My Lords, I want to embellish a couple of points particularly pertinent to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and my noble friend Lady Meacher.
Some noble Lords may remember that a few years ago we created care orders in cases of FGM for the family court. What emerged from the research that I did into that was that it was the family units that were espousing FGM but, furthermore, they liked to see themselves as a society—and, in certain cases, belonged to a society—that initiated and believed in female genital mutilation. I make this point because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, it is very easy for
a small group of people to move from being a family unit to being accepted possibly as a “school” and thereby having the moral authority to take forward these practices and propagate them. I mention this as a point which we should bear in mind, given what my noble friend Lady Meacher and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, were warning us about.