Serious Crime Bill [Lords]

Debate between William Cash and Lord Mann

Monday 23rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

I am extremely glad that we have this opportunity to discuss FGM and wish to thank those who have made the discussion happen. I have corresponded with the Home Secretary, the Secretaries of State for Justice and for International Development and the Leader of the House and met them to discuss all the matters to which I am about to refer. We have also had advice from some very capable and senior barristers. Sir Keir Starmer, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, completely supports what I am about to say, as does Aileen McColgan of chambers. These matters have been pushed forward by the not-for-profit organisation Justice for FGM Victims, and I would like to pay tribute to Sarita Bingeman for her work on this over many months.

Amendment 20, which stands in my name, is simple and incredibly short—all it would do is leave out “the” and insert “a risk of”. As I have said repeatedly in interventions, it is not good enough simply to rely on the fact that the act of female genital mutilation has been carried out, for example when notifying the police or dealing with guidance, which is quite vague and is not specific enough to deal with the problem of girls being at risk.

I will briefly give the House some figures. About a decade ago the number of girls and women in England and Wales who had undergone FGM was approximately 66,000. Shockingly, that figure is now estimated to be 137,000. Equally worrying is the number of girls in England and Wales under the age of 15 who are at risk of FGM, which over the same period has increased from about 20,000 to an estimated 60,000. I am talking about 60,000 girls under the age of 15 who are at risk. That rise is further demonstrated by official figures recorded since the new reporting system was introduced by hospitals in the UK last year. They show that 2,269 girls and women who had undergone FGM were treated in hospitals in November 2014 alone, and of those 466 were newly identified cases. That is very alarming and unacceptable, and there is an urgent need to prevent the number growing further. This is an unforgiveable crime. It is beyond imagination that it is going on, and indeed that it is increasing exponentially at the rate I have described.

I am glad that the Government have brought forward a power to make an FGM protection order. All I am asking for, on the best legal advice, is that the words “a risk of” be included in paragraph 1(1)(a) of schedule 2, which is set out in clause 72. Sub-paragraph (1) would therefore read:

“The court in England and Wales may make an order (an “FGM protection order”) for the purposes of —

(a) protecting a girl against a risk of commission of a genital mutilation offence”,

rather than simply

“(a) protecting a girl against the commission of a genital mutilation offence”.

The Bill currently does not state explicitly, despite the intention that it should do so, that the order may be applied for and/or granted in the event of a risk that a genital mutilation offence may be committed. Although some are arguing that there could be some difficulty interpreting the words in relation to forced marriage orders, the fact is that it is apples and pears.

When we are dealing with forced marriage, we are dealing with people who are much older and with different circumstances. We are not dealing with five and six-year-old children who do not know what is being done to them. The horror and brutality of FGM must be dealt with. We cannot simply deal with the circumstances by analogy, as has been suggested to me by some technical advisers and lawyers. I am a lawyer myself; I was shadow Attorney-General. I do not misunderstand the nature of questions of interpretation. We have to tailor the circumstances to the problem that we are faced with. We are faced with a massive problem so it is essential that we deal with it.

Some have said that guidance would be sufficient. The guidance, which everybody in the House can look at, does not deal with the specific problem of those at risk. As I said, on the issue of notifying the police, that would apply only where the mutilation had already taken place. These are small girls. The practice cannot be allowed to carry on. We must do something about it. If I may suggest it, everybody should vote with me on this issue, including the Government. I ask the Opposition to be good enough to vote with me as well.

Let me give an example. On 3 April 2014 the Department for Education published updated statutory guidance on safeguarding. It was called “Keeping children safe in education”. The guidance tells teachers how to identify girls who are at risk or who have suffered FGM. It was e-mailed to every school in the country and on the same day a letter from the Secretary of State was e-mailed to all head teachers, drawing their attention to the guidance. The letter was e-mailed to 31,660 addressees in 25,000 schools. As at 30 April only 43% of recipients had opened the e-mail, and only 30% of recipients had clicked through to the guidance on safeguarding. That is why the legislation is needed.

