Female Genital Mutilation

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the e-petition relating to stopping female genital mutilation in the UK.

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Robertson. Shortly, I think we shall be joined by the Minister for Crime Prevention, the Minister responsible for this area—[Interruption.] Indeed, he is rushing into Westminster Hall as I speak. Well done to the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) for sitting in for him; I think he was trying out the chair. I am also pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones).

This is a critical debate. It takes place on the eve of the start of the first parliamentary inquiry into female genital mutilation—an inquiry that begins tomorrow, with the hearings initiated by the Home Affairs Committee. This is the right time for Parliament to discuss this issue.

I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, for granting this debate and I also thank the other members of her Committee. I appeared before it for the first time to ask for the debate and I was delighted that its members were able to say yes. I particularly thank the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), who I think is planning to attend this debate. She certainly supports it; she supported the application for it and we would not have secured it without her, so I am extremely grateful to her.

I also thank the members of the Home Affairs Committee, who all co-signed the application for the debate: my hon. Friends the Members for Dudley North (Ian Austin), for Newport West (Paul Flynn), for South Ribble (Lorraine Fullbrook), for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) and for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), and the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless).

This is the first debate in this House on this subject since the relevant legislation was updated in 2003. I cannot think of a crime as horrible as FGM that has not been the subject of a prosecution since it became illegal. On numerous occasions, Members take part in debates on Home Office and other Bills, passing legislation and bringing in new offences, but this is the only crime that has not been prosecuted.

We need to look carefully at the reasons for the lack of prosecutions; we need to hear, as we will during the Select Committee hearings, the testimony of individual survivors and others. We also need to hear from Members who have raised the issue on so many occasions during questions—including today’s questions to the Home Secretary, when it was raised four times. Although some people may feel that the crime is hidden, it is very much on Parliament’s agenda.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 140 million girls and women alive today have been forced to undergo FGM. It further estimates that 66,000 women resident in England and Wales in 2001 had undergone FGM. There is another estimate that more than 24,000 girls in the United Kingdom are at risk from FGM.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I do not know whether my right hon. Friend is aware that some time ago I tabled a number of parliamentary questions to try to find out whether the lack of prosecutions was because the Crown Prosecution Service was not willing to prosecute or because the police were not passing such offences to it; it looked as if very few cases were being referred to the CPS for consideration.

What assessment has my right hon. Friend made of the action plan from the Director of Public Prosecutions? When it was launched—quite a while ago now—I thought it was a really positive step forward in encouraging the police to report more cases of FGM to the CPS, but nothing seems to have happened as a result of it.

[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.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this vital debate.

I started practising as a prosecution barrister in 1990. Prosecuting FGM cases involves the great difficulty of obtaining the evidence and securing convictions, and at that time there was the same difficulty with sexual abuse and child abuse cases. People were only beginning to come forward then, but the situation has changed during the past 20 years. When the right hon. Gentleman and his Committee consider this matter, they should learn the lessons of the ’80s and ’90s about how evidence can be given, including the use of televisual transmission, so that victims are able to give evidence about events that in many cases took place many years before.

[Keith Vaz]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He is not just a distinguished former barrister, but a distinguished author. He is right—things have changed. We should not stand by and allow crimes to be committed, especially given that how evidence can be given has been transformed since he started as a lowly paid legal aid barrister in the north of England. Things have changed, and the hon. Gentleman is right. New technology provides us with the ability to look carefully at these offences.

So far, the Select Committee’s inquiry has received 53 pieces of written evidence. That is higher than average— by the time we complete our hearings, I expect we will have even more. We are to report in July. We want to give the Government plenty of time to consider our conclusions, so that we can see whether they are serious about adopting the recommendations that we have made.

Of course, we will want to look at the legislation. Does the current legislation need to be toughened up? There are two relevant Acts: the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 and the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985. We need to look at them together and see what further changes we need to make. I do not believe that there is a reason to toughen up the legislation; the issue is not about changing the law, but about how we implement the law. If I am wrong, I am sure that witnesses will tell us so as the inquiry progresses.

