Female Genital Mutilation

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

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

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

“based on unreliable data…several years out of date”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Keith Vaz]

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

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

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[Lorely Burt]

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

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

[Ms Abbott]

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

[Lorely Burt]

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

[Ms Abbott]

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

[Lorely Burt]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

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

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

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

[Ms Abbott]

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

[Helen Jones]

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

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

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

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

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

[Ms Abbott]

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

[Mr Dai Havard in the Chair]

[Helen Jones]

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

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

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[Helen Jones]

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

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

[Ms Abbott]

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

[Helen Jones]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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[Norman Baker]

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

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

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

[Ms Abbott]

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

[Norman Baker]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Norman Baker]

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

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

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

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

[Ms Abbott]

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

[Norman Baker]

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

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

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

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

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

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

[Ms Abbott]

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

[Norman Baker]

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

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

[Ms Abbott]

indicated dissent.

[Lyn Brown]

Hardly!

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

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

[Ms Abbott]

They are not linked.

[Norman Baker]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Ms Abbott]

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

[Norman Baker]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Ms Abbott]

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