Hansard

I am grateful to have the opportunity to participate in this afternoon’s debate ahead of the international day of zero tolerance for female genital mutilation, on 6 February.

I welcome the Government’s motion and the opportunity that it provides to discuss “Scotland’s National Action Plan to Prevent and Eradicate Female Genital Mutilation”, both of which show in their tone and their detail the correct approach to a challenging and complex issue.

It is only fair to acknowledge and welcome Annie Wells’s amendment. I am sure that Alex Cole-Hamilton will join me in indirectly acknowledging the work of Lynne—now Baroness—Featherstone, who as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for International Development announced the funding, to which Ms Wells referred, at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in March 2013. That programme is set to end next year, and I hope that Annie Wells will urge her colleague Priti Patel, the UK Secretary of State for International Development, to build on the existing work, and that she will encourage her colleagues to support Eilidh Whiteford’s private member’s bill, which calls on the UK Government to ratify the Istanbul convention.

It is also only fair to acknowledge Mary Fee’s amendment, which highlights the need that is outlined in the national action plan to work with communities to break the cycle of violence. I acknowledge, too, the excellent speeches of other members, particularly those of Alex Cole-Hamilton and Clare Haughey, and the overall tenor of the debate.

The Government’s motion

“acknowledges that a preventative, supportive and legislative approach is crucial to tackling, preventing and eradicating FGM”.

We are making progress on all three aspects. It was only in 1985—the year that I was born—that FGM was made illegal in Scotland, through the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985. That legislation is relatively recent, but it is indicative of the progress that has been made that the term “female circumcision” is rightly no longer in common use and is nowadays probably far less known than “FGM”. That is reflected in the more recent Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005, and the further strengthening of legislation in the Serious Crime Act 2015.

Legislative progress has also been made in tackling forced marriage, which can, like FGM, be associated with honour-based violence. The Forced Marriage etc (Protection and Jurisdiction) (Scotland) Act 2011 provides a specific civil remedy for people who are threatened with forced marriage and those who are already in such marriages. Indeed, in Scotland forced marriage was recently criminalised in section 122 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which—crucially—states:

“A person commits an offence ... if he or she ... uses violence, threats or any other form of coercion for the purpose of causing another person to enter into a marriage, and ... believes, or ought reasonably to believe, that the conduct may cause the other person to enter into the marriage without free and full consent.”

The terms that are used in that act are important in their recognition of the various and complex ways in which people can be pressured into forced marriage.

It is clear that we have made progress in legislation on both forced marriage and FGM. I am also encouraged by the work that is already under way, or is imminent, as set out in the national action plan, and which constitutes the preventative and supportive aspects of the approach to tackling FGM. Measures that have been undertaken by the Scottish Government include issuing communication to police, education bodies and the national health service, and the national guidance for child protection being updated in 2014 to include a specific section on how to respond to concerns that a child might have been subjected to, or be at risk from, FGM. There is, moreover, now a standard operating procedure in place for Police Scotland.

FGM is perhaps the most overt manifestation of the patriarchy's attempts to dominate, control and possess women. Although, historically, FGM has not been a traditional cultural practice in Scotland, the fundamentally chauvinistic and misogynistic attitudes that underpin FGM and honour-based violence evince themselves in domestic abuse, rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking and commercial sexual exploitation. The same attitudes also evince themselves through sexual discrimination in the workplace and in the gender pay gap, as well as in the societal pressures and expectations that are placed on girls and women with regard to their bodies, their appearance and their role in society. Government, Parliament, community leaders and partner organisations all have an important role to play in the matter, but sustained progress will be achieved only when individual men address and abandon their own palaeolithic attitudes.

Writing in the mid-19th century, William Thompson wrote:

“As your bondage has chained down man to the ignorance and vices of despotism, so will your liberation reward him with knowledge, with freedom and with happiness.”

Liberty, knowledge, freedom and happiness are the rights of all human beings. Gender inequality denies those rights to one half of the population and gives the other the illusion of them.

We all have a duty to work towards a society in which we can all enjoy the same rights and opportunities, but achieving that will not be easy. Max Weber remarked that

“Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective.”

However, he went on to say that we would

“not have attained the possible unless time and time again”

we

“had reached out for the impossible.”

As is made clear in the national action plan, eradicating FGM will be challenging and complex. However, it is a challenge that I have every confidence this Government, this Parliament and this country will rise to. In doing so, we will have taken another step towards creating a truly equal society.