Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Government plans to produce (a) statistics and (b) updated estimates on the prevalence of female genital mutilation (i) nationwide and (ii) by city or region.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a crime and it is child abuse. The Government is clear that we will not tolerate a practice that can cause extreme and lifelong suffering to women and girls.

In 2015 a City University and Equality Now study, which was part funded by the Home Office, estimated that 137,000 women and girls who had migrated to England and Wales were living with the consequences of FGM, and approximately 60,000 girls aged 0-14 were born in England and Wales to mothers who had undergone FGM. This study also provides a regional breakdown of FGM prevalence by local authority area.

Additionally, the FGM enhanced dataset is published quarterly and annually by NHS Digital. The most recent set of annual statistics were published in July 2017 and quarterly statistics were published in March 2018. A detailed breakdown of these statistics by local authority, age at which FGM was carried out and country where FGM was undertaken is available online at https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/female-genital-mutilation. These statistics demonstrate that a very high majority of cases are identified in adult women who were born in Africa or Asia who also underwent the practice in their country of birth.

To improve understanding of the prevalence of so-called ‘Honour Based Violence’ including FGM we have amended the police Annual Data Requirement for 2018/19 to formally record for the first time where a crime has been committed in the context of preserving the honour of a family or community.