Forced Marriage Bill

It is not often that the House is united in its approach to a Bill. I am delighted that all parties seem to have a common approach to what I believe is a very sensible Bill indeed. Every one of us regards forced marriages as evils. They are quite awful; they are an infringement of human rights; they cause utter misery; and they are often accompanied by violence, so anything we can do to put an end to them is to our advantage.
How many forced marriages are there? I do not think we can ever know the truth about that. The forced marriages unit hears of some 200 or 300 a year, but there must be many more where, in truth, the victim—usually a woman—is unable to speak out or unable, largely through fear, to seek help from those who could offer it. Forced marriages are therefore a very bad thing indeed. We occasionally read horrible stories about so-called “honour killings” and we are disgusted by them. The House has a duty to take note of the problem and to see what can sensibly be done about it.
I represent Woking, which has a large and well settled community of Pakistani background. We have the Shah Jahan mosque—the oldest in the country—and this community, mainly based in Maybury and Sheerwater, makes a huge contribution to local life in Woking. We have a harmonious, happy and settled community there. In preparing my contribution to the debate on the Bill tonight, I thought that I would speak to some of those who represent the Pakistani community in Woking on both the borough and county councils in order to find out their views. It will be no surprise, I am sure, to find out that all those to whom I spoke utterly condemned the practice of forced marriages. A leading county councillor, Shamas Tabrez, reminded me in a conversation that forced marriage is condemned at the highest level and is forbidden and illegal in Islam.
We are very fortunate in Woking in having a strong mosque, which provides a spiritual and cultural centre for so many people and whose imam provides so much excellent advice. There are excellent councillors in the Maybury and Sheerwater area and many other bodies offer support to those in the community who need it.
Philip Davies: They have an excellent MP, as well.
Mr. Malins: I am so grateful to my hon. Friend. I shall think of something very nice to say about him at some later stage.
What my friends in Woking told me was that, much as they condemned forced marriages, they believed it important to differentiate them from arranged marriages. There is a world of difference between the two. We must understand that in many cultures, there are arranged marriages that are entered into voluntarily, though in a sense initiated by the families of the parties concerned. I venture to suggest that arranged marriages can often be much more successful than those that are not. The parties may come from families that know each other, so they start out with the absolute advantage of having mutual family support through parents and others who are all together in one big family. That can be essential, particularly in the early years of a marriage. There are many arranged marriages. Providing that they are entered into voluntarily, I say let that habit continue because in many ways they are a force for good in our community.
Is there a problem with forced marriages in Woking? My general view is no, and I shall explain why. What evidence do I have for my proposition? A very important charity, based in the London area, provides safe houses for women who have been forced into marriage. It picked up more than 100 cases between March 2006 and February 2007 of women in London and the home counties. Only one case came from Surrey, and that was not, I think, from Woking.
What is it about Woking? What is it about any community—this is the point of my speech—that can help so far as forced marriages are concerned? The first thing is to have an open and caring community, with strong and effective local support through various agencies to the settled community in that area. That is excellent. The importance of good local representation is also vital. As I said, Woking has an excellent mosque with an imam, the Maybury centre and the Asian women’s groups. There is plenty of advice from different organisations for those in the Pakistani community.
We have four excellent local councillors in Shamas Tabrez, Riasat Khan, Mohammed Iqbal and Muzzafar Ali, all of whom are well known to me and serve their community well. When I say to them, “What about forced marriages in the Woking area?”, they respond in these terms: “We are so stuck into our community and involved in it that we try desperately hard to hear of any problems that may crop up so that we can get on top of them, help the constituents and prove to be good advisers and helpers. We have a community where there is a culture of openness and mutual support. People with problems in our community are encouraged to talk to the various agencies that are there for their benefit, including the local councillors.”
There is a lot to be said for strong local communities. If somebody—let us say that it is likely to be a young woman—is frightened and has been put into a forced marriage, she will need to turn to somebody for help. My point is that a strong community, with plenty of avenues to get good help and advice from people who understand the issue and are close to those whom they are helping, is important. We very much have that in Woking.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab): I very much support what the hon. Gentleman says. Does he accept, however, that for some women the strong open community might feel as though it is open to people other than them? It is relatively easy for those of us in leading positions in society to assume that those structures are open to everyone in the community, but isolated and young women in particular sometimes do not feel that they are open to them. There is an obligation on us to create alternative structures that they might find more accessible.
Mr. Malins: How right the hon. Lady is. I am grateful to her for that intervention. There are those who, despite the good local structures and contact points, still feel alone and frightened. It is up to us to try to help them as much as we can.
On the Bill itself, little has been made of whether it is proper to approach the problem from the point of view of the civil law or the criminal law. In my judgment—I declare an interest as a part-time district judge, practising lawyer and Crown court recorder—what the Government have done is right. We should probably approach the problem from the point of view of civil sanctions. To bring the criminal law into it at the moment would not be appropriate. Apart from anything else, we legislate far too much in terms of the criminal law, and it could up the ante a little too much and cause more problems than it would solve. However, as hon. Members have said, forced marriages quite often—in fact, almost always—involve an element of crime, whether it is rape, kidnapping or violence. Many of those serious crimes are deeply connected with forced marriages and should be treated accordingly. The Bill is right to look at the problem from a civil point of view.
