Female Genital Mutilation

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I thank and congratulate my noble friend Lady Cox on again airing this important subject. It is outrageous that such a practice should be happening in what we like to think of as a civilised society. Having said that, I do not doubt for one minute that the Government and the various departments involved find this as shocking as the rest of us. However, it is not resulting in prosecutions, so I shall look at why that might be.

When the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, asked a Question about this a few weeks ago, the Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, replied very sensitively about why France has had some success. He said that there is compulsory examination. I took his point that that would not necessarily go down very well in this country. Looking at children’s private parts is a very tricky subject, but in France, they expect people who come there to behave like the French. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, made a very good point that even if we do not go as far as examination—and I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Howe, about that—there might be some aspects of French law that we should take and make it clear that anybody committing this act is committing a crime.

We cannot overstate that there are no medical reasons for FGM. There are no religious reasons in the Bible, the Koran or any holy scripture that justify it. It is about cultural tradition. I completely accept the Government’s point that this is a very tricky area to deal with. However, we have to deal with it. There have to be prosecutions. Reading all the papers that have been assembled, mainly by government agencies, I am struck by the fact that they feel there is a lack of leadership and joined-up thinking. For example, even those cases that come to the attention of the professionals are not being reported as well as they might be. There are initiatives that, with the greatest respect, the Government could take to improve this situation. Let us not wait another 10 years for a prosecution. Let us not wait another five years. Let us not wait another year. We need to see some effective action.

My final point is that I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, about the success of Orchid. It is an example we should look at because it has had real success in various African—mainly sub-Saharan—countries in persuading people that this practice should change.