Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill [Lords]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) who made her case in a typically powerful manner. I am sure she also made a powerful case for membership of the Public Bill Committee. It is not often that I rise to congratulate the Government, but I do so on this occasion. I am delighted that they have taken forced marriage so seriously and I commend them on the Bill. All-party consensus usually precedes a mess—the Child Support Agency and membership of the exchange rate mechanism jump instantly to mind—but in this case it has delivered a sensible result. I certainly endorse the comments of the hon. Member for Slough that we should not be complacent about the detail simply because we all support the aims of the Bill. I congratulate the hon. Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) whom I mentioned earlier. She is both my parliamentary neighbour and my constituent, and has been incredibly persistent about forced marriage for many years. She has also been immensely brave for many years and should take much of the credit for the Bill. I know how sorry she is that she cannot be here to take part in the debate, but that should not detract from all the work she has done on the issue over many years and for which she is extremely well respected both in the House and in our local area. I supported much of what the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Chris McCafferty) said in her speech, on which I congratulate her. Whatever legislation is enacted, some cases will always slip through the net; they will go undetected and will not be dealt with. The Bill has two objectives that we all share. The first is that the number of cases should go down. We should like them eliminated, but given that some will slip through the net, let us hope that the number goes down. Secondly, we want the people responsible for the practice of forced marriage to be properly prosecuted. I, too, was shocked at the scale of the issue. The forced marriage unit deals with a massive 5,000 complaints a year—100 a week—in 300 of which the unit is certain a problem has occurred. That is an immense problem and we should be doing everything we can to deal with it. We need to find ways to reduce the number of cases and to prevent such things from happening, as well as making sure that people are properly prosecuted. As I said earlier, part of the solution must lie in dealing with the issue of people entering the UK on a marriage visa—a point mentioned by the hon. Member for Calder Valley. I would not go quite as far as the hon. Lady, but raising the age from 18 to 21 would certainly help. The older people are when they are allowed into the country on marriage visas, the greater the chance that they will be mature enough to resist some of the pressures that they face when being forced into marriage, and we should not underestimate those pressures. This not a silver bullet, but if those people were a bit older, it might help to reduce the number of cases. There has been lots of talk during the debate—it has been very interesting—about whether this should be a civil or a criminal offence. My hon. Friends the Members for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) and for Woking (Mr. Malins), who are very distinguished lawyers and parliamentarians—certainly far more distinguished than I am or ever will be—made powerful cases for why we should support this being a civil matter. I am not entirely convinced that the offence should be a civil and not a criminal one. Making forced marriage a specific criminal offence would send out a powerful message that it is not tolerated in our county and might act as a deterrent. I certainly would not want anyone to think that, because it is not a criminal offence, forced marriage is not a problem and that they can carry on with forced marriages, because doing so is not a criminal offence. I would not want anyone to take away such a message from the debate. Making it a criminal offence would help to make it clear that forced marriage is completely and utterly unacceptable. The hon. Member for Luton, South (Margaret Moran) raised the issue of promoting the use of English, which would also help. I should certainly like more to be done to ensure that people who come into this country have a better grasp of English. If we are trying to encourage people to come forward with their complaint, they would certainly have more confidence in approaching our legal system, which can be daunting at the best of times to those of us who are fully conversant with English, if they had a better grasp of English. We need to deal with that important aspect. Above all, I should like to know from the Minister how we will measure the Bill’s success. As I said earlier, presumably, we have two objectives: a reduction in the number of cases and ensuring that the people involved are properly prosecuted. I should be grateful to the Minister if she gave an indication of how many people she envisages will be prosecuted as result of the Bill. Everyone supports the objectives and the motives, but the focus of my concern is on how effective the Bill will be in tackling the issue. I am interested to know how much of a reduction in forced marriage we can expect as a result of the Bill. If the Bill does not lead to the number of prosecutions that we hope for and a reduction in this evil practice does not occur, I hope that the Government will give a commitment to look again at the issue to see whether making forced marriage a criminal offence will deliver the reductions and the change in culture that we want.