome step in the right direction, it is no cure-all solution, and as many campaigners agree, more must be done by the Government.

On that note, I wish to press the Minister on a few issues. Can she tell me what the Government are doing to identify vulnerable girls and women? How do the Government intend to give confidence to those identified, in order to enable them to speak up about this practice and speak out against those performing operations? Will the Government take a greater look at the numbers affected, to provide a more accurate indication of how many people are affected across the UK, and, given the almost negligible number of those prosecuted for FGM in the UK, can the Minister tell me what more the Government are doing to prosecute those involved?

In the spirit of this discussion, I hope that the Minister will acknowledge the Government’s vital role in doing more to eliminate FGM, and will provide answers to those points. Drafted with the same desire to eradicate the barbaric practice of FGM, the Bill is a welcome step towards doing just that, and we will certainly not prevent or delay it, or stand in its way.

Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill [ Lords ]

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Second Reading Committee debate: House of Commons
Monday 25th February 2019 General Committees

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee recommends that the Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill [Lords] ought to be read a Second time.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. Hon. Members will have heard that the Bill is a private Member’s Bill—a few moments ago, very briefly, it was not, but it is again, and I am grateful. I thank the Government, who have provided time for the debate, and my hon. and learned Friend the Minister for their collective efforts to protect girls who are at risk of FGM.

Much has been said about why we are in Committee now, and in particular about the role of the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope)—not much of it has been all that polite. I do not want to dwell on that aspect of the matter, other than to say that the Bill is exactly the sort of measure for which private Members’ Bills are useful. It is a small, uncontroversial but important amendment to the law that would not sit easily in any Government Bill currently going through Parliament. I am delighted to have the Government’s support, but I acknowledge that the Bill was introduced by the Cross-Bench peer Lord Berkeley, who became aware of an anomaly in the law and decided to act. He piloted the Bill through the other place with huge passion, clarity and decency.

Although, like everyone in the room, I have known about female genital mutilation for many years, it is only relatively recently that I have been actively engaged in campaigning on the issue. That is largely thanks to the powerful work of FGM survivor and campaigner Nimco Ali, who will be known to numerous members of the Committee. She is an inspiration and I hope that the Bill will go a small way towards honouring her efforts, and those of the many women standing up to FGM in the UK and across the world.

The Committee will be familiar with the horrors of FGM, but they bear repeating, up to a point, to remind us why the Bill matters so much. According to the World Health Organisation, FGM includes

“all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”

It is almost always carried out on young children, and rarely by medical professionals. It has no basis in medicine or, despite what we are often told, particularly on social media, in religion. The practice is often wrongly blamed on Islam, both by extremists who want to excuse it and by others who want to use it as a stick to bash Islam as a religion. In reality, the practice predates Islam and the Koran neither advocates nor justifies it.

The consequences of FGM, of course, can be extreme, and include severe pain, excessive bleeding, infection, menstrual problems, pain during sex and childbirth, and deep psychological trauma. The consequences can last for the rest of the person’s life. It is estimated that around the world at least 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone FGM. In England and Wales, the figure is believed to be approximately 137,000, so it is also a UK issue.

When an urgent question was asked about the Bill on 11 February, several colleagues raised concerns about male circumcision. Whatever one’s views may be on that issue, it is self-evidently not comparable. The medical equivalent of FGM for a man would not be circumcision; it would be removal of the entire head of the penis and much more besides. Had that ever been a cultural practice, I suspect that it would not have lasted more than a generation at most.

FGM has been specifically illegal in the UK since the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985, which was replaced by the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. The 2003 Act, which made it illegal to assist someone performing FGM or to commit FGM abroad, was amended by the Serious Crime Act 2015, which introduced mandatory reporting of FGM and created FGM protection orders. Such orders, which courts can issue to protect girls who have undergone FGM or are at risk of becoming victims, can include any appropriate “prohibitions, restrictions or requirements”, such as forcing the surrender of passports to prevent travel abroad.

