Children: Forced Marriage

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

There are indeed several cases that can be highlighted. As the noble Lord will know, there is a difference between arranged marriages and forced ones. The main focus is on forced marriages, when children—often young ones—are taken away without their consent. We are looking closely at this important issue.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, while the Forced Marriage Unit is a joint initiative of the Foreign Office and the Home Office, there is also much government focus and spending through the Department for International Development. Can my noble friend outline whether those Ministers and officials are also inputting into this unit? There seems to be a correlation, or at least an overlap, between the countries where we are spending money through DfID to avoid local girls and women being forced into marriage, and the countries that UK citizens are at risk of being taken to.