Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Government is taking to prevent female genital mutilation.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a crime and it is child abuse. We will not tolerate a practice that can cause extreme and lifelong physical and psychological suffering to women and girls. Our work to end this practice is an integral part of the cross-Government Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy, which is backed by increased funding of £100m.

We have significantly strengthened the law, including introducing a new offence of failing to protect a girl from FGM, lifelong anonymity for victims, and a mandatory reporting duty requiring specified professionals to report known cases in under 18s to the police. We have also introduced FGM Protection Orders to protect women and girls at the earliest opportunity - since their introduction in July 2015, over 100 orders have been made.

To help raise awareness amongst frontline professionals, in April 2016 we published multi-agency guidance on FGM, which is now statutory, and we have developed free e-learning which has been completed by over 100,000 individuals to date. In addition, the Home Office’s FGM Unit is carrying out awareness raising outreach across the UK.

Significant work is also under way to improve the response from health and social care professionals. The Department of Health, in partnership with the NHS, is leading a £4m national FGM Prevention Programme, and as part of the Department for Education’s £200m Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme a range of projects have been funded. DfE have also invested £375,000 to raise awareness amongst school staff and pupils.