First of all, I want to thank Julie for bringing this debate, because if we can't talk about it, then nobody can. If we don't talk about it, nothing gets changed and it forever stays in the darkest recesses of society, let alone people's minds—those who have gone through this and experienced it. I did catch the BBC Two programme last week, and I would encourage people to watch it—Extreme Wives with Kate Humble. It won't make for good watching—anything but—but it will allow people some level of understanding, if they haven't got it, about what it is that we're talking about.

The procedure is, indeed, cruel. It's as cruel as it sounds, and, in my opinion, and that of others I have spoken to, it is surrounded by the misogynistic culture and twisted religious justification for it. Those are not my words—those are the words of women from Africa whom I've met as the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians representative, who were living with this being done to them.

There are a few things worth mentioning. The long-term implications cannot be overstated. Women who have been subjected to FGM are very often, as a result, left incontinent. The result of being left incontinent is that they are also left alone—their husbands leave them because they regard them as unclean. They are left in poverty—abject poverty—to bring up their children on their own. So, not only are they mutilated, and it is mutilation, but they are left destitute as a consequence. The other issue that hasn't been talked about, of course, and it is fairly obvious, is that this is a crime in this country, and there hasn't been a single prosecution. I think not to mention it is to almost do a disservice, so I will mention those things.

It is the case, of course, that culture very often follows people. We do have a fairly large diaspora here, and that is why it particularly affects some communities more than others. We do know that, according to City, University of London research commissioned by the Home Office, approximately 137,000 women and girls in England and Wales are now living with the consequences, as I've described, and around 60,000 girls up to the age of 14 years were born to women who have undergone FGM. Those are pretty shocking figures, and they have to beg the question, and this is where BAWSO comes in: are those, then, going to be replicated, since it is the women who actually carry out FGM on their daughters?

Another thing worth mentioning from that programme is that the people who carry out the cutting get paid for every single person whom they cut. It is worth remembering that, because the poor communities that believe that this is the right thing are actually gathering funds together to send their girls back to them with the most horrific injuries. I think that if anybody ever meets anybody—I've met several people who have gone through this—you'll get a level of understanding about the trauma that never, ever leaves an individual when it is their mother who has sent them to be cut, when you hear about the party that they were expecting and the horror that they experience.

So, I suppose for us here as an Assembly, what we absolutely have to do is make sure that we carry on supporting organisations like BAWSO, who will, in turn, support the women and the children. When you hear of a two-year-old dying as a consequence, I think it brings reality home into this Chamber.