The UK was the first country in the world to create a dedicated anti-FGM aid programme. An initial £35 million was pledged in 2013 and an additional £50 million was announced last November. I was delighted to see the Department for Education’s announcement today that FGM will be a compulsory part of all sex and relationships education for secondary school pupils.

The legal and financial apparatus to protect girls against FGM is not insubstantial, but as yet there is no hard evidence of a meaningful decline. In 2016-17, the NHS reported 9,179 cases of FGM, of which 5,391 were newly recorded. It is a source of huge concern that the first successful prosecution for FGM occurred only in January this year, after numerous failed attempts. There is a lot more still to be done, which is why this small but important Bill needs the Committee’s support. I do not pretend that by itself it will stop FGM, but it will provide another legal tool—potentially a crucial one—in the fight against it. Let me briefly explain why.

At present, the Children Act 1989 allows courts to make an interim care order: an instruction to a local authority to share parental responsibility for a child, such as when making decisions on where the child should live or how its welfare should be maintained. To make such an order, which can last up to eight weeks and can be renewed, the court needs to be

“satisfied…that the child concerned is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm”.

I am sure that we all agree that a girl who has undergone or is likely to undergo FGM is suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm. At present, however, the 1989 Act does not allow interim care orders to be issued for FGM. Under section 37, a court may direct such an order to be made only in “family proceedings”, which are defined for the purposes of the Act in section 8. The definition covers the Family Law Act 1996, which deals with non-molestation orders, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, which concerns divorce, and various statutes relating to domestic violence and forced marriage, but not proceedings under the Female Genital Mutilation Act. As a result, it is not open to a judge to issue an interim care order for FGM. That is clearly an omission in the law, and it means that our courts do not have the full suite of powers necessary to protect girls who are at risk.

As Lord Berkeley pointed out when introducing the Bill in the other place, a family court has more powers to protect a girl at risk of forced marriage than to protect a girl at risk of FGM. That needs to be evened out. As David Maddison—the family lawyer who raised with Lord Berkeley that omission in the law—has pointed out, it is a genuine practical concern, not just a theoretical one. There have been occasions when the police have sought an FGM protection order in the family court and the judge has wanted to employ the powers of the local authority in an order. Under the present law, however, judges cannot compel the local authority to act, so they have had to rely on encouragement. The Bill will grant the power that has been missing by inserting proceedings for FGM protection orders made under the Female Genital Mutilation Act into the section of the Children Act that defines which family proceedings constitute grounds for making an interim care order. What it proposes is pretty simple and uncontentious.

I do not imagine that the Bill will lead to a vast number of new care orders being issued—I understand that they are rarely used—but it is vital that judges have all the power we can give them to protect girls who are at risk. At present that is simply not the case. I acknowledge that the Bill alone will not stop FGM from happening, and to anyone who argues that it is not enough, I would simply say that I agree. We need to see much more done to supplement the existing legal powers. That means better mental health support for survivors; better education, so that young girls and boys grow up knowing that FGM is wrong; identifying girls who are at risk; and ensuring that aid money is spent as effectively as it can be, to support heroes campaigning at the grassroots in countries in Africa and Asia where FGM is still prevalent, such as Jaha Dukureh from Gambia, who managed almost single-handedly to force the Government there to change the law to ban FGM.

I look to the Minister to assure us that the Government will redouble their laudable efforts in all these areas. If the Bill protects just a handful of girls from undergoing the horror of FGM, then we will have done something worth while in passing it into law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank Committee members for all their contributions. The Bill, as has been acknowledged, effectively closes a loophole. As my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash pointed out, it is fundamentally about prevention—preventing abuse and preventing harm.

I want very briefly to touch on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole. He and my hon. and learned Friend the Minister are right that it is impossible to estimate the number of cases involved, but we know that in the year to September 2018, 117 FGM protection orders were issued—up about 20 on the previous year and another 20 on the year before that. That gives some indication of the number that may be involved.

