Diana Johnson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Diana Johnson on 2014-03-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have been convicted of an offence under sections 1, 2 or 3 of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 where the offence was committed against a child in each of the last four years.

Damian Green

No-one has been convicted of an offence under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 in England and Wales since the Act came into force. However, the Director of Public Prosecutions announced the first prosecutions for female genital mutilation on 21 March.

The Government is committed to tackling and preventing the harmful and unacceptable practice of female genital mutilation. As part of this cross-government work, the Ministry of Justice is already considering suggestions made by the Director for strengthening the criminal law on female genital mutilation to make successful prosecutions more likely.

We welcome the Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into this area and will give careful consideration to any additional recommendations for legislative change that may be made by the Committee when it reports in due course.