Hundreds of prosecutions have been successfully secured in France. Protection Maternelle et Infantile, a state-funded medical body, conducts check-ups on pregnant women and on children in the first six years of their lives. I am not sure that any equivalent body is doing that in our country. The process results in the highest rates of FGM detection and it is one of the most significant factors behind the high number of successful prosecutions.

However, we need to be clear that what is being done in France is controversial; it has not been met with universal support from individuals and community groups. We need to look at and build on the success of what has happened in countries such as France. I do not know whether the Minister has gone to France to meet his opposite number, but the Committee will want to do that as part of its inquiry.

I have just returned from Nairobi, where we have been looking at counter-terrorism as part of the Committee’s brief. We met a number of Kenyan officials who were pleased at the change in law in Kenya and other countries and wanted to share their experience with us. I was told on my way to this Chamber, by a number of people coming to watch these deliberations, that we should also concentrate on countries such as Sierra Leone, because there is a real problem there. As well as looking at our own country, we need to look abroad to see what is happening—in Africa and other parts of the world and in those European countries where there have been prosecutions.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. It seems to me that evidence could come from doctors and hospitals; such medical evidence should be sufficient to start a serious investigation to deal with the problem. That could happen now, although I am not sure whether it does. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will enlighten me.

[Keith Vaz]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. He is right. Common sense dictates that the first thing one would do is go to the doctors, because they would know better than anyone else. We can make suppositions, but at the end of the day, when people are being treated in hospital or undergoing other forms of assessment, the doctors are in the relevant position.

I would not want to say that the hon. Gentleman has identified one of the Committee’s recommendations, bearing in mind that we are only starting the inquiry tomorrow, but common sense dictates that the medical profession has a huge role to play in trying to help us solve the problem. However, we will not know how until we have the chance to hear from them.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I met a group of women health workers in Bristol on Friday. My right hon. Friend knows that Bristol has been at the forefront of the campaign against FGM. Some brilliant work has been done by the young women there. The health workers obviously come into contact a lot with women who have undergone FGM, but usually at the stage when they are giving birth and going through maternity services. That is far too late to identify who carried out the operation on them, given that that usually happens before the age of nine.

The health workers were convinced that the best solution would be to have examinations of girls in schools. I agree with my right hon. Friend that this is an incredibly sensitive matter, but I just wanted to place on the record that the health workers I spoke to thought that the solution would be for us to have some system of inspecting girls at risk.

[Keith Vaz]

That is extremely helpful. If my hon. Friend would like to put the group that she contacted in her constituency in touch with the Select Committee, we would very much like to hear from them. One feature of this inquiry is not just to hear from the men in suits, who always want to give evidence to Select Committee inquiries—although I hope that the Minister will come suitably suited and booted when he appears. We also want to hear from others, including all the stakeholders. Local groups know more about this subject than those of us who sit in Westminster. Please put us in touch with the groups, so that we can hear from a wide range of individuals and organisations about this subject.

[Bob Stewart]

I apologise for intervening again, but I recall, colleagues, that when primary schools take children in, there is a medical for boys and girls. If that was to be somehow tightened up, we might get better evidence about what is happening. Again, I may be wrong, but that is what I think. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman, who is a friend, will enlighten us again.

[Keith Vaz]

I do not know. It is about 52 years since I was in primary school.

[Bob Stewart]

Me too!

[Keith Vaz]

I was going to say that the hon. Gentleman looks younger than me. I cannot remember what happened at primary school, even though I am sure some newspaper will find out what I did there 52 years ago.

We will find out; this is precisely why we are having this debate. We will study every contribution from every Member, because these are the kinds of things that we need to find out.

[Guy Opperman]

I welcome the fact that the right hon. Gentleman is looking to take evidence from the French example, because surely that is the country we can best learn from; it has dealt best with this problem. Does he agree that we will need to be robust with the communities where the problem is taking place? As the French former Justice Minister, Rachida Darti, said,

“This mutilation has no foundation in any religion, philosophy, culture or sociology…It cannot be justified in any way”,

because, quite simply, it is a crime.

[Keith Vaz]

That is helpful. I am glad the hon. Gentleman quoted Ms Darti. I do not need to use that quote since he has cited it so eloquently.

Yes, we need to find out what is happening and we need to be robust, but we should also understand that this is an area of the criminal justice system; the hon. Gentleman described how it has improved. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) warned us about getting children to give evidence against their parents. These are important issues. They are not cultural issues, but about how we approach our system of justice.