The hon. Member for Swansea East and many other hon. Members expressed disappointment that there has been only one conviction. That point was well made, and I think that disappointment is shared across the Committee.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent, because it was her question at Prime Minister’s questions that secured the formal commitment to make Government time available for the Bill. I am really grateful to her for that, and I know a lot of other people are, too.

We heard two powerful speeches from the Front-Bench representatives, my hon. and learned Friend the Minister and the hon. Member for Ashfield, who both fully support the Bill. I am very grateful to them for that, and for making powerful speeches with great compassion. Finally, I thank you, Mr McCabe, for chairing the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee recommends that the Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill [Lords] ought to be read a Second time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Lady raises an interesting issue and I would very much like to discuss it with her.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Nick Hardwick, the former head of the Parole Board, made the case yesterday that it should be required to publish comprehensive explanations for the decisions it takes and that it should make public the names of the people who are making those decisions. May I urge my right hon. Friend to follow that advice as he undertakes his own review?

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend is right to point out that I am undertaking my own review of that. The first step is to address the decision of the High Court on the existence of rule 25, which prohibits, in essence, any information being provided on Parole Board decisions. We will do that, but we also need to look more widely at how the Parole Board rules work—that includes the issues of transparency and of how the Parole Board can reconsider cases in particular circumstances.

Worboys Case and the Parole Board

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I very much support the calls by the Opposition for a thorough, end-to-end review. The reality is that these victims have managed to blow open the system using, as we have heard, a very big, popular campaign. They have given us a rare glimpse into something that many people across this House would find utterly terrifying, given the profound errors that have been uncovered by Leveson in the inquiry that he has just concluded. Will the component of my right hon. Friend’s review relating to transparency be completed in advance of the new Parole Board determining the second stage of the Worboys case?

[Mr Gauke]

First, let me put on record my tribute to my hon. Friend for his tireless work on this case, as he has been a very strong advocate for the victims. On transparency, as I said, I hope that we can make progress in the course of the next few weeks. It is not for me to determine when the Parole Board will next look at John Worboys’ case, but I would be astonished if it were before we had new rules on transparency in place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

The proposed release of John Worboys has absolutely horrified and terrified his many, many victims. Like me, they are appalled to learn today that he has been moved to London’s category A Belmarsh Prison. Will my right hon. Friend assure us that he will do everything in his power to ensure that Worboys is released with strict licence conditions that keep him out of Greater London?

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend has been tireless on this matter in recent weeks. The precise conditions are operational matters that are decided at operational level, but let me reassure him that nearly a fortnight ago I wrote to the relevant authorities and stressed the need to ensure that the concerns of victims are at the heart of the process and that the most stringent conditions are applied.

Parole Board and Victim Support

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

Yes, it is vital that these crimes be taken seriously. I think that there is consensus across the House and the country that they are, and certainly it is my intention that that continues to be the case.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Worboys was a prolific sex attacker for up to 10 years, and there are likely to be hundreds of victims, yet in court he showed no remorse and dismissed his actions as “banter”. Just two years ago, he was claiming that he had done absolutely nothing wrong. It is impossible, therefore, for people to understand how the board could possibly have deemed this man to be safe. Will my right hon. Friend agree that, unless and until the board explains publicly the rationale behind the decision, people cannot possibly have confidence in our criminal justice system?

[Mr Gauke]

I completely understand my hon. Friend’s point. As it currently stands, the Parole Board cannot provide in public the reasons for its decision. The chair of the Parole Board has made it clear that he wishes that it could, but the Parole Board rules—secondary legislation, essentially—prevent that from happening. One thing we will have to look at is what can be done to review and potentially change that secondary legislation to provide for greater transparency, so that these things can be explained. As I said earlier, there is a question about whether the new regulations could apply to cases before any change, including this case, but that is something we will want to look at.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

It is an honour and a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), who gave an extraordinarily compelling and principled speech.