Further statistics for each London borough show that the response rate was significantly worse in some areas, including some where large numbers of girls were from communities that had traditionally practised FGM. In Hackney, for example, only 25% of the 91 heads had read the guidance, and in Lambeth and Southwark the proportion who did so was only 34%, yet those girls are at risk. Other front-line workers have said that faced with the confusing number and breadth of guidelines, protocols and regulations that often appear conflicting, they have turned to the legislation—the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003—to provide clarity for themselves. But as the shadow Minister said, only two prosecutions have taken place and neither was successful. What are we doing in this country? How are we allowing FGM to happen? I appeal to Members to vote for my amendment.

A number of front-line professionals from the health, education and social services, including the child protection sector, were interviewed by Justice for FGM Victims. All of them stated that they would welcome the guidance that would be provided if the amendment were accepted, but not otherwise. They believe that the explicit mention of the requirement to apply successfully for a protection order would support front-line staff and empower them to take action where they thought there was a risk of FGM being committed against a young girl or woman.

FGM is practised in secret. It is extremely difficult for care professionals to know whether a person is at risk. Therefore as a deterrent and in order to catch the perpetrators, it is essential that the words “a risk of” are included. This is not a small matter. It is a small amendment about a very, very big matter. Girls are being victimised, abused and terrorised by FGM, and it is happening on our watch. It must be stopped.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I welcome various sensible and positive suggestions. I shall speak to new clause 2, which I trust the Government will accept. If not, we will give the House the opportunity to decide whether it should be accepted. I am sure, Mr Speaker, that in today’s rather confused timetable you will indicate the appropriate time at which to do so.

I wish to make three substantive points in relation to the new clause. I thank those in every part of the House who have added their name to it. The abuse in Rotherham has been described as the tip of the iceberg. It is a rather easy phrase to use. I do not think that the majority of people out in the country, if they have thought about the language used, believe that that is true. They think they have seen the bad side and that there may be a bit more of it, but that it cannot get worse than that. My experience is that Rotherham is no different from anywhere else, except that it has had a detailed inquiry which has quantified the problem better than in other places. There are some specific and uncomfortable elements to the problem there that certainly differentiate it from my area, but I know that my area is no worse than anywhere else.

When I have used the opportunities I have in my weekly newspaper columns to suggest to victims, current or past, that they should come forward, I expected a few people to come forward. What I did not expect is somebody new to come forward every week. I did not expect people to fly back to my constituency from across the world, as they have done and as more wish to do, to give me precise evidence that they have given to nobody in 30 years. They know that that will never lead to a prosecution, but when they spoke out before they were not believed. They speak of individual, specific, single incidents of sexual violence, on different scales, of differing natures, yet every week new people—my constituents—are coming forward.

It is almost as if the process began with the easier cases—easier in the sense that the people were more prepared, and the cases were more specific, more identifiable and more prosecutable—and, as the weeks go by, the bigger ones come. I have a brand-new case now. People do not make up such allegations. One cannot make up what I was told by somebody younger than me. The sexual violence and other violence is not even the most horrific part of it. At the age of 11, that person was put into slavery in a workplace and location that I can identify. I am not going to name it as that is the prerogative of the person involved. I think he will name it, then everybody in my area will be able to identify it. He mentioned witnesses whom he could identify and names that I know.

That went on year after year, and what did my constituent and other kids of 11 or 12 do? They ran away. What happened when they ran away? They were returned time and again to the same perpetrators by the police and the social workers, until one heroic social worker rescued my constituent, unlike the other kids living in that foster home, who were not rescued. He has got on with his life and had spoken to nobody until he came to me. The report is being prepared in great detail and will go to the police. I do not know whether those who covered up for the school by falsifying its records in saying he was there when he was not—the employer and those working there alongside an 11-year-old, then a 12, 13, 14 and 15-year-old, during those years—are all still alive; presumably some of them will be. There will be a major investigation.

That is just a single example; I have not mentioned the other victims. If it happened in my constituent’s time, what about the kids before or the kids after? I make a few discreet inquiries and vast amounts of things immediately come out that people know about—a huge web. This was just one foster family among many. It was horrendous, systemised abuse. The system was at fault, and everyone within it, because these kids were regarded as commodities. They were to be sold, and they were sold—in this case, into actual, technical slavery. It was a money-making activity.