Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the female genital mutilation (FGM) unit will be given the remit, powers and budget to become the sole source for safeguarding girls at risk and eradicating FGM.

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.

The Government has taken a range of measures to support professionals, increase our understanding of FGM and co-ordinate activity across Government.

This includes:

• a mandatory reporting duty requiring regulated health and social care professionals and teachers to report known cases of FGM in under 18s to the police came into force on 31 October 2015.

• publishing new multi-agency guidance on 1 April for all frontline professionals, including the police, which is statutory, for the first time.

• over 70,000 professionals have completed our free FGM e-learning, which we have updated to include information on the recent changes to the law.

• the Department of Health’s £4 million FGM Prevention Programme which is improving the NHS response • Department for Education have funded the Barnardo’s and Local Government Association’s National FGM Centre which is working to strengthen the social care response.

The Government also recognises the importance of gathering and disseminating information on the prevalence of, and attitudes to, FGM. In addition, we are part-funding a 2015 prevalence study and we have also introduced the recording and publication of FGM patient data across the NHS in England. We will not stop FGM until we have changed attitudes within communities. In July 2016, the Department of Health delivered a targeted patient and public facing FGM prevention advertising campaign based on our understanding of the motivations for FGM which has generated over 650,000 views on social media.

We continue to work closely with community organisations, faith groups and survivors to better understand the motivations behind FGM. The FGM role and function is to coordinate work across Government and carry out outreach work. However, we are clear that all agencies have a role to play in tackling FGM.