This is a critical Bill. We cannot logically leave the EU if we continue to subject ourselves to EU law, courts and regulators. It is for exactly that reason, however, that some Members will use the Bill as an opportunity to scupper the process and prevent us from leaving the EU. And that worries me. In perhaps the most important—certainly the biggest—democratic exercise the country has ever seen, people voted to leave. I believe that 80% of electors in the general election voted for parties that pledged to honour the result of the referendum. If that promise was broken, the resulting anger would give rise to extreme political movements right across the UK that would change our politics forever. We can improve the Bill in Committee and on Report, but to stop it on principle is to play with fire.

I want to comment briefly on one area impacted by our leaving the EU: the natural environment. The opportunity to do great things here is almost incalculable. We have a chance not only to right some wrongs, but to make historic progress. Under the common agricultural policy, for example, vast amounts of public money are handed to wealthy landowners simply because they own land. The policy supports perverse incentives to harm the environment and shuts off the UK market to developing countries through higher tariffs. For years, environmentalists, farmers’ organisations and a whole succession of farming Ministers have dreamt of changing and profoundly reforming the CAP. Well, we now can—and we must. We will be able to ensure that the subsidies regime that replaces the CAP supports food production and improves and protects the natural environment, with a system whereby public money is genuinely a return for public good. We have an opportunity to raise standards and boost our rural economy at the same time, and that opportunity extends beyond the CAP. As a country, we have led the way on animal welfare, but we have been limited in what we can do due to our membership of the EU.

[Henry Smith]

One animal welfare benefit is that on leaving the EU, we could ban the live export of animals from our ports, which causes such great suffering.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, which is one that I was just about to make. CAP funds have even been used to subsidise bullfighting in Spain.

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Zac Goldsmith]

No, I will not take any more interventions.

Most critically, even though we apply high animal welfare standards to production in this country, we cannot apply those standards to the food we import, which means that instead of preventing cruelty, which is what we are trying to do, we are simply exporting that cruelty to other countries while disadvantaging our own farmers. We could address that as well.

Clearly, in other areas, the EU has been a good thing for the environment—I would not pretend otherwise. The EU has undoubtedly been instrumental in forcing us to clean up our act. For instance, our rivers and beaches are cleaner today because of the EU than they would have been.

[Sir Edward Davey]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I will not.

That is why a core responsibility of this Parliament and this Government is to ensure that those key EU regulations—the habitats directive, the birds directive and the sewage sludge directive—have absolute, meaningful, proper, full protection in British law. We have had that commitment, but I should like to hear it a few more times from Ministers during this debate.

There are legitimate concerns about this process that need to be addressed in the Minister’s wind-up.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I will not, because I am running out of time.

First, when a state fails to implement EU law today, there are penalties, but that will no longer be the case—for obvious and appropriate reasons. However, an alternative system does need to be introduced. If the present or a future Government fail, for example, to stay within air pollution limits, it must be possible for sanctions to be applied and for that Government to be held to account—that is a core ingredient in any healthy democracy.

Secondly, it is not clear that important principles, such as the “polluter pays” principle or the precautionary principle, will be fully and meaningfully absorbed into UK law. If the individual regulations are to have meaning, those principles must be embedded in UK law. Finally, the Bill enables the Government to transfer regulatory functions from the EU to domestic bodies, but it does not make that obligatory, which seems to me to be an obvious weakness. I hope that the Minister will respond to my concerns, as well as the other issues that are raised today, and provide reassurances that they will be addressed either during the Bill’s later stages, or in subsequent environmental legislation.

Leveson Inquiry

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

We are having today’s debate because the current system of media self-regulation has not only failed, but failed spectacularly, again and again. I suspect that the majority of Members in the Chamber agree on what now needs to be achieved—in other words, the outcome. Where there are differences, they relate to the method of delivering that outcome. An editor of the “ConservativeHome” website—a vehicle that has been vociferously opposed to any kind of legislation—wrote a few days ago, just before the report came out:

“What’s needed post-Leveson is a settlement that helps…ordinary victims…That’s a new, non press-run complaints body with the power to fine and punish papers—which is, none the less, independent of the state.”

