Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that Primary Care practices have the ability to submit securely information on patients that have been subjected to female genital mutilation to the statutory database.

The Female Genital Mutilation Enhanced Dataset is collected via the NHS Digital Clinical Audit Platform or CAP, which is an easy to use, intuitive, data submission tool that needs no specific training.

NHS Digital has published clear guidance online to support National Health Service organisations, including primary care practices, to register to access CAP and to submit information on the system. In 2017, the process was simplified and streamlined to further support primary care practices to register on the CAP, and it was confirmed that the Senior Partner or Caldicott Guardian at a practice can submit the registration to access CAP.