Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill [ Lords ]

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Second Reading Committee debate: House of Commons
Monday 25th February 2019 General Committees

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee recommends that the Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill [Lords] ought to be read a Second time.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. Hon. Members will have heard that the Bill is a private Member’s Bill—a few moments ago, very briefly, it was not, but it is again, and I am grateful. I thank the Government, who have provided time for the debate, and my hon. and learned Friend the Minister for their collective efforts to protect girls who are at risk of FGM.

Much has been said about why we are in Committee now, and in particular about the role of the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope)—not much of it has been all that polite. I do not want to dwell on that aspect of the matter, other than to say that the Bill is exactly the sort of measure for which private Members’ Bills are useful. It is a small, uncontroversial but important amendment to the law that would not sit easily in any Government Bill currently going through Parliament. I am delighted to have the Government’s support, but I acknowledge that the Bill was introduced by the Cross-Bench peer Lord Berkeley, who became aware of an anomaly in the law and decided to act. He piloted the Bill through the other place with huge passion, clarity and decency.

Although, like everyone in the room, I have known about female genital mutilation for many years, it is only relatively recently that I have been actively engaged in campaigning on the issue. That is largely thanks to the powerful work of FGM survivor and campaigner Nimco Ali, who will be known to numerous members of the Committee. She is an inspiration and I hope that the Bill will go a small way towards honouring her efforts, and those of the many women standing up to FGM in the UK and across the world.

The Committee will be familiar with the horrors of FGM, but they bear repeating, up to a point, to remind us why the Bill matters so much. According to the World Health Organisation, FGM includes

“all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”

It is almost always carried out on young children, and rarely by medical professionals. It has no basis in medicine or, despite what we are often told, particularly on social media, in religion. The practice is often wrongly blamed on Islam, both by extremists who want to excuse it and by others who want to use it as a stick to bash Islam as a religion. In reality, the practice predates Islam and the Koran neither advocates nor justifies it.

The consequences of FGM, of course, can be extreme, and include severe pain, excessive bleeding, infection, menstrual problems, pain during sex and childbirth, and deep psychological trauma. The consequences can last for the rest of the person’s life. It is estimated that around the world at least 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone FGM. In England and Wales, the figure is believed to be approximately 137,000, so it is also a UK issue.

When an urgent question was asked about the Bill on 11 February, several colleagues raised concerns about male circumcision. Whatever one’s views may be on that issue, it is self-evidently not comparable. The medical equivalent of FGM for a man would not be circumcision; it would be removal of the entire head of the penis and much more besides. Had that ever been a cultural practice, I suspect that it would not have lasted more than a generation at most.

FGM has been specifically illegal in the UK since the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985, which was replaced by the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. The 2003 Act, which made it illegal to assist someone performing FGM or to commit FGM abroad, was amended by the Serious Crime Act 2015, which introduced mandatory reporting of FGM and created FGM protection orders. Such orders, which courts can issue to protect girls who have undergone FGM or are at risk of becoming victims, can include any appropriate “prohibitions, restrictions or requirements”, such as forcing the surrender of passports to prevent travel abroad.

The UK was the first country in the world to create a dedicated anti-FGM aid programme. An initial £35 million was pledged in 2013 and an additional £50 million was announced last November. I was delighted to see the Department for Education’s announcement today that FGM will be a compulsory part of all sex and relationships education for secondary school pupils.

The legal and financial apparatus to protect girls against FGM is not insubstantial, but as yet there is no hard evidence of a meaningful decline. In 2016-17, the NHS reported 9,179 cases of FGM, of which 5,391 were newly recorded. It is a source of huge concern that the first successful prosecution for FGM occurred only in January this year, after numerous failed attempts. There is a lot more still to be done, which is why this small but important Bill needs the Committee’s support. I do not pretend that by itself it will stop FGM, but it will provide another legal tool—potentially a crucial one—in the fight against it. Let me briefly explain why.

At present, the Children Act 1989 allows courts to make an interim care order: an instruction to a local authority to share parental responsibility for a child, such as when making decisions on where the child should live or how its welfare should be maintained. To make such an order, which can last up to eight weeks and can be renewed, the court needs to be

“satisfied…that the child concerned is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm”.

I am sure that we all agree that a girl who has undergone or is likely to undergo FGM is suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm. At present, however, the 1989 Act does not allow interim care orders to be issued for FGM. Under section 37, a court may direct such an order to be made only in “family proceedings”, which are defined for the purposes of the Act in section 8. The definition covers the Family Law Act 1996, which deals with non-molestation orders, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, which concerns divorce, and various statutes relating to domestic violence and forced marriage, but not proceedings under the Female Genital Mutilation Act. As a result, it is not open to a judge to issue an interim care order for FGM. That is clearly an omission in the law, and it means that our courts do not have the full suite of powers necessary to protect girls who are at risk.

As Lord Berkeley pointed out when introducing the Bill in the other place, a family court has more powers to protect a girl at risk of forced marriage than to protect a girl at risk of FGM. That needs to be evened out. As David Maddison—the family lawyer who raised with Lord Berkeley that omission in the law—has pointed out, it is a genuine practical concern, not just a theoretical one. There have been occasions when the police have sought an FGM protection order in the family court and the judge has wanted to employ the powers of the local authority in an order. Under the present law, however, judges cannot compel the local authority to act, so they have had to rely on encouragement. The Bill will grant the power that has been missing by inserting proceedings for FGM protection orders made under the Female Genital Mutilation Act into the section of the Children Act that defines which family proceedings constitute grounds for making an interim care order. What it proposes is pretty simple and uncontentious.

I do not imagine that the Bill will lead to a vast number of new care orders being issued—I understand that they are rarely used—but it is vital that judges have all the power we can give them to protect girls who are at risk. At present that is simply not the case. I acknowledge that the Bill alone will not stop FGM from happening, and to anyone who argues that it is not enough, I would simply say that I agree. We need to see much more done to supplement the existing legal powers. That means better mental health support for survivors; better education, so that young girls and boys grow up knowing that FGM is wrong; identifying girls who are at risk; and ensuring that aid money is spent as effectively as it can be, to support heroes campaigning at the grassroots in countries in Africa and Asia where FGM is still prevalent, such as Jaha Dukureh from Gambia, who managed almost single-handedly to force the Government there to change the law to ban FGM.

I look to the Minister to assure us that the Government will redouble their laudable efforts in all these areas. If the Bill protects just a handful of girls from undergoing the horror of FGM, then we will have done something worth while in passing it into law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank Committee members for all their contributions. The Bill, as has been acknowledged, effectively closes a loophole. As my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash pointed out, it is fundamentally about prevention—preventing abuse and preventing harm.

I want very briefly to touch on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole. He and my hon. and learned Friend the Minister are right that it is impossible to estimate the number of cases involved, but we know that in the year to September 2018, 117 FGM protection orders were issued—up about 20 on the previous year and another 20 on the year before that. That gives some indication of the number that may be involved.

The hon. Member for Swansea East and many other hon. Members expressed disappointment that there has been only one conviction. That point was well made, and I think that disappointment is shared across the Committee.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent, because it was her question at Prime Minister’s questions that secured the formal commitment to make Government time available for the Bill. I am really grateful to her for that, and I know a lot of other people are, too.

We heard two powerful speeches from the Front-Bench representatives, my hon. and learned Friend the Minister and the hon. Member for Ashfield, who both fully support the Bill. I am very grateful to them for that, and for making powerful speeches with great compassion. Finally, I thank you, Mr McCabe, for chairing the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee recommends that the Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill [Lords] ought to be read a Second time.