Female Genital Mutilation

Question

15:18:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government how many cases of female genital mutilation have been reported in the past 10 years, and how many cases have been prosecuted.

I thank the noble Lord for his Question, and I know that this is not the first time he has raised this very important issue before your Lordships’ House. The Home Office began collating data on a mandatory basis in April 2019. Since then, there have been 350 FGM offences recorded by the police. We have, though, only seen three convictions. Notwithstanding the complexities inherent in prosecuting these cases, the disparity between police reporting and successful prosecution rates is extremely concerning. We are determined to ensure that all the levers within the criminal justice system are utilised to increase accountability for this abhorrent crime. But the response cannot lie just within the criminal justice system. The extent and complexity of FGM in our society means that we must address it in a multi-agency approach, not least through education and healthcare. That is why, for example, in healthcare we now have FGM clinics, which are mainstreamed in the NHS, and it is why at the borders we have a forced marriage unit on hand when victims are at risk of being taken abroad. It is also why we have had over 50,000 frontline staff undertake e-training in the last year. But the data shows, and the noble Lord’s Question raises the point, that there is much more to be done.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that information and his very encouraging response. Female genital mutilation means cutting off a young girl’s clitoris. It usually happens in a back room off some back street. It is being inflicted on thousands of children every year and yet, in 50 years, as the noble and learned Lord suggested, there have been only three convictions. Like the Post Office, bad-blood and grooming-gangs scandals, people will, rightly, in a few years’ time, demand, “Why was nothing done when we had the opportunity?” So, I am very glad to hear what the Minister says. It is not the Minister’s fault; clearly, it is not—we all bear a degree of shame for this past record. Will he encourage the setting up of a task force, to report very quickly, whose objective will be to increase the number of prosecutions and convictions? Without successful prosecutions and convictions, we will still be failing thousands of innocent children.

I can reassure the noble Lord that I am determined to work with the Crown Prosecution Service, which I superintend, to increase the rate of prosecutions. I am determined we do that in a joined-up way, together with other parts of government and arm’s-length bodies, to ensure there is a whole-system approach to this abhorrent practice.

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My Lords, it is the turn of the Labour Benches.

My Lords, first I will pay tribute to our noble friend Baroness Rendell, who championed this and ensured it was put on the statute book; she is much missed by all of us. Does my noble and learned friend agree that one of the most important things the Government must succeed in preventing is young girls being taken out of the country for this dreadful procedure? I would like to hear how that is progressing. Secondly, we have to pay attention to the hundreds, if not thousands, of women here in the UK who have already suffered this terrible procedure and who need the resourcing and help of our NHS in the special units that have been set up to do that. We have to ensure they are properly resourced.

On the increased protection, there is provision already on the statute book, in Section 3A of the Female Genital Mutilation Act, which is about a failure to protect girls under 16. On the civil side, the family court also has a power to impose protection orders that put in place, for example, restrictions on travel and contact with children. Those are both criminal and civil measures, but, to have real effect, they need to be used more frequently—I am convinced of that. On the NHS, I agree; already there is a lot of work that is being done, and it needs to be fully supported. I had the privilege of meeting with the Vavengers, an NGO working in this field, which does fantastic work to promote the importance of healthcare to the victims of these crimes.

The noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General mentioned the NHS and also FGM protection orders. The facts are these: in the first quarter of this year alone, the NHS reported over 2,000 patients who were the victims of FGM, of whom 970 were newly recorded victims. In the same quarter, the Ministry of Justice tells us there were only 21 female genital mutilation protection orders made. For over 20 years, health professionals and teachers have been under a mandatory legal duty to report FGM, so that sisters and cousins can be protected. Will the noble and learned Lord tell the House what steps the Government are taking to ensure this mandatory duty is enforced in practice? When will we see an increase in the number of young girls actually receiving the legal protection they deserve?

It is going to be fatal to the young girls that we all want to protect if we turn this into a political issue—I am not suggesting that the noble Lord was doing that. He has given the most recent figures, and he is right to do so because those are the figures that we need to focus on, but I am not going to go through the figures for the past 14 years because we need to focus on outcomes. Work is going on across the board, including at the CPS, where we are updating guidance, training and cross-co-ordination with other agencies, and I am due shortly to meet the Director of Public Prosecutions to discuss what more we can do. Again, I stress that this not a problem purely for the criminal justice system; it is a problem that needs to be addressed across government.

Does the noble and learned Lord agree that, as part of the proposed curriculum review in schools, it should be made clear to young parents of the future that FGM is a serious criminal offence for residents in this country wherever in the world the assault takes place, that it carries heavy sentences of imprisonment when prosecutions are brought and that cultural differences do not amount to a defence?

I agree entirely with the spirit of what the noble Lord has said. He will appreciate that I cannot, from this Dispatch Box on an ad hoc basis, determine what goes into the curriculum, but I am convinced that this problem is one that needs to be addressed from the classroom to the courtroom.

My Lords, the low rate of criminal conviction is the result of evidential problems presented by young victims and of family and cultural pressures, but FGM remains a dangerous and illegal practice. In many cases, prevention and protection must be seen as more effective than prosecution. Does the Minister agree that the more reliable measures of prevalence are the important FGM protection orders made by the family courts—albeit only 930 have been made in the last 10 years and 21 in the first quarter of this year—coupled with the excellent data now collated by the NHS? We are now just at the time of year before the long school holiday, when girls are most at risk of being taken abroad and subjected to FGM. Will the Government remind professionals of that and of the particular need for vigilance?

My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord’s question and agree with the points that he has made.

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We will hear from the noble Baroness opposite.

My Lords, your Lordships supported an amendment to the Health and Care Act 2022 to make virginity testing and hymenoplasty illegal, as part of broader efforts to address violence against women. Like female genital mutilation, these practices are typically hidden within families and communities, making evidence hard to gather. There have been police investigations here, some of which are ongoing, but there have been no convictions here yet. What specific steps are the Government taking to encourage reporting, and how are they working to build stronger evidence?

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. This is, of course, another aspect of honour-based abuse, and I am sure the whole House agrees that there is no honour in honour-based abuse. In the criminal justice sphere, to help to bring stronger cases in this area, the CPS and the police have a joint protocol on honour-based abuse, and the College of Policing has just published guidance for managing these types of offences. Separately, the Department of Health and Social Care has multi-agency guidance available for organisations and anyone who may come into contact with women and girls affected by virginity testing and hymenoplasty. It sets out the steps that an organisation should follow, including safeguarding procedures where it deems someone to be at risk of those abhorrent practices. As with FGM, we are determined to do more across the system, not just, but very much including, the criminal justice system. We are convinced that successful prosecutions not only amount to justice for the victims but send a clear deterrent message to society.