Immigration Control

I congratulate everyone in the room on tolerating the conditions of a miserable, cold Chamber. I wonder if you could pass that message on, Mr. Hood. I cannot see why we should not have daylight and a bit of heat. It is very cold. That is my moan. I want to refer to the part of the report on forced marriages, which begins on page 77. I seem to spend an increasing amount of my time helping the victims of forced marriages. I pay tribute to the staff who have looked after us on the Committee, particularly those who did all the donkey work of writing the report. When I was with the group in Accra and Lagos, the Clerk who was with us worked until midnight to draw up all the information and evidence that we had acquired. I wish to give the background to my comments. I represent Keighley, which forms one fifth of the Bradford metropolitan district. Some 80 per cent. of all marriages in the Muslim community there—mainly Pakistani couples but some Bangladeshi—take place transcontinentally. Girls and young men go to Pakistan or Bangladesh, marry someone and eventually bring them back. Approximately 800 immigrants from the sub-continent enter the district each year. Many of them come on compassionate grounds, and I have absolutely no argument with that. They are elderly people who come to join daughters and sons to be looked after in their old age. Many, however, are husbands and wives coming for permanent settlement. I would guess that at least 600 of them enter the district for that reason. I look forward to a time when more young men and women will enter Bradford because they have a job than because they have a wife or husband. The Pakistani community in Bradford hails mainly from Mirpur, where there is a strong tradition of first-cousin marriages. That makes it even more difficult for young men and women to duck out of arranged marriages, which therefore become forced marriages. The Bangladeshi community comes from Sylhet, and one of the less attractive traditions of the Sylhetis is that they tend to go in for child brides. I have dealt with several cases of 14-year-old girls being carted off back to Bangladesh for marriages that they did not want and should never have had inflicted on them. I pay tribute to the work of the various Departments involved. A great deal of work has been done since I raised the subject of forced marriages in 1999. We now have the forced marriages unit, which is paid for and staffed by the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It gives advice on forced marriages by phone or person-to-person, to help girls avoid being forced to marry or be reluctant sponsors to a marriage. Through various voluntary groups, the Government provide refuges in my constituency and in the rest of Bradford so that girls wishing to leave an unfortunate marriage can do so and be safe. The West Yorkshire police are absolutely brilliant— Sitting suspended for a Division in the House. On resuming—