Female Genital Mutilation

Baroness Featherstone Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Equalities (Lynne Featherstone)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) and congratulate her on securing this debate on an incredibly important topic for women and girls both in the United Kingdom and internationally. We have to protect girls from this abuse, and we have to ensure that all those living with the consequences of female genital mutilation are given the care and support they deserve.

I want to answer my hon. Friend’s specific points first, so that if time runs out I do not miss answering them. On updating the statistical and quantitative evidence base, she made a powerful point about the fact that the records are outdated. We shall certainly look at what the Greater London authority comes up with. Although £120,000 is small in governmental terms, it is not easy to come by, but we can commit to considering it. I am happy to give her that commitment.

My hon. Friend also mentioned health inequalities, the tackling of which is a Government priority, as part of our wider focus on fairness and social justice. In the Health and Social Care Bill we are proposing the first ever duties, on the Secretary of State, the NHS commissioning board and clinical commissioning groups, to have regard to the need to reduce health inequalities—and of course, victims and survivors of female genital mutilation would fall into that category. We expect there to be action, therefore, under that banner.

My hon. Friend raised the important point that everyone works with the best of intentions, but that perhaps teachers are uncomfortable or do not use the multi-agency guidelines that the Government have published, and she asked what feedback the Government are receiving centrally. Currently, we are not receiving or collating feedback resulting from those guidelines, but there will be a review of the use and effectiveness of the guidelines in February 2012, and we will evaluate their success by examining how extensively they have been used. Depending on the review’s findings, we will consider how we might improve or adapt the guidelines. If front-line workers are not using them properly, there must be another barrier that we have not recognised in dealing with victims of FGM.

My hon. Friend raised the possibility of health passports for at-risk girls. I can undertake to explore and investigate the feasibility of such a measure. I do not know enough about the Dutch system to make a commitment, but I can commit to considering the idea.

The Government have recognised the need for a joined-up approach, co-ordinated by several Departments, to tackle FGM. We are trying to raise awareness of that barbaric practice. We have made progress, but I want to make it clear that the long-term and systemic eradication of FGM in the UK also requires communities affected by the practice to abandon it themselves. I cannot emphasise that point too strongly. We all work hard and are committed, but the pace is slow.

Our key focus is on prevention, and we have undertaken considerable work in the past year, across nine Departments, to take forward our efforts to prevent and tackle FGM. In February, I was pleased to launch the multi-agency practice guidelines for front-line professionals at the Manor Gardens centre, with which my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), who has also contributed to the debate, will be familiar. Both are committed to that agenda. I spoke there to committed and dedicated community practitioners, and I want to commend and thank them publicly for their work.

As I said, the guidelines aim to raise awareness of FGM, highlight the risks of the practice and set out clearly the steps that should be taken to safeguard women and children from this abuse. I remember reading the guidelines myself. We talk about guidelines, and I sometimes wonder whether people know what they are like. I shall give an example for a teacher: if a girl spends half an hour going to the toilet, which is an inordinately long time, the teacher, if it happens more than once, should be alert, because it might be a signal that the girl has been cut, and so signpost and refer it on. The guidance focuses in particular on ensuring a co-ordinated response from all agencies, which is key to ensuring that professionals are able and confident to intervene to protect girls at risk. That is the objective. In addition, we continue to distribute leaflets and posters about FGM, which are key to bringing the issue to more people’s attention. More than 40,000 leaflets and posters have been circulated to schools, health services, charities and community groups around the country. In July, the Metropolitan Police Service’s Project Azure worked alongside Kids Taskforce to produce a film for secondary schools to raise awareness of FGM, which is now available for download on the Kids Taskforce website. Last summer the project also worked at Heathrow airport, talking to families with young girls going to countries where FGM is practised.

[Jane Ellison]

I watched the film, and I was astonished to see the young teenagers who made it say towards the end, “We want girls to have an informed choice about this.” No one can have an informed choice about a crime that is committed against them. However, those involved in campaigning on the issue are often forced to make such compromises in their language, essentially because of concerns about how they will be dealt with in their communities, which goes exactly to what the Minister said about changing attitudes in communities.

[Lynne Featherstone]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Some of the attitudes and sensitivities—or perhaps over-sensitivities—associated with this issue have sometimes meant that what needs to be said is not said as directly as it should be.

