Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill on introducing the Bill and giving us the opportunity to debate this important subject. He has an international reputation as a jurist. When he proposes legislation on individual liberties, we should always sit up and take notice. On this occasion, he also happens to be right. The Bill is about marriage, an important private and public institution. It is also fragile. It is worth a great deal to those involved—to families and the wider public—if founded on mutual respect. It is worth nothing if founded on fear and mere obedience. The Bill addresses those themes. I declare an interest as a patron of a recently formed charity, STOP—Stop Trafficking of People in the UK. It has brought together members of the judiciary, experienced police officers and others with professional experience of observing the problems and tragedies caused by people trafficking. Forced marriages are part of the people-trafficking picture which that charity wishes to address. Those of us involved in STOP have observed that the slavery which still exists—not only elsewhere in the world, but in the country in which we live and are debating today—includes a great deal of sexual slavery. It is not confined to prostitution, although that often catches the headlines. The sort of sexual slavery we have observed includes domestic sexual slavery, involving enforced domestic service, which occurs in this country, and, shockingly, enforced marriage. Enforced marriage destroys the dignity of the person upon whom it is enforced. The spouse faces sexual compulsion, domestic compulsion of all kinds and the abolition of that self-determination which all Members of this Parliament in both Houses value above all things. We must, however, emphasise that we are sensitive to religious and cultural diversity. I have enormous respect for the Sikh community. In my role as independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, I have turned to the Sikh community for advice on international issues from time to time. I have always found it helpful, responsible, ever robust and cogent in what it says. Nobody should get the impression that any community is being targeted in a discriminatory Bill by this legislation. It is intended particularly to enhance the dignity of women living in the United Kingdom and throughout the world. About a year ago, I was in south Asia, where I encountered by chance some staff of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office whose dedicated work is dealing with forced marriage. I commend their extraordinary work. Sometimes they go, with local police, into pretty hostile places, where the practices they seek to undermine remain traditional. They quite often leave those places with young women who have been forced into unwelcome marriages, who have usually been taken from the United Kingdom in their early teens. It is important that this House recognises the fantastic work being done by government officials in that context. One of the complaints that judges constantly make about this Government is that they seem to have a compulsion to introduce more and more criminal law—although this week, they seem to be telling judges not to enforce it from time to time, but that is part of the stuff of political life. My noble friend has saved the Government from that compulsion by taking the imaginative course of using civil law to achieve something that could have been achieved with a blunt instrument through criminal sanctions. I applaud him for taking that approach. It is measured and proportional and emphasises that women should control their own lives, which I hope is our shared aspiration. I believe that this measure is widely supported in this House. After many years in one or other House of this Parliament, I think we see the best of our UK Parliament when a private Member is able to use parliamentary time to introduce legislation that adds to the value of the lives of vulnerable citizens. That is what my noble friend has done today. I hope that the Government will support the enactment of these proposals with as little delay as possible.