All NHS acute hospitals are to be obliged to provide information on patients who have undergone female genital mutilation, the government has said.
Thursday's announcement, made to mark the UN's day of zero tolerance to FGM, comes the day after the Guardian launched a campaign in partnership with the 17-year-old Bristol student Fahma Mohamed and Change.org to end the practice.
The purpose of the new obligation on hospitals is to provide more information on the prevalence of FGM than ever before, the government said. From September, all hospitals will be required to record if a patient has had FGM, if there is a family history of the practice or whether deinfibulation, which is an FGM-related procedure, has been carried out on a woman. The data will have to be reported to the Department of Health every month.
The public health minister, Jane Ellison, said: "Female genital mutilation is an abhorrent practice that has no place in this – or any other – society.
"In order to combat it and ensure we can care properly for the girls and women who have undergone mutilation we need to build a more accurate nationwide picture of the challenge. This is the first step towards doing that."
The government also announced that charities are being invited to bid for up to £10,000 to carry out community engagement work aimed at raising awareness of FGM. This follows a successful Home Office bid for funding from the European commission, enabling it to launch the £100,000 initiative.
Norman Baker, the crime prevention minister, is to chair a cross-government ministerial roundtable on Thursday to discuss work to end FGM. He said: "I am determined we do all we can to bring perpetrators to justice. The law in this country applies to absolutely everyone and political or cultural sensitivities must not get in the way of preventing, uncovering and prosecuting those who instigate and carry out FGM."
A consortium of anti-FGM campaigners set up by the government will support efforts by politicians and grassroots activists in Africa to end the practice. The international development minister Lynne Featherstone said: "We will not see an end to FGM in the UK unless the practice is eliminated worldwide."
The Guardian campaign is calling on the education secretary, Michael Gove, to send urgent guidance to schools on tackling FGM before potentially thousands of girls are taken abroad in the summer holidays to be "cut".
