Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill [Lords]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point that I was going to deal with a little later. It is one area that I think that we might like to consider a bit further in Committee, if possible. I shall explain in a moment what I had in mind; other hon. Members might have different ideas. I do not wish to take up the House’s time on an issue on which there is so much consensus, but I should like to say a couple of things about the Bill. As originally introduced by Lord Lester, it was a new piece of legislation. Since the Government’s helpful intervention, it has, in essence, been turned into an amendment of the Family Law Act 1996. There was great merit in that approach. Lord Lester had the ideas and set them out on paper, but translating them into detailed court powers is a rather more complicated process—I see the Minister smiling in agreement—and the 1996 Act provided the necessary mechanisms. Under the powers set out in new sections 63F, 63G, 63H, 63I and so on, we now have a panoply of court powers that were not originally provided for in Lord Lester’s Bill, and which will be very useful. That brings me to what my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said about whether criminal sanctions are required. That is an important issue. If somebody is forced into marriage, and it can be shown to the criminal standard of proof that that is what has happened, there is no doubt that a great range of criminal offences may have been committed, depending on the circumstances, such as blackmail, threats to kill, assault, false imprisonment, child abduction, kidnapping or sexual offences. However, the problem is that it is questionable whether putting in a criminal standard of proof will get a better result, particularly where somebody is extremely unwilling to come forward. The merit of the way in which this has been approached is that, first, it will encourage people who have been forced into marriages to come forward, and secondly, it allows the courts much greater flexibility to look in the round at what is going on—for example, to listen to a relative or friend who comes forward and says, ““I think this is a forced marriage, as the person is clearly not happy about it””, and then do something practical about it. If it becomes clear, in the course of all that, that a criminal offence has been committed, I have no doubt that the opportunity for prosecution may still ensue. My hon. Friend needs to bear in mind the question of whether having a criminal offence of forced marriage would leave us with some serious definitional problems and then the problem of proving to the requisite standard that that is what happened.