Female Genital Mutilation

(asked on 2nd March 2020) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much funding the Government has allocated to tackling female genital mutilation in each financial year since 2015; and how that funding was allocated.


Answered by
Victoria Atkins Portrait
Victoria Atkins
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
This question was answered on 14th July 2020

FGM is a crime and it is child abuse. The Government will not tolerate a practice that can cause extreme and lifelong physical and psychological suffering to women and girls. We significantly strengthened the law in 2015 in order to improve protection for victims and those at risk, and to break down the barriers to prosecution.

The table below comprises funding allocated by UK Government departments to tackle FGM since April 2015.? It excludes:

  • staffing and other administrative costs;

  • grants which were made to organisations to tackle both FGM and other issues, where it is not possible to break down the money spent on FGM and on those other issues; and

  • components of broader funding provided to statutory agencies and office holders (namely the NHS and Police and Crime Commissioners) which those agencies and office holders chose to spend on FGM.

All figures are rounded to the nearest £1,000. Financial years run from 1 April to 31 March.

Financial Year

Total Domestic Government Spend

2015/2016

£2,718,000

2016/2017

£1,664,000

2017/2018

£1,918,000

2018/2019

£1,814,000

2019/2020

£432,000

This funding comprised:

  • Home Office expenditure on grants to four organisations for projects dealing solely with FGM as part of the Building a Stronger Britain Together Fund (2017/18-2019/20); and on a communications campaign to raise awareness of the risks of FGM (2017/18-2019/20).

  • Department for Education expenditure on grants to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) (2015/16); to Barnardo’s/National FGM Centre (2015/16-2019/20); and to two other voluntary sector organisations (2016/17-2017/18).

  • Department of Health and Social Care expenditure on the FGM Prevention Programme (2015/16-2017/18), as well as additional funding in 2018/19 to embed the improvements delivered by that programme across NHS services.

  • Funds allocated by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government to 37 local authority areas to fund locally-driven outreach, engagement and communications on the practice of FGM (2018/19).

The Home Office also awarded £476,000 in grants to two projects dealing solely with FGM as part of the Violence Against Women and Girls Service Transformation fund. As these grants were awarded as a block encompassing three financial years, the figures cannot be broken down into financial years.

Information on the amount of funding provided by the Department for International Development (DfID) since 2015 is not available by financial year. DfID's spending by calendar year is outlined here: https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2020-03-02/23440/

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