Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill [Lords]

Sarah Champion Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

I could not agree more vehemently with my hon. Friend. FGM is not just a kind of child abuse; it is child abuse by any definition or metric.

I said earlier that FGM has no basis in medicine and, despite what we are often told, nor does it have any basis in any religion. The practice is often wrongly blamed on Islam—this can particularly be seen on social media—both by extremists who want to justify or, in some cases, even advocate FGM and by others who wish to use FGM as a stick with which to bash the religion itself. In fact, the practice predates Islam, and the Koran neither advocates nor justifies it in any way at all.

The consequences of FGM can be extreme. It can lead to severe pain, excessive bleeding, infection, menstrual problems, pain during sex and childbirth, and deep, long-lasting psychological trauma. In fact, the effects of FGM can, and often do, last for the duration of a person’s life. It is estimated that, around the world, at least 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone FGM. In England and Wales, shockingly, the figure is around 137,000, although not all of them were subjected to FGM in either England or Wales.

I apologise to those of a sensitive nature, but during a recent urgent question on this issue, after the Bill was blocked by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), a number of colleagues raised concerns about male circumcision as if there were some kind of comparison between the two. Whatever our views on male circumcision, it must be obvious that it does not compare to FGM. The male equivalent of FGM would not be circumcision; it would be the removal of the entire head of the penis and much of the shaft, too.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

We often hear this argument comparing the two, but male circumcision, in my experience, is rarely, if ever, done to subjugate the boy, whereas FGM is very clearly done to end women’s sexual pleasure.

[Zac Goldsmith]

The hon. Lady is exactly right, and I thank her for her intervention. It is also worth saying that, were a culture to experiment with such an extreme form of male circumcision on a comparable level to what young girls are experiencing around the world, I suspect it would not last more than a single generation, and it certainly would not require legislation and a campaign of the sort that Nimco Ali and her colleagues have waged.

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[Mrs Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend for doing that. He is right to say that it is a jigsaw of issues that must fit together. I see Members sitting on the Front Bench from three different Departments, working seamlessly together on these issues. This Government have a lot to be commended for, especially with regard to the cross-departmental working on these issues, to the way in which they have characterised these sorts of acts against women as cowardly acts, and to making sure that the right support is in place for victims and for bringing perpetrators to justice.

In any of those issues—I am sure that those Ministers sitting on the Front Bench will be very aware of this—there is a need to have support in place, as the pressure that additional legislation brings, particularly on our colleagues in local government, cannot be ignored. I am particularly grateful to the Government for making sure that additional resources will be available to local authorities to deal with any extra pressures that this amendment to legislation imposes. When it comes to issues to do with children, where pressures are already acute, we cannot expect local authorities to be effective unless they have the resources to put the necessary support in place.

[Sarah Champion]

I completely agree with the right hon. Lady on the need for additional resources for local authorities. Does she share my concern that the National FGM Centre—a collaboration between Barnardo’s and the Local Government Association—is having its Government funding stopped in 2020, especially given that it is the main resource that local authorities are using at the moment?

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Lady raises an important point about specialist provision and resources. I hope that the Ministers on the Front Bench will take that point away and consider how we can ensure that very specialist resources are available to local authorities, because it will be difficult for them to have that sort of expertise in-house. The hon. Lady makes an extremely valuable point, as somebody who has campaigned vigorously and with incredible compassion on these issues.

I want to underline the important role of the Department for International Development, which other Members have referred to in interventions. We should be proud that our country is the first country to have a dedicated anti-FGM programme, working across the globe. It is important for the House to underline that the Department has supported 8,000 communities to abandon, or campaign to abandon, FGM.

The Government have supported the Girl Generation programme—the largest ever global work on the issue, with over 900 organisations working to end FGM. The work that is happening outside the UK is not only important for women in those countries, although that would be justification enough to do the work; it is also invaluable in underlining the human rights of those women in their own countries. Last but by no means least, this work helps to change attitudes that can still influence communities in the UK. The importance of DFID’s work has to be acknowledged. Those who may be naysayers about our contribution to this global world should reflect a little on their views when they consider how this work can so enormously change the lives of millions of women across the world.

This is not a debate in which we will be thinking about internal processes too much, but it would not be right not to point out at least that the reason that we are here today is because of our private Members’ Bills system, whereby an individual Member—quite unrepresentative of the majority feeling of the House—can block a Bill. This is not just a Bill that will do something very small and day to day; it is so important to women’s lives. The whole House has to acknowledge that the need for reform of our private Members’ Bills system is long overdue, and we need to find a way of giving priority to that reform of this place. If we do not, we continue to run the risk of this House being brought into disrepute by individual Members exercising what might be a very principled point of view on the procedure of this place—although I am not sure that this particular objection was as principled as that. We need to acknowledge that this place can look prehistoric from the outside. If we are going to regain the trust of people in Parliament, this sort of reform has to be given priority at some point in the parliamentary calendar.

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[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

It is a great honour and privilege to be present in this debate because I really think that this House works best when we come together to protect the most vulnerable. I hugely congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), who has done so much to secure the safe passage of the Bill. I add my support to the recommendations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) on how we can better protect all children from female genital mutilation.

As has been mentioned, FGM is not a cultural practice and we should not be seeing it as such; this is child abuse and it must be dealt with harshly, as child abuse. FGM has been illegal in the UK since 1985, but the lack of prosecutions has enabled people to come up with the myth that it is a cultural practice, rather than a crime against a child. I am very pleased that last week the strong sentence of 11 years was given to someone who facilitated FGM. That is the sort of message that needs to go out—that we will act, prosecute and jail people for this crime against children.