As well as hearing from the Minister and others, we hope to hear from health care professionals, the police—we need an explanation about why there have been so many years without a prosecution—and the CPS, because these matters go to the CPS. We have had an enlightened DPP in the past few years in Keir Starmer, who made some useful statements about the issue, but unfortunately no one was prosecuted while he was DPP. The inquiry will hear from Alison Saunders, the new DPP.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which gave written evidence to the Committee, set up a helpline last year to see how many calls were received and from whom.

To date there have been 152 calls, e-mails and other communications to the helpline: 31 were from professionals seeking general advice on female genital mutilation; 56 were inquiries about more detailed information or training, and 65 were referrals by professionals concerned about specific young people. That gives us a good breakdown of the number of people involved in the study. I thank the NSPCC not only for submitting written evidence but for sharing that important information with us. The statistics prove that we need not only prosecutions, but education and awareness, without which we will not be able to get to the bottom of this terrible crime, and we will miss opportunities to prevent such crimes and to take appropriate action.

I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) has joined us. In the House this afternoon he probed the Home Secretary on female genital mutilation and rightly praised the Government for their work so far, but he also urged more action. He has been one of the great campaigners on this issue, and I pay tribute to him.

[Guy Opperman]

I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way one last time. Does he accept that, although prevention is obviously the most important part of any campaign, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police must have a strong emphasis on prosecuting events that may have taken place 10, 20 or 30 years previously where there is evidence that allows such cases to be brought, provided that the victim is willing to come forward?

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I caution against taking a historical approach too far. I understand what he says. If someone has committed a crime, no matter how long ago, we have to follow the evidence and search for the truth, but the evidence is in front of us now. Female genital mutilation is happening now, so we have to prevent it from happening at this very moment. He is right that we need to go back to find those responsible. Debates, inquiries and discussions such as this, and the consequent media attention, will mean that many people come forward to talk about things that happened many years ago, and perhaps they will now feel stronger about giving evidence than they would have done when it happened to them.

The urgency is that, as we speak in Westminster Hall today, the statistics show that in some part of the country a young girl or woman is being subjected to FGM. It is happening as we speak. I do not want to say to how many people it will happen during this three-hour debate because I have already cautioned against being over-reliant on estimates, but it is happening. We need to act now.

I conclude by congratulating those who initiated the e-petition, without which we would simply not be holding this debate. It is true that we could have taken our place in line to apply to the Backbench Business Committee for a debate, but the e-petition has enabled us to come to Parliament with a body of opinion behind us in the country so that we could put that information before the Backbench Business Committee. I thank those who led and signed the petition to the Government, which amassed 106,281 signatures: Leyla Hussein, whom I have mentioned; the Daughters of Eve; and Efua Dorkenoo OBE from Equality Now. I also thank those who signed and organised the Change.org petition, particularly Fahma Mohamed—that petition obtained 229,925 signatures. Taken together, a third of a million people have signed petitions to ensure that female genital mutilation was brought before the House today.

Some things happened almost immediately, before this debate and before the Select Committee’s hearings, which begin tomorrow. I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State for Education, after meeting Fahma Mohamed and others, has agreed to write to all primary and secondary head teachers to remind them of their responsibilities. That is very important, but when the Select Committee produced a report on forced marriages because we were concerned about the number of young girls who were disappearing in the summer term to be married abroad and we asked the Secretary of State to write to remind head teachers to look out for sudden falls in the attendance rolls, he and his Ministers decided not to do so. The FGM reminder is an excellent opportunity to address that responsibility in relation to forced marriages.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

I am obliged to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I apologise for arriving late, and I congratulate those who secured the debate. The Secretary of State for Education is writing to schools, but should we not now seriously consider a mandatory obligation to report any suspicion, whether it is in schools, hospitals or any other field? People should be forced by law to report such suspicions because FGM is a serious criminal offence.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend speaks with great passion on this subject, and he is right that that is something we need to consider. I will not pre-empt the Committee’s conclusions—the inquiry has not even started—but that is something we will need to consider. If people are required to report their suspicions, we are more likely to discover crimes that have been committed.