I have another point to put to the Solicitor-General. The Bill provides that the procedures for a remedy will go through the family courts, by which I take it to mean the county court, the High Court and so on. Will she dwell a little on the prospect of extending the jurisdiction to the family side of the magistrates courts? They are more in number. An awful lot of places that do not have a county court have a magistrates court. They also have the advantage of speed and cheapness.
I want to raise another issue, which has been touched on. The issues connected with religion and culture, which are quite sensitive, will come before county court and High Court judges. I cannot stress enough the need for relevant training for the judiciary when they are handling such cases. That training was mentioned in an intervention. It could and should be extended to many other people in this general field, if one likes to put it that way, who would benefit from the proper training necessary to equip them adequately to deal with the cultural and religious issues involved. The hon. and learned Lady will know, and will be able to tell me, that the judiciary are obliged to go on regular refresher courses for training purposes and so on, but to add at some stage something specifically on the issue of forced marriages might be a sensible way forward.
I want to touch on some other aspects, which can be examined carefully in Committee. The Bill mentions a forced marriage protection order. First, what is in it and against whom can it be made? Under proposed new section 63B, the contents of the order can be absolutely anything:
“A forced marriage protection order may contain...such other terms”
as the court thinks appropriate. Against whom can it be made? That is very widely drafted, because such an order can be made against other persons
“who are, or who may become, involved in other respects”.
I am not sure whether the hon. and learned Lady will be able to narrow that down a bit either at this stage or in Committee. At the moment, the order can say anything and can in effect be made against anybody. In proposed new section 63B(2), the word “knowingly” does not come before the word “involved”. One wonders whether in fact orders can be made against people who are, in truth, not culpable and not aware of what we might describe as culpable or guilty participation.
My next question is who will be able to apply for a forced marriage protection order? I appreciate that many Bills nowadays do not tell us the full story. That is generally left for regulation to do later. The Bill tells us that an application can be made by
“the person who is to be protected... or... a relevant third party.”

That is fine as far as it goes, but who is a relevant third party? According to the Bill, it is
“a person specified, or falling within a description of persons specified, by order of the Lord Chancellor.”
Who on earth will that be? It might be helpful if we could be told tonight; otherwise it seems likely that anyone with a tenuous or not tenuous, or close or not close, link with the family concerned will be able to make an application. Surely the Government do not want the definition to be as wide as that.
Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD): I should be interested to know why the hon. Gentleman thinks that we need to restrict the definition of those who may apply for the order. The person concerned might have a social worker, or might know of someone in the community, who would be prepared to stand up for him or her and who might not be a particularly close associate.
Mr. Malins: I take the hon. Lady’s point. Indeed, in a sense she has put her finger on the issue, which is that at some stage we shall need a little more definition of the type of person who can make a application. The hon. Lady may agree with me that it might not be appropriate for a family friend or acquaintance to be permitted to make such an application, and that therefore limitations may be necessary.
I have pointed out that a court can make any order that it wishes. I feel that at some point we shall have to discover the likely terms of an order. There is a direct parallel with the legislation on antisocial behaviour orders, which also gave courts power to make whatever orders they wished. As a result, courts all over the country made absurd orders whose terms were so wide as to make them totally unenforceable—for example, “The defendant shall not enter the City of London” or “The defendant shall not commit a crime”. Only case law tightened up the definition of what should be in an ASBO. It now appears that anything can go into a forced marriage protection order. It would be helpful if the Government gave us some idea of what might go into such orders, how wide they might be, and what might be seen as going a step too far.
The provisions on arrest also have powerful implications. A constable may arrest someone who is in breach of an order, but under new section 63J
“An interested party may apply to the relevant judge for the issue of a warrant for the arrest of a person”.
An interested person is defined as
“(a) the person being protected by the order”
—so far, so good—
“(b) (if a different person) the person who applied for the order”
—so far, so good—or
“(c) any other person”.
That provision too is very wide, and we may have to have a look at it in Committee.
I think that the Bill is right to provide for a person who is arrested to be brought to court very quickly, but I ask the Minister to confirm that the judge will refer to section 5(1) (a), (b), (c) and (d) of the Bail Act 1976 when considering the granting of bail. Will securities, sureties or other conditions similar to those imposed under that Act be imposed in these circumstances?
I think we all want a society in which people can live without fear, force or coercion of any kind. I hope to goodness that the Bill will prove slightly helpful in the long run, but I remain worried because whatever else happens—even if the Bill sails into law—we will depend on the victim coming forward, or on someone coming forward on the victim’s behalf. We need to make life straightforward enough to give people the feeling that however badly they have been treated they can come forward, obtain protection and be looked after properly.
I wish the Bill well. Let me end by repeating what I said earlier. Woking is a strong community. We are aware of this issue, but there is no evidence of there being a great problem in Woking. That bears testimony to the quality and strength of its advice bodies and local councillors.