FGM is a big issue in this country. NHS Digital statistics from April 2017 to March 2018 show that there were 4,495 newly recorded cases of women and girls where FGM had been identified, that 6,195 individual women and girls had an attendance where FGM was identified or a procedure relating to FGM was undertaken and that there were 9,490 attendances reported to NHS trusts and GP practices where FGM or a procedure relating to FGM was identified. These figures, though, will be a massive underestimate of the actual problem of FGM in this country because of the hidden nature of the practice. Research has shown that there is no local authority in England and Wales where there is not a woman living with FGM. It is estimated that 103,000 women between the ages of 15 and 49, and 10,000 girls between the ages of four and 14, have undergone FGM, and there are a further 60,000 girls at risk of FGM in the UK.

I would like to bust the myth that this is just about UK girls being taken abroad for this practice. It is not—it is happening in this country as well. In recent years, there has been a phenomenon of cutting parties where people have figured out that it is cheaper to bring the cutter into this country and invite girls round—well, invite their parents round—for them to be cut. This is a UK problem.

That is not to say that girls are not taken abroad. Yes, this happens to young girls, but the most horrific case that I heard of was of a woman from London, born and brought up here. When she was 15, her parents asked if she would like to go back to the country that they grew up in to see what it was like. Of course, she welcomed this opportunity, and, at 15, went back. Literally as she came off the plane, she was introduced to the lady who was going to take her back to the village. At 15, this Londoner was taken back to the village, pinned down and cut. How does someone get over something like that? To be honest, she has not got over it.

Since 2015, health professionals, teachers and social workers have had a mandatory duty to report known cases of FGM to the police, but that is when it happened to people under the age of 18. I would like there to be consideration of support for women over the age of 18 once the crime has been committed. I had a meeting with a dozen women. Between them, they had about 20 children, so they had been to at least 20 GPs, 20 midwives, 20 nurses, 20 consultants—20 health professionals. Almost all the women had been advised to have caesareans because they had been stitched so closely that the damage it would have caused to even try to give birth naturally meant that it was not going to happen. The health professionals recognised that, because of their FGM, they could not give birth naturally. Not one of those women had that raised with them, ever, by any of those health professionals. No one offered them support or the chance for a prosecution—and that is just a group of 12 women that I met.

We talk about what is happening in France. I have only recently discovered that in the French health system, someone who has been subjected to this crime gets reconstructive surgery as an adult. A friend of mine, Marie-Claire, said that after having her reconstructive surgery, she felt like a proper woman—a sexual woman. She felt able to have sexual relations with her partner for the first time. That literal rebuilding of someone’s self-esteem as well as their body is something we need to be doing in this country. If someone was in a car crash and needed facial rebuilding, we would see that as something that the NHS would do, so why do women not automatically get that right for this crime?

This is also about justice. We need these women to know that they can get justice. As I said, it is great that the prosecution has happened, but there are many historical cases where justice has not even been mentioned to these women because what they have been through has not been recognised.

Having undergone FGM is a real barrier for women in coming forward for things like cervical screening. Many women do not want to go to a GP to report gynaecological issues because they are concerned that it will be raised and there may be prosecutions against family members. We need to get the reality of what is going on out there so that people can access the proper health support they need. If a woman is repeatedly missing her smear, rather than just writing her off and seeing her as someone who is not engaging, we need to be asking questions: “Are there reasons why you don’t want to come for your smear, and is there a way we can help and support you to overcome that?”

[Hannah Bardell]

The hon. Lady might be aware of the project My Body Back, set up by an incredible woman called Pav. It has a clinic in London and one in Glasgow, providing services for women who have suffered sexual violence or, indeed, FGM. I would commend those services to any woman who needs that specialist care.

[Sarah Champion]

I have heard of it but not visited. However, that is two centres for an estimated 160,000 women and girls. We need to have more and it needs to be statutory.

When we talk about prosecutions and mandatory reporting, the crime has already been committed and the damage, both physical and psychological, has already been done. We need to be doing much more about prevention. I would like to speak in support of the National FGM Centre, which is a collaboration between Barnardo’s and the Local Government Association. It receives funding from the Home Office, the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care. None of those Departments is continuing its funding beyond 2020 because it is deemed that the centre ought to be generating its own income. I understand that. However, its main support services go via local authorities, which are already suffering under huge cuts and do not have additional resources to start buying in specialist support for FGM.

The National FGM Centre does great work. It embeds FGM specialist social workers within multidisciplinary safeguarding teams. It works from the bottom up, empowering communities to tackle this crime themselves and to get the word out that it is a crime and it should not be happening. The centre also does amazing training for professionals and provides a knowledge hub so that all local authorities can share the information. With the best will in the world, if the funding stops, the prevention work will stop with it.

[Mrs Miller]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. We agreed earlier that it is important for local authorities to have the funding, but I am not sure whether I agree that we should not encourage local authorities to take on this responsibility, because surely getting them to prioritise funding of facilities such as the one she mentioned is a great way to try to raise their awareness of this issue.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We have 13 Members waiting to speak, and the Minister needs to wind up the debate. I do not want someone to miss out on the opportunity to make a speech. Can we all look after each other in this important debate?

[Sarah Champion]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention, but I disagree. We need a centre of expertise. When resources are tight, we need to be able to push and make local authorities prioritise. If the Minister wants to do that and guarantee that all local authorities will make provision and ring-fence that money, I will be happy, but there still needs to be that centre of expertise.

The other area that I would like to touch on is relationships and sex education. I welcome the fact that children will now be taught about FGM at secondary school, but we need to teach them about it at primary school as well, because the majority of the crime happens to primary age children. They need to be empowered to understand what is going on and that it is a crime so that we can get ahead of this. All that said, I am hugely grateful that we are taking forward this amendment to the law.