I am nearing the end of my contribution, so I just say to hon. Members that I will not give way again because I know that others want to participate, but I thank everyone for what they have said.

I finish by acknowledging what the newspapers have done. Alexandra Topping of The Guardian has written many impressive pieces on what has been happening, and Martin Bentham and Anna Davis of the London Standard won Women on the Move awards for raising awareness. I am pleased that the Government have pledged £35 million of dedicated foreign aid to address FGM abroad, and I welcome the work of the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire as chair of the United Nations women all-party group and the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd). I also welcome the extremely helpful work of the Select Committee on International Development and the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce).

There is still a huge amount to be done and a long way for us to go to stop this brutal crime. Although the wheels have started to turn in recent months, the best way to ensure that the Government act is for Parliament and the people to come together to ensure that the Government do not lose the momentum that has begun over the past few weeks and months. It is deeply worrying that when, for example, Leyla Hussein stopped shoppers in Northampton to ask them to sign a petition helping her to protect her culture, tradition and rights, many people did not sign. She asked people to sign the petition in good faith, but 19 people declined in a 30-minute period. It is important that we acknowledge that, although we know about the problem, there are many more who do not know about it. We must continue to raise awareness.

Since the debate began, two members of the Home Affairs Committee have joined us: my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North and the hon. Member for Cambridge. They have both been at the forefront of securing the Committee’s inquiry. I know that they will want to ensure that the Committee looks for all the reasons why there have been no prosecutions, so that we can get those prosecutions and so that women and young girls in our country and abroad can at last feel that justice is being done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lyn Brown]

The unit is in its infancy and is currently developing how it will work within the community. I will go on to discuss what the unit expects to do in the next bit of my speech.

When a maternity professional becomes aware of a mother who has been the victim of genital mutilation, they are required to make a referral to safeguarding officials for child protection reasons and to invite the woman to access the genital mutilation prevention service. The service is geared up to support the victims of female genital mutilation to empower them to understand the negative consequences of mutilation and to enable them to become an advocate against the female genital mutilation of their own daughters. The service will provide advocacy for victims, involving extended family and spouses where appropriate, and thereby support women in their own environment to take a stand against the practice.

In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question, Newham council is training community-based female genital mutilation champions and is supporting victims to report domestic sexual violence to the police. So it is working with women in the community to work with women in the community in order to raise awareness of the act’s illegality.

[Keith Vaz]

I thank my hon. Friend for her eloquent speech. I am pleased to hear about what Newham council is doing, which is no doubt a result of her prompting and campaigning. Will the people involved in the unit also be members of the community? Units that are set up sometimes do not reflect the clients and diasporas involved. Is she confident that the unit will reach the roots of the community?

[Lyn Brown]

I am supportive of the action that Newham is taking to try to address the issues that may exist in the community, but I will not take the credit. Councillor Robinson and Councillor Paul have been active in action tackling violence against women and girls in our community, and it is their work that effectively led to the unit’s creation.

I am told that the unit will be highly sensitive. It is being commissioned in the grass roots of the communities themselves and will not be a council office. The service will seek to educate local health visitors, GPs, educational professionals, children’s services and police professionals and to support them in making relevant referrals. The council is also intent on gathering evidence on trends and issues concerning female genital mutilation in the borough, and I hope that that will help to inform the work not only of Newham council but other councils and communities that are affected. I am encouraged that the CPS thinks a prosecution for female genital mutilation is closer, because that would raise the issue higher in the mind of the community. Unless we start to prosecute those responsible, to raise awareness and reduce stigma, I am not sure we will ever begin to eliminate the awful practice in question. That is why the debate is so important, and why I am delighted to speak in it.

I urge all Members of the House, and indeed communities across the country, to continue to highlight the issue and campaign for appropriate resources to tackle a brutal practice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right. Many young people take the issue seriously. Peer-provided information is often much better for young people than some old sod like me going in to lecture to them—[Interruption.]

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with everything my hon. Friend has said so far. She has heard about the initiative by the London borough of Newham, which my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) explained. If it is successful, and obviously we will wait to the see the outcome of the project, does my hon. Friend think that it perhaps should be rolled out in other parts of the country where FGM is a real problem?

