Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment her Department has made of the level of female genital mutilation in the UK; and if she will make a statement.

The Coalition Government has part funded a new study by Equality Now and City University into the prevalence of female genital mutilation in England and Wales.

The interim report, published in July 2014, has estimated that approximately 60,000 girls aged 0-14 were born in England and Wales to mothers who had had FGM, and that approximately 103,000 women aged 15-49 and approximately 24,000 women aged 50 and over who have migrated to England and Wales are living with the consequences of FGM. In addition, approximately 10,000 girls aged under 15 who have migrated to England and Wales are likely to have suffered FGM.

The full report, with data disaggregated to a local level, will be released in the new year.

In addition, since April 2014 NHS staff have been required to record in a patient’s healthcare record whenever it is identified that the patient has
suffered FGM. This applies to all NHS clinicians and healthcare professionals across the NHS. The collection became mandatory on 1 September 2014.The first aggregated monthly data return from acute hospital providers inEngland, published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, reported that in September 2014 there were 1,279 patients identified as having undergoneFGM prior to the reporting period, who were still being actively seen or treatedfor FGM-related conditions or any other non-related condition, and 467 newly identified cases of FGM nationally.