Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Helen Jones(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
4. What recent assessment he has made of how effectively police and prosecutors co-operate in securing convictions of perpetrators of child abuse.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
6. What recent assessment he has made of how effectively police and prosecutors co-operate in securing convictions of perpetrators of child abuse.
Female Genital Mutilation
Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Helen Jones(10 years, 1 month ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Helen Jones
My hon. Friend is right. I have long been an advocate of compulsory sex and relationship education in schools. It is essential for our children to grow up confident in themselves and able to form healthy relationships. She is also right about training. As the documentary programme, “The Cruel Cut”, showed, if a young child turns to a teacher for help and does not get that help, it is clear that much more must be done.
Teachers have many demands on their time, but all schools need to have safeguarding plans in place and those safeguarding plans must include dealing with female genital mutilation. Teachers must be able to recognise the signs that a child is at risk or that they have already been cut, and know what to do when that happens.
Kerry McCarthy
I was at St Brendan’s sixth form college in my constituency on Friday and I met a group of young women to talk about a range of issues. They were very strong in their support for the need for compulsory sex and relationship education. I had the opportunity to sit in at the beginning of a class where four young women from Integrate Bristol, which is at the forefront of campaigning against FGM, were explaining to a roomful of students what FGM was all about by showing them a film and encouraging them to discuss the issue in workshops. Those students were 17 and 18-year-olds, and I thought that was a valuable initiative. I was impressed by how serious they were. Hon. Members can imagine that, particularly if there are young lads in a class, they might not take that sort of thing seriously, but they all seemed to take on board the serious message that was being conveyed.
Helen Jones
My hon. Friend is right. Many young people take the issue seriously. Peer-provided information is often much better for young people than some old sod like me going in to lecture to them—[Interruption.]