Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he has taken to ensure that health care professionals report cases of female genital mutilation.

To support National Health Service staff to deliver their legal obligations under the female genital mutilation (FGM) mandatory reporting duty and to support them in their work, the Department’s FGM Prevention Programme partnered with NHS England launched a package of health-specific materials for NHS organisations to support them in implementing the duty. The materials were developed with stakeholders and NHS England and contain guidance, posters, slideshows for training sessions, video interviews with professionals, a flow-chart, and an information leaflet for patients and their families.

These materials support healthcare professionals to carry out their duties by providing guidance on what healthcare professionals should do if they think a child has had or is at risk of FGM, guidance for confirming ‘known’ cases of FGM in under 18-year-olds, explanations of what the duty means for healthcare professionals, health training packages to introduce the duty as well as materials to explain the duty to patients and families affected by FGM.

Where professionals fail to comply with the duty, this should be dealt with in accordance with professional bodies’ existing disciplinary procedures on a case by case basis.