I'd like to thank my colleagues Jenny Rathbone, Joyce Watson, Jayne Bryant, Dai Lloyd and Angela Burns, who can't be here today, for supporting this debate today. I'd also like to thank Jane Hutt for her support on this issue.

Female genital mutilation—the process of cutting or disfiguring young girls and women for non-medical reasons—is an extreme form of discrimination against them. FGM is mostly carried out on young girls some time between infancy and age 15. It causes severe bleeding and health issues, including cysts, infections, infertility as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn death.

There are four categories of FGM, which range in severity, and are harmful procedures carried out for non-medical purposes. Eighty per cent of women have undergone either type 1 female genital mutilation, which is partial or total removal of the clitoris, or type 2, which also includes removal of the labia.