21 April 2007
The government has moved to help victims of forced marriages in the UK.
Campaign groups including Southall Sisters and Refuge helped draft a Private Members Bill with Lord Lester, amendments to which were published on Friday.
It will extend the reach of the Family Law Act to give the courts powers to prevent forced marriages or, where one has already taken place, to remove the victim to safety.
Breaches of injunctions would be contempt of court and could lead to arrest. The Bill will also enable relatives and friends to appeal to the court for protection of the victim in a forced marriage.
A consultation in 2005 decided that making such marriages a criminal offence wouldn’t work as they could lead to victims being taken overseas and held there. .
In an open letter to the groups, the PM described the practice as "inhuman and highly damaging".
Read the letter in full
Open Letter to :
- The Southall Black Sisters
- Ashiana Network
- Rights of Women
- Refuge
- Hounslow Domestic Violence Network
- Asian Family Counselling Service
- Khatun Sapnara
- IMKAAN
- Newham Asian Women’s Project
I am writing to you because I know how effectively you have campaigned for action against forced marriages and your close involvement with Lord Lester in shaping his Private Member’s Bill on this important issue. So I wanted to tell you personally about the Government’s intention to support the Bill and to help strengthen the protections it gives to prevent people being married against their will.
Forced marriages are an inhuman and highly damaging practice and we are determined to take seriously our responsibility to prevent them and support the victims. As you will know, the Government has already made progress in this area.
We have already raised from 16 to 18 the age for gaining access to the UK for the purpose of marriage and are now consulting on increasing it again to 21. We have also set up the joint Foreign Office/Home Office Forced Marriage Unit (FMU), the only one of its type in the world. The FMU works closely with our consular offices and now helps around 300 victims of forced marriages a year. Some of those it helps are as young as ten.
But the Government has also accepted that more needs to be done. Forced marriages are already against the law but a national consultation exercise last year strongly suggested that specifically criminalising them might not be effective so we have looked to see how better use of existing legislation, civil remedies and the family courts could increase protection.
Lord Lester’s Bill, which you have helped draft, is very much along these lines. By extending the reach of the Family Law Act, it will give the courts powers to prevent forced marriages or, where one has already taken place, to remove the victim to safety. Breaches of injunctions would be contempt of court and could lead to arrest. The Bill would also enable relatives and friends to appeal to the court for protection of the victim in a forced marriage.
The Government has also worked with Lord Lester to strengthen and widen protections against forced marriages from the original proposals in the Bill. This, in particular, includes tougher action against third parties who can help coerce people into marriage. The overall impact of the Bill will be to make it easier to protect victims and for the courts to intervene to stop this illegal activity.
Government support for the Bill, of course, means that these added and much needed protections now have a much greater chance of becoming law. I am very pleased that we have been able to work with you on these proposals and believe they will have a big impact in stamping out this cruel practice.
Tony Blair
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