Female Genital Mutilation

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is an enormous pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir.

It is important to note that female genital mutilation has been on the agenda for many years. Only this week, however, our Select Committee held our first evidence session on the matter since the publication of our report last July. One can never predict when one will get a debate in Westminster Hall, but it is extremely timely that we are able to have this debate so soon after our follow-up evidence session.

I am delighted that the Minister for Crime Prevention will respond to the debate. She is well known for her involvement in efforts to combat FGM over many years. Now that she has returned to the Home Office, after a period as an International Development Minister, she can once again focus on the important issue of FGM.

I am also pleased to see in the Chamber my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), who is another great campaigner on FGM. She has tabled parliamentary questions and motions on the matter because so many people in her constituency are affected by that terrible activity.

The whole Select Committee does not normally turn up for debates on our reports, but I am pleased to see the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) in the Chamber to support us. However, he has other important duties in the House to attend to, so I understand why he will not be staying for the whole debate.

The Home Affairs Committee was united and unanimous in presenting our conclusions to Parliament and the Government last year when we published our report on FGM. At the outset of the debate, it is worth reminding ourselves of the numbers involved. By their very nature, they are estimates, but it is important to read them into the record so that people are aware of them. An estimated 125 million women and girls worldwide have undergone FGM, and an estimated 3 million girls are subjected to FGM each year. It is estimated that 170,000 women and girls in the United Kingdom are living with FGM and that 65,000 girls aged 13 and under are at risk of FGM.

More than 200 FGM-related cases were investigated by the police nationally in the past five years but, unfortunately, it has taken 29 years since the criminalisation of FGM for the first prosecutions to be brought. As we debate the issue today, a prosecution is ongoing in another part of London. We cannot talk about the circumstances of that case, and nor would it be right for us to do so, so I refer to it only in terms of it being the first such prosecution. Interestingly, it was initiated only two days before the Director of Public Prosecutions came to give evidence to the Select Committee. Having waited 29 years, it was something of a surprise suddenly to get the first prosecutions only days before we looked at the subject, but we welcome them. There have been no prosecutions since, which is an issue for us and for the Government.

I described the figures I cited as “estimated” because the prevalence of FGM in the United Kingdom has been difficult to determine due to the hidden nature of the crime. In two London boroughs, for example, almost one in 10 girls is born to a woman who has undergone FGM, meaning that they are also at risk of being cut themselves. We have little information about the children who are most at risk, or even about the extent to which the cutting is occurring in this country or when the girls are taken abroad.

This crime—the mutilation of women and girls—is taking place in the shadows, so it is important that we shine a light on what is happening. As we speak, somewhere in London a young girl is being cut, and we in Parliament are unable to do anything to stop that happening. That was why the Committee’s recommendations were so forceful about the need for substantial changes to how things are done.

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

Will my right hon. Friend say something about whether it is now necessary to create the criminal offence of failing to report suspicion of FGM? Would that help?

[Keith Vaz]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment as shadow Solicitor-General. If the British people vote in a Labour Government and he is fortunate enough to become Solicitor-General, his Department—the Attorney-General’s Office—will have responsibility for that, so it will be for him and the new Government to say, “We will change the law.”

The Committee made specific recommendations on mandatory reporting and the criminalisation of failing to do so. The professions, however, are not so keen on that and would prefer to deal with this on a professional basis. We need to keep the law under constant review, but there is already legislation in place that has not been used. If my hon. Friend becomes Solicitor-General, we will expect whoever is his DPP to be a little more active than their predecessors of the past 29 years in ensuring that things happen.

The World Health Organisation defines FGM as

“all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”

That will include, in our view, designer work on genitals that is done with the woman’s consent.

FGM is usually carried out on girls between infancy and the age of 15, with the majority of cases occurring between the ages of five and eight. It is commonly performed by a traditional practitioner who has no formal medical training, without any kind of drugs to assist with the pain that the young girls are suffering, and using knives, scissors, scalpels, pieces of glass or even razor blades. We heard harrowing testimony during our inquiry of how girls are often forcibly restrained, in some cases by close members of their families, including their mother and aunts. While the performance of FGM might be done by a stranger with the instruments that I described, the act usually involves the connivance and support of members of the family including, in some cases, mothers.

During our inquiry, we heard some excellent evidence from those involved in dealing with FGM and campaigning on the issue. On Tuesday, we took evidence from two campaigners called Leyla Hussein and Alimatu Dimonekene. We also took evidence from Keith Niven, who is head of the rape and child abuse command in the Metropolitan police, Professor Nigel Mathers from the Royal College of General Practitioners and Janet Fyle from the Royal College of Midwives, all three of whom also gave evidence during the original inquiry. In addition, during the original inquiry, Leyla Hussein appeared before us, and we also took evidence from Professor Janice Rymer, Obi Amadi, a community practitioner, Dr Kerry Robinson, Dr Comfort Momoh, Linda Weil-Curiel, a lawyer from Paris, and Dr Emmanuelle Piet, a female gynaecologist who is county medical officer in a district in France.