I agree with that absolutely, and I am sure that most other Members do. The question is: can we achieve that without legislation? I do not think that we can.

I question some elements of the Leveson report, which I will come to in a moment, but I do not accept the hyperbole emanating from those media commentators who are opposed to change. Nor do I think it responsible for otherwise serious papers to imply that those MPs who advocate some form of regulation are motivated by self-interest. I think we can all agree that The Daily Telegraph was scraping the barrel when it accused my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind)—who is not in his place at the moment—of taking revenge on the media because he had been criticised for supporting the poll tax in 1990. I do not know my right hon. and learned Friend particularly well, and there are many issues on which we disagree, but it strikes me as unlikely that he would harbour a grudge for 25 years over something so routine.

We have been told that any form of legislation would irreparably damage the ability of the press to do what it does best—uncovering corruption, exposing hypocrisy, holding the elite to account—and that our democracy would be impaired as a result. However, no serious commentator, and no MP, is advocating any measure that would weaken the scrutiny of elected representatives or hand them any control over the press. At most, some MPs are calling for statutory recognition of an independent regulator. We want something that looks like the Press Complaints Commission but that is not controlled by the very people it exists to regulate—in short, a PCC that is independent of the media and of politicians, and that has the power to impose fines and demand apologies.

None of this is inherently new. There is nothing new about fines—the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror were both fined this year for contempt of court—and the principle that journalists and newspapers should abide by a code of practice is well established. It has been accepted by editors and proprietors for decades, since the editors’ code of practice came into being. The difference is that a new code might be more than simply a fig leaf.

Some commentators argue that a new statute would provide a greater opportunity for a future authoritarian Government to gag the press. That is an illogical argument. A statute can be drafted to prevent amendment other than by fresh primary legislation, which would leave a future Government in exactly the same situation as the one we are in today. Regardless of that, however, it is a basic fact of democracy that with enough votes, any Government can pass any law they like, as the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) pointed out earlier. I suppose that that is one of the downsides of any democracy, as well as one of the upsides.

[Jim Dowd]

One of the principles of this place is, rightly or wrongly, that Parliament is sovereign, but is it not an act of the grossest deceit and vanity for any Member to claim that, magically, we are noble but that those who come after us might not be?

[Zac Goldsmith]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point; I agree with him.

A new statute to make independent regulation effective would improve investigative journalism, if it included express public interest defences. It would ensure that when the ends were in the public interest, the means would be justified. The example of The Daily Telegraph has already been cited, but I will give it again. The information that led to the expenses scandal was illegally accessed, but it was so obviously in the public interest that no one has ever challenged the newspaper. Theoretically, it could have been challenged. We now have an opportunity to protect journalists engaged in that kind of activity.

Let us not pretend that the state does not already influence the media; it does. There are countless laws relating to the press, a number of which—defamation and contempt, for instance—bear directly on the content of newspapers. What is more, despite arguing vigorously against any form of state intervention in the media, Lord Black and Paul Dacre have both advocated the use of legislation in their own submissions to Leveson. Both advocated a tribunal that could hear defamation and privacy cases and protect newspapers from high legal costs and damages, and both acknowledged that that would require statute. It does not follow that legislation would inhibit journalism. For example, Finland, which has been No. 1 on the world press freedom index in eight of the past 10 years, has a system of independent press regulation backed by statute. In 2003, it passed a law that gave people a right of reply and gave publications a duty to correct.

Television has a far higher level of regulation than anything I—indeed, most people in the Chamber—would endorse for newspapers, but it is worth noting that, no matter what survey we choose to look at, we see that television remains the country’s most trusted medium. Neither is television journalism cowed. Every Government, more or less without exception, have taken issue with the BBC, fought with the BBC and actively disliked the BBC. In addition, many of the recent high-profile exposés—for example, of Jimmy Savile, Winterborne View, of “The Secret Policeman”, racism in Polish football and so on—came from television.