The Government are frustrated by the lack of prosecutions in the 25 years since the practice became a criminal offence. Indeed, as a Minister, I am intensely frustrated by that, as I stand at the Dispatch Box at Question Time and am asked why there have been no prosecutions under Labour, Conservative or coalition Governments. We have worked to strengthen the current legislation and we keep trying to encourage prosecutions. As my hon. Friend said, in September the Crown Prosecution Service launched FGM legal guidance so that prosecutors can better understand the background of FGM-affected communities and identify evidential challenges, so that they do not work in a vacuum, but understand the issue.

Research suggests that the most likely barrier to prosecution is pressure from the family or wider community, which makes it difficult for girls and women to come forward and notify police about what has happened to them. Victims may be too young, vulnerable or afraid at the time of mutilation to report offences to the police or give evidence in court. There could be other evidential difficulties if cases are reported many years after the event. I had not heard about the compulsory examinations that take place in France, which my hon. Friend mentioned. That is not the way we do things here, but one does sometimes think, “What other way is there to know whether a girl has been cut?”

The aim of the legal guidance is to provide prosecutors with advice on building stronger cases to bring to court. Prosecutors will now work closely with the police to investigate cases and consider evidence from social services, schools or local authorities, which may have crucial information to help build a case. The guidance has not been launched in isolation, but is part of a concerted approach to building prosecutions. The CPS will be monitoring and reviewing every case referred to it by the police for 12 months. That will allow the CPS to identify why cases are failing to proceed to court and what issues need to be addressed in building a successful case. That reflects the CPS’s commitment to taking positive action to address the problem.

I want to talk about abandonment. I recently met representatives from the Orchid project, who introduced me to Tostan, a non-governmental organisation whose mission is to empower African communities to bring about sustainable development and positive social transformation based on respect for human rights. It takes a respectful approach that allows villagers to make their own conclusions about FGM and to lead their own movements for change. By helping to foster collective abandonment, Tostan’s programme allows community members to share the knowledge. Through this process, entire villages and communities—men and women—have decided together to end FGM. This is incredible work, and I am looking into it. I do not know whether it is directly transferrable, because, geographically, such villages are quite different from the communities here, in the midlands or wherever. There must, however, be something to be said for a community making a decision about the value being put on women being cut. If the whole community accedes to that decision, it will be something that has been done collectively.

A couple of months ago, at the conference on FGM at Manor Gardens, religious leaders met for a forum on female cutting. They represented all the religions, although the Jewish representatives could not come, but did send a message of support. What was so amazing was that all the speakers made it clear that religion played no part in FGM. Afterwards, 80% of the people who had attended said that that was beginning to break the link. Somewhere in all this, there is something that we need to look at that is more than all the things that we have been trying to do for so long.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I apologise for joining the debate after the start; I was selling poppies in Westminster tube station. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) for bringing this important topic to the Floor of the House. I hear what the Minister is saying about getting the whole community involved, but I am concerned that this practice, which is illegal in the UK, is an underground practice. We need to give the young women in our communities a safe way to come forward, to understand the problems with the practice and to report it. I fear, however, that those groups of vulnerable young women are not yet being given a voice to raise the issue and express their concerns.

[Lynne Featherstone]

We are working hard to provide those avenues, and to provide the people to listen to those voices, so that such young women will have the freedom to come forward. We have been trying for a long while to make those things come true. As a Minister, I have to say that we continue to pursue avenues such as the new guidelines and the CPS approach, but it would be wrong of me not to look further and wider when people bring me ideas that might have some value. I am not saying that they do have value or that they do not; I am simply saying that I am open to new ideas as to how we can tackle this intransigent issue. There has been a great deal of work and genuine commitment on both sides of the House, and we are moving forward with that, but we have not really succeeded. In fact, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea said that the incidence of FGM was growing. In addition, perhaps the diaspora is at a different stage from what is happening in the countries of origin, where people are making moves that are not happening in the diaspora.

Our efforts to prevent the practice continue, and in October we launched the FGM fund, a £25,000 fund for front-line organisations that work to prevent FGM. They have been able to bid for grants of £2,000 to £5,000 to further support their commendable work in strengthening the voice of women to speak about FGM and work to abandon the practice. I thank my hon. Friend for raising the issue and I congratulate her on securing the debate. I hope that my comments have gone some way towards reassuring her that this crucial issue remains on the political agenda in order to ensure that girls and women are protected, and that we are working, united, to eliminate this unacceptable form of abuse.

Question put and agreed to.