The Committee’s conclusions were quite clear. We lamented the lack of prosecutions, so we were glad when Alison Saunders came before us to announce that prosecutions were taking place. Rather bizarrely, I found out about the first prosecutions on the Friday before that evidence session in a supermarket in Battersea, along with the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who is another great campaigner on FGM. We were there to talk about diabetes when the call came through to her that the first individuals had been arrested and would be charged. I pay tribute to all her work in the House on the issue both before and after she became a Minister, and she still has an interest as a Health Minister.

There is no doubt that prosecutions can send out the powerful message that the Government are serious about an issue, so the lack of prosecutions relating to FGM—only two in 29 years—is lamentable. The Committee said that we need many more prosecutions. It is not possible to match up the hundreds of thousands of girls affected worldwide, and the thousands affected or at risk in our country, with the fact that there have been only two prosecutions. We are not saying that we should prosecute for the sake of it; we are asking why there have not been sufficient prosecutions, and that is when we must look to the various agencies and their reactions.

Hon. Members will know that whenever the Select Committee conducts an inquiry, we come away with one standard recommendation: agencies concerned with a policy area have to work together. That is absolutely clear as far as FGM is concerned. There are some individual practitioners—Dr Comfort Momoh, for example, whom we visited at St Thomas’s hospital to look at her clinic and to talk to some of the women who were waiting to see her—who have tried to bring agencies together, but the process has taken far too long, and the agencies involved have become institutionalised.

We were especially critical about the lack of action by the police. We were not very impressed with the evidence given by the Association of Chief Police Officers lead. We did not feel that the answer to FGM was more seminars, discussions and conferences. We believe that the action required as a result of our report should be on the front line, engaging with community organisations to ensure that action is taken. We were not pleased with what the police had done.

On Tuesday, Detective Chief Superintendent Niven reminded us of evidence that had been given to us previously: the police cannot take any action if there are not sufficient referrals. At that time, the police were saying that it was not their responsibility, as they would act and investigate as soon as somebody came to them, and bemoaned the fact that not enough people were reporting the issue. We therefore must go to the next stage in the chain: social workers and doctors. The Committee believes that when doctors examine a young girl and find that FGM has been committed against her, they are under a duty to report it. We were of a view that there should be mandatory reporting, with a sanction for those who fail to report. Colleagues from the Committee—I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) here, as he took part in the inquiry sessions—put this question to all our witnesses: what should the sanction be? A number of them talked about the need for criminal sanctions, depending on the seriousness of the failure to report, which suggested that some individuals deliberately wished not to report, while others did not know what they were looking at.

Frankly, I was surprised to hear from some of our witnesses that doctors might not know what FGM is. Given that it takes seven years to train a doctor and medicine is one of the most difficult subjects to get into at university, I would have thought that most people who came out of that training would know whether FGM has been committed against a patient, rather than requiring further training. Of course we need particular FGM training, but doctors ought to know when something is wrong. I was really surprised that people, including social workers, were saying, “Well, the doctors might not know.” When we asked why, they said, “They may not be trained about it.” That is a big area that we need to look at, and the Committee believes it is important that we do so.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

The information given to us by a number of witnesses was that although prosecutions in Britain have been very few—there have been hardly any, although the first are now taking place—in France there have been 40, and sentences have been imposed. Why should there be that difference, bearing in mind that this barbaric custom must be eliminated as far as we are able to do so?

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The French need to be congratulated on the way they have dealt with the issue. He will recall the evidence given to the Committee by the witnesses from France whom I have already mentioned. I went over to Paris to meet doctors and prosecutors, and I was extremely impressed by not just the passion of those on the front line but the willingness of the authorities themselves to get things done. We went to meet the officials of the relevant Minister. They were determined to ensure that that willingness continued. We could not understand why there was a difference between what the French were doing and what we were doing, with so many prosecutions in France and only two in our country.

We asked every one of our witnesses from Britain whether they had gone over to France to look at good practice. Frankly, none had done so, from the ACPO lead to those who run our royal colleges. It is really important that we compare what is being done abroad to ensure that we are doing the right thing.

