Serious Crime Bill [Lords]

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Fiona Mactaggart

Monday 5th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this debate.

When the Home Secretary referred to scams that defraud pensioners of their savings, I thought that it is unfortunate that at present such scams are not often counted in our crime statistics. The crime survey for England and Wales has shown that since 1995, in our country as in most other European countries, crime has consistently fallen, and we are all glad about that. I fear, however, that that is a reflection of crime changing and migrating to new kinds of offences for which our statistical methods fail to account. That is particularly true of online fraud and exploitation, people trafficking, and other very serious crimes. While I welcome this Bill, I think that measures other than legislation are needed to make dealing with these things a reality.

I will focus on two parts of the Bill: in part 1, the powers to confiscate and restrain assets; and in part 5, female genital mutilation. I am glad that the pressure from the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee on the draft Modern Slavery Bill has been responded to in part 1 and that the test for freezing assets is being reduced from “reasonable cause to believe” to “reasonable suspicion”, as the Committee recommended. We also recommended, in paragraph 208,

“that the existing requirement to demonstrate risk of dissipation be explicitly removed.”

I am not a lawyer, and I recognise that that requirement, which currently exists in these sorts of cases, might still be there, but I cannot find it. I would be grateful for reassurance that it has been removed. If it has not, may I suggest that we should look at the issue when the Bill is considered in Committee? Very often, with those involved in organised crime and so on, there is no way of showing that there is a genuine risk of dissipating assets, yet those assets will be concealed, and it would therefore be sensible to enforce their restraint at an early stage.

The pre-legislative scrutiny Committee also recommended that it should be possible to include in restraint orders

“property that the court deems to have been related to the offence”,

such as certain premises or very low-value property, particularly if that property is one of the tools, as it were, that are being used by the people traffickers to oppress and exploit victims. One of the aims of the powers of restraint is to disrupt the capacity of the criminal to continue with exploitation in future. I would be grateful to receive some reassurance from the Minister on those points.

My main point is about female genital mutilation. We know how hard this offence is to prove. Indeed, we have had legislation on the books since 1985, amended in 2003, and yet there were no prosecutions until October last year. That is partly because we have not listened enough to victims and to women in the communities where FGM is most rife. Let us be clear: this is not some quiet little bit of fiddling with women’s bits; it is an issue of abuse against children and violence towards women, and all institutions of the state should be committed to eliminating it.

At the risk of horrifying Members, let us go through the consequences of cutting into a young woman’s genitals, because that is what happens. It can cause haemorrhages and death. It can cause death from tetanus, particularly if it happens overseas—that is one of the things that the Bill is helping to deal with, for which I am grateful. In the short term it can cause shock, open sores, cysts and keloid scarring, among some of the less severe physical impacts. Sometimes the same knife or instrument is used to cut many girls without being sterilised, making the girls vulnerable to HIV infection. Girls who have been infibulated are likely to have trouble passing urine, as the urethra may be obstructed and urine cannot escape easily. They will be prone to bladder infections. Once a girl starts menstruating, it will be hard for menstrual blood to pass through the small hole, which may cause extremely painful periods as stagnant menstrual blood causes bacteria to build up, leading to pelvic inflammation. Infertility may result.

So there are huge consequences to the offence. I welcome the changes in the Bill, which will help to deal with the main reasons why we have failed to prosecute. The main obstacle has been the difficulty in getting testimony. One of the reasons for that is that FGM is usually arranged by close family members of the victim, and children, whether from loyalty or fear, are reluctant to implicate their own parents or other relatives. The anonymity provision might help in this regard, but we also need to beef up victim support. I raised with the Home Secretary when she introduced the Bill the need for refuge provision for girls who are victims or prospective victims of FGM. The lesson we have learned from similar kinds of offences is that if a victim knows that she can be safe, she is much more likely to be a witness to the abuse which has harmed her. As well as legislation, therefore, we must ensure that there is effective protection and refuge for victims of this crime.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Is she heartened by the Royal College of Nursing and other royal colleges adopting a joint approach, particularly to raise awareness within their profession so that there is a requirement for mandatory reporting by health professionals?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Mandatory reporting by health professionals is essential, and it should be a duty on all professions, especially teachers. I agree that any steps which ensure mandatory reporting would be valuable.