Those who oppose any form of legislation have genuine fears, and I absolutely do not seek to discount them or pretend they do not exist. Good regulation would, I believe, improve our newspapers without inhibiting any public interest journalism; bad legislation would do immeasurable harm. There is room here to get it very wrong.

I want to point briefly to what I believe is a mistake made by Lord Leveson. The same “ConservativeHome” editor I cited earlier made a statement that I thought risible at the time. He said:

“Essentially, they”,

meaning advocates of legislation,

“want to create a climate of opinion in which, for example, doubt can’t be expressed about whether global warming is driven by human activity.”

Having read much of the Leveson report, although I admit not all of it, I have some concerns. Instead of confining himself to protecting the victims of newspaper smears and malpractice—Christopher Jeffries, Milly Dowler and so forth—I believe Lord Leveson has strayed beyond his brief. Let me quote directly from the report:

“Overall, the evidence in relation to the representation of women and minorities suggests that there has been a significant tendency within the press which leads to the publication of prejudicial or pejorative references to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or physical or mental illness or disability…A new regulator will need to address these issues as a matter of priority, the first steps being to amend practice and the Code to permit third party complaints.”

The rumbustious, politically incorrect and sometimes irresponsible—and, in my view, occasionally, appalling—approach of the tabloids is not to everyone’s taste, but in an open society, it is part of the rough and tumble of free expression. I know I am not in a minority on either side of the House when I say that we must never make it possible for lobby groups with their own political agendas to suppress free speech. Unless there is an individual victim with a legitimate grievance, the regulator has no business interfering.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

Could my hon. Friend produce an example of such a system somewhere other than Finland and Ireland? One of the problems of this debate is that it is difficult to point to a country such as the United States, France or Germany where such a regulator exists, but perhaps I have misunderstood.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith]

I sense that an answer is bubbling up in the speech we will hear from the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). I cannot answer my hon. Friend’s question, as the examples I have given are the examples I know, but it does not change the principle. In effect, we are effectively talking about taking the editor’s code—a code written up by the editor—and giving it teeth. What I cannot understand is why the media commentators who so viciously oppose any kind of legislation would oppose putting into law something that they themselves have deemed okay and appropriate because they have designed it themselves. There is a break in the argument there that I am yet to understand.

I will actively support the creation of a genuinely independent regulatory body, backed up in law, that exists to even the playing field, so that newspapers can be held to account for their behaviour, so that individuals can seek fair redress and so that the code can be seen as real and not, as it is today, synthetic. I would not support a Bill that went beyond that. In common with the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham—I mention Peckham and the other lovely part of the constituency—I support the creation of a slim Bill that guards against slippage and creep, but which does the job.

Finally, I want to make a suggestion. When the Secretary of State meets editors tomorrow, I urge her to ask them to develop a proper plan—not the already and widely discredited Hunt and Black proposals, but a real plan—and then to present it early next year, in January or February. Parliament should then be invited to decide in a free vote—in my view, it must be a free vote—whether the plan goes far enough. If we decide that it does, that is the end of the matter. If we decide it does not, we would commit ourselves to creating a new PCC backed up by statute. As a means of avoiding division in this House, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said she wishes to avoid, over such a complex and highly sensitive issue, I can think of no better mechanism.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

I will come on to answer the point that the hon. Gentleman made in his speech, if he can be patient.

The Prime Minister made it clear that we have serious concerns and misgivings that the recommendation to underpin this body in statute may be misleading. Such concerns were echoed by hon. Members from both sides of the House, including my hon. Friends the Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). They were also echoed with inimitable eloquence by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). We should be wary—this House is wary—of any legislation that has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press. That point was also made eloquently by the hon. Members for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd) and for Falkirk (Eric Joyce), and by my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) and for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray). We should be wary about whether legislation is truly necessary on this point.