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

Ms Jones, perhaps we should record your remark as “old soul”.

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[Norman Baker]

I will touch on what other Departments are doing as part of my response to the debate today. In answer to the hon. Lady’s question, I am not sure what the protocol is either. However, if the Chairman and members of the Select Committee wanted to invite other Ministers, I would have no problem with that; if those Ministers wished to give evidence, they would. I am, for example, giving evidence to a Select Committee about crime figures, which is largely a Ministry of Justice issue.

[Keith Vaz]

To answer my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) through the Minister, yes, we will call Ministers from other Departments: Health, Education and the Attorney-General’s Department. We try to share Ministers around as much as we can, as that is best for our recommendations.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

We have to be clear about whether the law is faulty, whether there is a reluctance to use it or whether other obstacles are preventing it from being used successfully. I am not ruling out looking at the law; I am merely saying that we have to look at all possible avenues to find out exactly what the problem is. The DPP is doing that through her work with the police, and I am sure that the Home Affairs Committee will do the same in its investigations.

[Keith Vaz]

The points raised by Members are important in answering the question why; however, we must look forensically at why there has not been a prosecution. A change to the law, or how we implement it, might be required, but we must not rush to judgment. Although we need to act quickly, we must get it right for the future.

[Norman Baker]

The Home Office is looking at what has happened to date. We are looking at whether there are sufficient referrals, or whether there is a hold-up elsewhere, and we welcome comments from anywhere in the House about how matters might be improved. We are open-minded.

The Ministry of Justice is considering whether a civil law remedy might provide an additional tool with which to tackle FGM. The idea is that those afraid of being subjected to FGM, or friends or family of those at risk, could apply for an order so as to put the potential victim under the protection of the courts. That would be a proactive rather than reactive step. The MOJ is also seeking views from key stakeholders about the merits of a civil law measure and how that might work alongside criminal legislation. That aspect is already being considered in Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

It is a pleasure to serve under you for the first time, Mr Havard. Thank you for coming to chair this debate. I will put the fact that the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), is here on the record. I want to pay tribute to her as a Back-Bench MP. No other Member in the House has been as assiduous as she has been. I know that a lot of Members, some of whom are here today, have worked very hard with her. I am pleased that she is now in the Department of Health, because she will be one of the Ministers who will be called before the Select Committee to explain what she is doing in Government, having done such excellent work already.

I thank all the right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in this debate. The hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) rightly told us that in order to deal with the issue effectively, there had to be clear leadership, education and awareness. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) said that we need to be open and honest about names and exactly what the processes were. I have never known her to be someone, especially having served in the Whips Office, not prepared to put even controversial words on the record, and she did so today. I was pleased to hear about what is happening in Newham, which the Committee will visit. I also commend the work of Councillors Robinson and Terry Paul for what they have done on this issue.

The hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) has put out a six-point plan with benchmarks and recommendations to the Select Committee. We will follow what he has to say, not only because he is my next-door neighbour in Norman Shaw North, but because I know that he, as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Home Office, will want to make sure that that plan is adhered to. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) was, as usual, passionate and eloquent, and rightly raised issues concerned with the community. She also specifically reminded us of the international dimension. FGM happens not only to British girls; it also happens abroad.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) also intervened on a number of occasions, and it was good to hear from her. I was heartened by what both the shadow Minister and the Minister said. They both seemed committed to making the changes that are necessary. Tomorrow we begin the first set of evidence in the Select Committee. I can promise the House that we will be thorough and we will hold people to account for the lack of prosecutions. We will ask the Government what they are proposing to do, and will put forward a series of recommendations that I hope the Prime Minister can take forward when he hosts the conference in July.

Sometimes at prime ministerial conferences, Parliament is left out of the discussion. I hope that the Prime Minister will invite Members of this House to take part. I have today heard some of the most eloquent speeches in my 27 years in this House. There is a lot of expertise in Westminster and we should work together. We all want the same thing. There is a unity in Westminster Hall today that I see too rarely, unfortunately. I know I may sound like a Liberal Democrat, but I want everyone to get on together and work together on the same agenda, because the real suffering of our children and the women in this country is there for everyone to see. FGM is a cruel, horrific crime and we will bring the people responsible to justice.

Question put and agreed to.