Violence Against Women and Girls

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke. I pay tribute to those who spoke before me, and I will comment particularly on the powerful message from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) about the need to stand up against things happening in this country that must be exposed and not hidden away—female genital mutilation, and early and forced marriage.

I very much—perhaps “enjoyed” is the wrong word—appreciated being part of the inquiry by the International Development Committee. I confess that I had not given enough thought to this issue over the years, and the process opened my eyes to the extent of violence against women and girls, not only in the developing world but, as we have heard, in the developed world. I am pleased that the Government have made the issue a focus of their work, led by the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development, and by Ministers in the Department for International Development, including the former Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr O’Brien), and the current Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), who has rightly championed the issue and made it a focus of her work.

The issue was particularly brought home to me by three students who approached me from King Edward VI school in Stafford, in my constituency. Those three girls—Maya Lucey, Amy Mace and Chloe Taylor—wrote to me saying that they would like to speak with me about it. I had not spoken to them about it before, but what they had heard in the press and elsewhere had made them concerned about female genital mutilation in the UK. I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking to them last Friday, or rather of listening to what they had to say. I was profoundly impressed not only by the extent of their knowledge, but by their commitment to stopping FGM in this country. I pledged that I would do what I could to raise the matter in this debate and to supporting all the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire and others continue to do in Parliament. I pay tribute to the girls’ teacher, Mrs Jo Bentham, who ensured that they were supported in talking about an issue that is particularly difficult for some people of their age to raise.

Members have already discussed the statistics on FGM prevalence rates. They are as high as 98% in Somalia and 94% in Sierra Leone; I will mention Sierra Leone a bit later. An estimated 3.3 million girls a year globally are still at risk from the practice. A study conducted in 2007 by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the City university midwifery department, using modelled estimates, concluded that 66,000 women resident in England and Wales had undergone FGM, and that 23,000 girls under the age of 15 were at risk of it. This matter is of great importance not just in countries in the remit of the Department for International Development, but right here on our doorstep. I welcome the work being done by DFID. We understand that, in March 2013, it dedicated £35 million to ending FGM in one generation. Part of that money will fund social change, communications and research. The goal is ambitious and worthy, and I congratulate DFID on its commitment.

In the time remaining to me, I will concentrate on the vital matter of changing social norms. I well remember living in Tanzania and having a good friend from an area where FGM was the norm—everybody allowed their young daughters to be subjected to it. He was determined that that should not be the case for his daughters, and instead of taking a negative or critical approach, he stood up and said, “We’re not going to allow our daughters to go through this. We are setting an example.” That comes back to a point made by previous speakers: it is vital that we engage communities, not just lecture them. We must work with women’s groups, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire said, and with men and boys, to say that FGM is completely unacceptable.

I want briefly to address the question of early marriage, and one problem that it brings and to which FGM contributes: fistulas. When I was in Sierra Leone at the end of last year, I visited the Aberdeen Women’s Centre in Freetown, which has been equipped through generous donations from Scotland, in particular, and from Ann Gloag. We saw women there, some of them very young, whose lives were being transformed by the repair of their fistulas, which had developed largely as a result of their being married and giving birth at an early age. It made an enormous difference to them. Without it, they would have been almost outcast and ashamed to be in society.

We have heard about the critical matter of water and sanitation. While I was living in Tanzania and my wife was running a public health programme there, one key thing that she wanted was for shallow wells to be drilled in every village to enable women and girls to get water locally, rather than having to travel 5 km, 6 km or 7 km for it. Such travelling not only meant that they could not receive education, but put them and their mothers at risk of violence. The project made a big difference, especially as the community was involved in not only raising the money for the wells and pumps in the first place, but maintaining them. One could see that when a community was committed to the well-being of the girls and women in their midst, it was quick to raise the necessary money.

I conclude by again commending the Government’s work in this area. We must ensure that it continues and is not a theme for only a year. It has to be a theme for this Government and many Governments—and for many generations. That is so obvious, yet it sometimes seems to escape our notice.