The Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985 (c. 38) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It made female genital mutilation a crime throughout the UK, allowing for sentences of up to five years' imprisonment.S. 1(2) It was first introduced to the House of Lords by Wayland Young, 2nd Baron Kennet in 1983, but the Bill did not progress to the House of Commmons.
Two years later, Dame Marion Roe MP introduced a private member's bill to prohibit female genital mutilation . With cross-party support, Roe's Bill gained royal assent on 16 July 1985.S. 4
No one was ever successfully prosecuted under the act, but a medical practitioner was stricken from the Medical Register in 1993 for having performed the procedure. The act was replaced by the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005 in Scotland, both of which extend the legislation to cover acts committed by UK nationals outside of the UK's borders, so that it became a crime to take a girl abroad to undergo FGM.
See also Female genital mutilation in the United Kingdom
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