We also believe it is important that all schools provide training for teachers on the issue on in-service training days. Although we did not take direct evidence from schools to the extent that we would have wished, simply because we did not have time to see everyone, we felt that that training was important. Teachers and those in the education profession should be aware of and able to deal with the issue. If we look at a place such as London, there is no reason why every teacher in every school ought not to be made aware of the problem. They should be told about it and told exactly what to do about it, so that we can get to the truth of what is happening.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I apologise because, alas, I am unable to stay to the end of the debate. I joined the Committee after the original report was published, but have been at the subsequent sittings. The Chair rightly talks about the need for prosecutions, and we have better examples to follow in France. He also rightly talks about the need for better training and awareness, although, frankly, ignorance is no defence in this case. However, surely the heart of what we need to do is to challenge the culture and mentality of communities and families who allow FGM to go on, whether we do so through schools educating girls that they have a right to say no, or through working with the communities to say that it is an act of barbarism and a terrible form of child abuse. That is where the root of the problem lies, and it is what has to be rooted out.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I will come on to the role of the community and family members, but he is right to raise the matter at this time. I agree with everything he said; this is a matter for communities and families.

We have dealt with the police and the lack of action by the police. The report has dealt with the comparisons with France. The report deals with the prosecutors. We have dealt with the medical profession, but before I finish with the medical profession, I have to say—this is my personal view—that of all the witnesses who came before us, the royal colleges seemed to lack understanding of the seriousness of the subject. They kept talking about the need for guidance and guidelines and for it to be dealt with on a disciplinary basis within their professions. We were talking about criminal sanctions for doctors who failed to report. They were relying on patient confidentiality to ensure that, whoever came before them, the information was kept within the parent-doctor or client-doctor relationship. We did not agree with that. We feel that the medical profession and the royal colleges have not acted swiftly enough to deal with the issue, because they are not sensitised to it; they do not have enough expertise in dealing with it.

There are individual doctors in different parts of the country who do have expertise. I remember doing a radio interview on this. There is a doctor in Reading who has made it her life’s work to deal with FGM, so many women go to Reading to see her, but that kind of expertise needs to be taken all over the country. St Thomas’s hospital is a classic example. Comfort Momoh is doing wonderful work there, but she has built things up herself; no one asked her. She has developed that work and ensured it will help women and children.

[Mr Winnick]

In order that there is no misunderstanding by those who may be sensitive, in the medical profession or elsewhere, that this could be a form of racism, should we not make it absolutely clear that what we are discussing has absolutely nothing to do with the Islam religion as such and that the leading campaigners—very courageous people whom we should praise, as I am sure my right hon. Friend has done—are themselves Muslims?

[Keith Vaz]

Yes. I support that absolutely. I am sure that my hon. Friend was moved, as I was, by the fact that Leyla Hussein broke down in tears before the Select Committee on Tuesday when she was asked whether she had been subjected to death threats and other threats to her and her family. The courage of people such as Leyla Hussein goes against those who believe that some kind of political correctness means that people cannot talk about these subjects—that the community is somehow on its own and no one can comment. As my hon. Friend said, this is barbarism—brutality—and it needs to be dealt with. There is no community, religious or political justification for what is going on, which is why it needs to be stopped.

To finish my point on the medical profession, it needs to do much more. This country does not do mandatory examinations of young children as France does. That is not what we do here, but we believe that if a doctor comes across this, there should be a mandatory duty to report.

Let me deal finally with where we go from here and what the Select Committee hopes will happen to its report. The Home Affairs Committee does not believe in publishing reports with a lot of recommendations and then just walking away from them. That is why this week we revisited the conclusions of this report and took fresh evidence. I can say now, even though we have not written another report, that I was not overly impressed that huge progress has been made since we published this report, but we made a promise to the campaigners that we would look at the issue again, so we will produce a report as a result of our revisiting it. However, it will be for our successor Committee in the new Parliament to look at it again.

The worst possible thing that we could do for those who suffer every day is to produce a report, let it lie on the shelf, wait for the Government response and not pursue it. We wish to pursue this matter until we see real change, and I do not mean just the kind of FGM that we have been discussing today. We raised with all witnesses that which is happening as we speak in places such as Harley street—private clinics that women go into to create what are described as designer vaginas. They consent to that happening; they are not forced to do it by individuals holding them down. They go voluntarily, for whatever reason—peer pressure or another reason—and have these operations themselves. I believe that this should be a criminal offence, and I am very pleased that all the witnesses who gave evidence to us this week—barring Detective Chief Superintendent Niven, who thought there should be a debate about this—also felt very strongly that it should be a criminal offence.

The argument is that we can allow this to happen if there is consent and it is done in the private sector, but not if it is done in people’s homes and redone sometimes in the public sector when women go to hospitals and doctors perform the operation again, for whatever reason. We should not have double standards. That is why I believe that what we have proposed should happen.

