Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

I thank my hon. Friend. He raises a critical issue. When I went to Burkina Faso, one of the leading countries in Africa in tackling and reducing FGM, I visited a school to watch an FGM lesson. It is part of the curriculum there, and I do believe that this needs to be a required part of the curriculum here in high-prevalence areas. In a recent speech on development, the Deputy Prime Minister made a commitment both to this and to giving support to the front-line professionals, because we know from the helpline of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that professionals need support and training.

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that female genital mutilation is part of a much wider issue of cultures where gender equality is not recognised, and will she take every opportunity possible when contacting countries where this applies to further the cause of gender equality?

[Lynne Featherstone]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question and I can assure her that I do take every opportunity to raise the issue, because these social norms, which oppress and suppress women and have been going for 4,000 years, are really because of women’s low status in the world in terms of rights and of voice, choice and control over their own lives.

Violence Against Women and Girls

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke. I shall keep a close eye on the clock.

I speak as a delegate of the Council of Europe, which has 47 member countries across geographical Europe—it is much larger than the European Union. Its purpose is to uphold three things: democracy, the rule of law and human rights. All those categories come within the subject of this debate, but none more so than human rights. We are going on our first quarterly visit next week, but on our last visit we happened to go to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where we were reminded that it was set up to prevent gross abuses of human rights, rather than to address some of the trivial things that it is asked to decide on these days. We were interested to find that 97% of the applications to it from the United Kingdom are rejected on the grounds that they are inadmissible or inappropriate. The sort of gross abuses that took place during the second world war, for example, gave rise to the body’s creation.

I wish to speak briefly about the horror of the use of rape as a weapon of war. The results of that are not just the psychological, emotional and physical damage that sufferers live with for the rest of their lives, but the cultural rejection that comes with it. Victims often have no means of earning a living and are condemned to a life of extreme poverty and isolation.

However, I want to focus mainly on the subject that almost every other speaker has spoken about: female genital mutilation. That most grotesque, barbaric practice amounts to torture. It is illegal in this country and is a gross breach of human rights. It was probably during my first Parliament that I served on the Committee that considered the Bill that made it illegal to remove girls from this country and take them abroad to undergo this practice. Another member of that Committee was the then Liberal Democrat Member, Dr Jenny Tonge. We all agreed before our proceedings started—hon. Members on both sides of the Committee were of the same mind—that there was no need to enter into any graphic descriptions, but Jenny Tonge, as a doctor, did embark on the most graphic descriptions of what happens to victims. I will not name the male colleague who was with me, but he was so affected by that that he went very pale and almost passed out in his chair.

The Bill’s purpose was to stop the practice happening, but of course it has not, given the extreme difficulty of enforcement and of finding anyone who is willing to provide evidence. There is often collusion among older women in the cultural groups that still uphold this practice, which is often carried out in unsterile conditions. The victims suffer infection, chronic health problems for the rest of their lives, and real trauma during marriage and childbirth.

We must try to deal with this practice in many ways, including through diplomacy between countries and Governments, and do whatever we can to bring it to an end. It involves the most appalling subjugation of women. An estimated 140 million women in Africa and the middle east, and 66,000 women living in this country, have suffered FGM. A further 20,000 girls in this country are estimated to be at risk. However, it is extremely difficult to obtain evidence about what happens, and then it is only after the event, although even that has a purpose. If we could just secure some convictions, it would help to deter further instances of this practice, break the cultural habit and make people realise that FGM is illegal in this country.

One hundred years ago, women in this country rose up to demand their human rights. Women in other countries need to do that, and we need to do whatever we can to find strong women in the countries in which the practice prevails and to help them to speak out and rise up there, because that will be the most effective way of getting this dreadful practice stopped.

Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Lady knows, NHS England is now in a position to make some of those big judgments—[Interruption.] We are having questions on what money goes where in the NHS from the party that, if I understand it correctly, still does not agree with our protection of the NHS budget. We are putting £12.7 billion extra into the NHS. I would be interested to know whether the Labour party agrees with that.

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Will the Deputy Prime Minister join me in congratulating the London borough of Havering, which has rehomed 1,000 previously overcrowded families into larger and more suitable accommodation as a result of the Government’s welfare policy?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I would certainly like to join my hon. Friend to congratulate the borough of Havering on the excellent work it has done. Overcrowding is a real problem, and hundreds of thousands of families are living in overcrowded properties in which children have no space to do their schoolwork. The fact that the Labour party has no answers to some of those fundamental problems that it created in the first place shows a bankruptcy of ideas.

Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I am sure we will be raising those issues at the G8, as I did when I was at the UN a couple of weeks ago. It is simply unacceptable that the Syrian Government continue to refuse to allow humanitarian deliveries across the border from Turkey, and we need all sides in this conflict to agree to give unfettered access to humanitarian agencies and to do that free from violence.

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

The number of refugees coming across the border from Syria into Turkey is way beyond Turkey’s ability to provide for them. Has my right hon. Friend had any discussions with her counterparts in Turkey, the European Union or the wider international community on how these refugees might be catered for?

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is right to recognise the impact that refugees are having on several countries in the region. Some 370,000-plus refugees have arrived in Turkey, and we have spoken with the Turkish Government about what we can do to provide support. They have played a leading role in providing humanitarian support to those refugees, and that should be acknowledged, too.