The other well constructed amendment that the Bill makes relates to immigration status. Where someone is at risk overseas, the amendment shifts the requirement from permanent residence, which was in the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 and was thought to be sufficient but proved in practice to be insufficient, to habitual residence, so that there can be effective prosecution of cases where people’s immigration status in the UK might be vulnerable. Those steps are important and will make a real difference.

I mentioned at the beginning that legislation is often not sufficient to achieve the desired outcome. We need a multi-agency approach to female genital mutilation, involving education, health, and local authorities, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, so that all the information on suspected FGM cases is shared and communicated appropriately. Institutions must work together on cases, sharing intelligence to ensure that girls at risk are not lost in the system. Even though there had not been a prosecution until October, every prosecution is a mark of failure. It is a mark of a girl who has been cut up. Our ambition should therefore be to change the thinking and to create a consciousness which rejects this form of abuse.

We in Parliament know that we can do that. We have done it on gay rights and gay marriage, for example, and on a number of other things. We can change thinking. However, although I am glad that there are still a few Members in the Chamber at 9 pm on this first day back after recess, this debate is not going to do that. We have to go out there and work carefully with people to make sure that FGM is recognised as a crime and that we work with the communities most affected in order to prevent it.

I was struck by what happened in a meeting I held in my constituency of Slough on 12 December on the issue of women and child sexual exploitation. About 25 women turned up. We were not focusing on FGM, but it was raised by one of the women in the audience. The meeting’s minutes say:

“General feeling that a lot of ‘brushing under the carpet’ still happens in our communities regarding these issues. Much of that is closely connected to misplaced notions of shame/honour and that needs addressing and should not be allowed to go untouched or not spoken about honestly and openly…Strong feelings that women need to be at the forefront of tackling these issues and providing solutions but that hasn’t been case up to now”.

A particular suggestion was made for parents to receive personal, social, health and economic education. I think it would be an excellent idea to educate parents about some of the risks to their children, such as online sexual exploitation and FGM. We could provide such mechanisms in schools to help to protect young girls. I pass that recommendation on to the Home Office team and hope they can make their colleagues in the Department for Education realise what a difference it might make.

I gather from other speeches that there are plans to amend the Bill in a number of ways in Committee, including criminalising coercive behaviour as part of domestic abuse, which I welcome. I want to focus, however, on a proposal made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) relating to child abduction, because I am concerned about the sentences available to people who have abducted children.

I met Abida, who lives in Slough, a couple of years after I was elected in 1997 and she asked me for help to bring back her children. Just a year ago, the perpetrator who had taken away two of her children was successfully prosecuted, but the maximum sentence for such an abduction is seven years. Frankly, that does not seem right, given that a woman has been separated from her children and those children have grown up without the love of their mother or contact with their brother because their father has exploited them. They have spent many years without that contact. Indeed, as a result of the way in which they have been groomed during that process, relationships within the family have broken down.

I do not think that the current maximum sentence is sufficient in such cases. Therefore, if the Bill Committee considers child abduction, I hope that the question of the appropriate sentence, taking into account in particular the amount of time a child has been separated from the rest of their family, is reviewed during that debate.

It is not enough just to pass laws, although that is critical; we have to work together in unison. This debate has shown that Members on both sides of the House think that this Bill moves us forward in many regards, but we will have to work together and with people on the ground. That means using the resources existing in our constituencies to help women to be at the forefront of protecting their daughters and to help girls to protect each other by helping them be aware that such behaviour is illegal and is abuse, and that they can report it and be protected without making themselves more vulnerable to different kinds of abuse within their family. That is what we must all do.

I am glad that these issues—people such as me have blithered on about them for decades—can now be discussed in Parliament, and that we can do something that I hope will be more effective than what we have been doing for the past 20 years.