I wish that I could say in conclusion that, as a result of something we have done, someone has been prevented from being the subject of FGM. We do not claim that. All we say is that we hope that we have raised the issue in a positive and constructive way. I believe that we are pushing at an open door. Government and Opposition are united on doing something about this. I saw the Prime Minister’s personal commitment during the Girl summit. Leaders came from all over the world to support the initiative that he and the Department for International Development had taken.

The Minister should take credit for the Girl summit and her involvement in that. Everyone is for it and everyone is united, but this practice is still going on in London, Leicester, Bristol and Manchester and is not being stopped. We have to stop it, because that is the right thing to do, it is the humane thing to do and it protects the human rights of girls and women.

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[The Minister for Crime Prevention (Lynne Featherstone)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I congratulate the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) on securing this debate, and I thank him and other Committee members for their interest in the issue and their detailed report. I am pleased to see the public health Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), arrive; she has campaigned long and valiantly on this issue.

The coalition Government formally responded to the report on 9 December, setting out how the majority of the recommendations are in line with work that the Government are already undertaking. I will touch on some of them in due course. Many powerful contributions have been made to this debate, for which I am grateful; it has been a good discussion. This is an issue on which I am pleased to say all sides agree. It is probably the first issue I have campaigned on in politics where I have not found anyone against me, including the media.

After my speech, I intend to pick up on the points made by hon. Members before concluding. As set out in our response, the Government agree fully with the Committee’s assessment that tackling FGM requires a comprehensive approach. We recognise that the issue must be addressed through a range of measures focused across prevention, enforcement, support and protection. At the Girl summit last July, we announced an unprecedented package of measures to tackle FGM domestically, and we are on course to deliver those commitments ahead of the election.

Time, although I have a lot of it, precludes my setting out point by point everything that this Government have done to tackle FGM. Our actions include updated guidance, communications campaigns, training materials and a suite of resources for front-line professionals and communities, but I will provide more detail about how that action has contributed to increasing awareness of and focus on FGM. Demand for awareness material has increased even since the Girl summit. Since July 2014, we have received more than 230,000 orders for the materials, which include copies of guidance, fact packs and posters.

Although I hear that those measures are about process, the demand created by the high-profile nature of the issue is reaching people. The online training tool, while not the end of the line—I agree that colleges need to train their professionals—is making a substantive difference. Calls to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children’s dedicated helpline have almost doubled in the six months since the summit, but the coalition Government recognise fully that we must sustain and build on that momentum if we are to protect the thousands of girls at risk from this horrendous practice.

I recognise that it is always helpful to have the Home Affairs Committee hold our feet to the fire. As a campaigner who kicked off the Government campaign—it only really fired up about two and a half years ago with the launch of the £35 million campaign to support the African movement—I think that things have moved on apace, and I agree that holding feet to the fire must be done regularly. The worst thing that could happen would be if all the work that all of us have done, and the passion that we feel across all parties, lost momentum in successive Parliaments down the years.

[Keith Vaz]

I acknowledge the work done in this area by the public health Minister, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison).

May I hold this Minister’s feet a little closer to the fire, as she has offered to have them put there, especially in relation to Government funding of community organisations involved with this issue? We were very surprised that the organisation headed by Leyla Hussein, for example, receives no Government funding; it receives funding from Comic Relief, which is not yet part of the Government, but no direct Government funding. I put that question in particular to the Minister.

Also, on the issue of awareness, does the Minister agree that it is important that we fund organisations that can get into the community, rather than just giving out Government leaflets and doing this work through Government agencies?

[Lynne Featherstone]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but we are already funding community organisations. Of course, anyone who does not get funding always says, “I haven’t got funding.” We are trying to underpin a number of organisations, including with funding. There is a £270,000 European fund and a £100,000 Home Office fund, and they are both funding community organisations. I went to visit one in Battersea, in fact. I am sure that the public health Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, will want to talk about that if she intervenes on me.

Furthermore, community champions are being created—10 feisty females who are taking this message right into the communities. It is not only the Somali community that is affected; so often that community is put forward, and of course it has an extremely high prevalence of FGM. However, a whole range of communities are affected. There are champions from all of them who can take the message right into the heart of their communities, where they are accepted in a way that middle-aged politicians would not be. That is not ageist; it is just—

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[Keith Vaz]

I am most grateful to all those who have participated in the debate, as well as for the commitments made by the Minister. We in this House can ensure that we continue to raise awareness. I pay tribute to newspapers such as The Guardian and the Evening Standard for the articles they have published on this subject, and to all the campaigners involved. I am glad that the Minister will ensure that the issue is in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, and I hope all the other political parties that have been represented in the debate will ensure that it is in theirs.