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport said in opening the debate, it is right that we should take the time to look at the details. I agree with many of the points made by hon. Members on both sides of the House. For instance, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) made a good point in saying that many of the failures were breaches of the criminal law; my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) was right to warn against regulatory creep in these things; and the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) was exactly right in saying that the ball is in the press’s court now, that they have to take the immediate decisions and that it is up to them.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I am just wondering whether I misheard my right hon. Friend. For the record, I made the case that I do not believe that effective regulation will be possible without legislation. I will send him a copy of the Hansard record of my speech later.

[Damian Green]

I listened to my hon. Friend’s speech carefully and I thought he made it clear that he had misgivings—that is the point I was making. If he does not have misgivings, I apologise to him.

Obviously, further cross-party discussion will be needed on this and some of the other recommendations, particularly on the proposed changes to the Data Protection Act. I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House agreed that the Leveson proposals were pretty inadequate on data protection and its effect on investigative journalism, and I assume that that lies behind the nuanced change in the Opposition’s position. It is important that we look at these proposals carefully, particularly in the context of the negotiations on the broader European Union framework to which the Data Protection Act gives effect.

Lord Leveson himself said that these changes need to be considered with great care and he also admitted that this was something that had not been aired extensively during the inquiry or received much scrutiny generally. I believe that the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) made that point very well. We agree that this matter needs careful analysis. We must not make haste to amend the Data Protection Act only to find that responsible investigative journalism, holding the rich and powerful to account, is unduly hampered because of some wide-reaching amendments, even ones made with good intentions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) talked about how the press had helped him in his council work on child protection. Several hon. Members spoke eloquently and passionately about the effects on their local community of press malpractice. They included the hon. Members for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) and for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain). My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will return to the House on all these issues following the cross-party discussions.

Some specific questions were raised in the debate. The right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) asked about the timetable for decisions, and we look forward to the press coming forward with their new proposals after tomorrow’s meeting. People have said that we should not delay; the meeting with editors is actually happening tomorrow. Lord Hunt has suggested a timetable that starts this week with that meeting and proposals that will come in the early months of next year.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) asked about the LASPO Act changes and defamation. We believe that good cases can still be brought after the LASPO reforms come in, but we clearly want to ensure access to justice for those such as the Dowlers who may feel that they have been denied it in the past. That is why we have referred the matter to the Civil Justice Council. That is the appropriate body to consider the details of the proposals, which are both important and complex.

I agree with the shadow Police Minister that although most of the debate has been about press regulation, the issues around the police and their handling of the investigations into phone hacking as well as their relationship with the media and police integrity more widely are equally central to the debate—

Presumption of Death Bill

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Friday 2nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

As you will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I was fortunate enough to come 14th in the ballot for private Members’ Bills. Unsurprisingly, a few hours after hearing that news I returned to my office to find a full inbox, and over the next days the amount of mail that I received increased substantially. One letter gave me some hope. It was from the former Member of Parliament for Chertsey and Walton, Sir Geoffrey Pattie, who wrote that in the 1970s he had managed to get legislation on to the statute book having also come 14th in the ballot. That has given me a little encouragement, and I hope that the House will be minded to look seriously at my Bill and will allow it to proceed as well.

Having been given this opportunity, I thought carefully about the legislation I should present to the House. I concluded—on the basis of my time as a member of the all-party parliamentary group on runaway and missing children and adults, and also on the basis of personal experience—that a means of supporting families by dealing with the uncertainties surrounding presumed death would be an extremely worthwhile cause to champion.

As I have said, I have some personal experience of the effects of such situations, although at one step removed. In 1996 my sister’s godfather disappeared. His name was Norman Harriss, and he was an airline pilot, married, with two sons. The case was reported at the time. He had taken a yacht on to the Solent. The yacht was found with the engine still running and the dinghy missing, and with no sign of him. A search ensued, but, unfortunately, he was never found.

