Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will consider writing to all frontline clinicians to remind them of their statutory duty to record and report female genital mutilation cases which they identify as part of clinical examinations.

The Department’s national Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Prevention Programme aims to improve the way in which the National Health Service responds to the health needs of girls and women who have had FGM, and to actively support prevention. As part of the Programme, NHS Digital issued a Data Provision Notice (DPN) on 25 November to formally communicate their statutory power to mandate the collection of data about the treatment of patients with FGM in the NHS.

The DPN has been issued to all general practitioners and mental health and acute trusts - the organisations upon which this mandate is placed. It confirms what they need to do to comply with the dataset and communicates the legal basis and the benefits of the collection.

The FGM Prevention Programme continues its outreach work with a series of national and online workshops in February and March 2017 to support designated safeguarding leads at NHS mental health trusts and wider mental health services to better understand their responsibilities around the treatment of FGM.