When I was thinking about taking up this cause, I contacted one of Mr Harriss’s sons, Alistair, to ask whether he thought the proposals were a good idea and whether it would have helped his family if such a law had been in place in 1996. Fortunately, he was unequivocal in his response: he said he was more than happy for me to mention his father’s case and stressed the effects of his disappearance on the family when no provision was in place to acknowledge properly his father’s death.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I just want to put on record my total support for my hon. Friend’s work in this area. It builds on the work done by a brilliant organisation based in my constituency: Missing People. It has on its books hundreds and hundreds of examples similar to the case my hon. Friend has just outlined, of families who are unable to move on as a result of what is effectively a bureaucratic barrier. My hon. Friend’s Bill addresses that barrier, so I wish him all the luck in the world and I hope he succeeds.

[John Glen]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for his support. I will talk about the Missing People charity later, but for now let me just commend it on the wonderful work it does.

Alistair said:

“The 7 year wait on the death certificate was a serious strain on everyone involved with my father’s case. Dad made sure that we would have been provided for in the event of his death but due to the circumstances the death certificate was not released for nearly 7 years. Our house was defaulted on and sold, the boat was sold and I very nearly had to change schools in the middle of my GCSEs. Due to some serious hardships from my Mum and step father I managed to complete my GCSEs and A-levels and am now flying as a commercial pilot. I think I was one of the lucky ones!”

As a result of my researches into the issues involved in such cases I have also been fortunate enough to meet Peter Lawrence, the father of Claudia, who has now been missing for more than three and a half years. I, along with many people throughout the nation, have been extremely moved by his story. I have listened carefully to his testimony, and he is very clear that the law needs to be updated. Peter would also like provision to be made for guardianship, and I shall touch on that subject, too.

For all the reasons I have set out, I hope this Bill can be progressed, and the law can be improved for people with missing family members who find themselves in the distressing situation of not being able to deal with their affairs following the disappearance of a loved one.

I am acutely aware of the fact that many people have spent a great deal of time—more than I have spent—in campaigning on this issue, and in bringing energy to advancing a solution to this problem. Some of them are present today, supporting the Bill. I must mention a 2009 private Member’s Bill introduced by the former Member for Daventry, Lord Boswell of Aynho. Unfortunately, his Bill did not make it on to the statute book, but I have based my Bill on its contents.

I also wish to put on the record my gratitude to Baroness Kramer, who has a similar Bill in the other place. Should my Bill be fortunate enough to progress, she will be able to assist in the other place. I have also had a great amount of cross-party support from hon. Members, particularly those associated with the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults, especially the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), who, unfortunately, cannot be here today.

At this point, I should mention the help I have received from the Missing People charity, whose sharing of expertise has been so invaluable on this subject. I am thinking, in particular, of the valuable evidence it gave the Justice Committee prior to the publication of its report in February. Missing People was founded in 1986 by Mary Asprey OBE and Janet Newman OBE following the disappearance of the estate agent Suzy Lamplugh. The charity supports the friends and family of those who have gone missing, young people who have run away from home and missing adults. Missing People offers advice and practical support, as well as maintaining a database of missing people and providing a central point of contact to report sightings. It also provides advice on working with the media and the police, and on the legal and financial difficulties faced by families when somebody goes missing.

I would like to use my speech to pay a particular tribute to the chief executive of Missing People, Martin Houghton-Brown, who has been a tireless champion of presumption of death legislation. He has made his case persuasively in the media over many years and during the Justice Committee’s inquiry. Martin is, unfortunately for Missing People, about to leave that organisation, but I know that I speak for everyone he has worked with in wishing him well in his new role. Martin is generally acknowledged as one of the most effective advocates and campaigners in the charity world.

The Justice Committee’s report on presumption of death strongly recommended primary legislation on this subject. It stated:

“Non-legislative solutions to the problems of resolving the affairs of missing people are necessary but not sufficient. Primary legislation is required…the fact that, in 34 years, only one person who was the subject of an order under the Scottish Presumption of Death Act 1977 has reappeared is a compelling argument that the legislation provides a clear, robust court process to resolve the question”—