Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how her Department is using the 2019 consultation on mandatory reporting of forced marriage to safeguard victims of forced marriage and understand the scale of forced marriage in the UK.

The Government is absolutely committed to tackling forced marriage in all its forms, and to safeguarding victims. The joint Home Office/Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Forced Marriage Unit provided support for 337 victims or potential victims of forced marriage in 2021, as well as handling 868 general enquiries, and in the same year it delivered training and outreach activity to 1,014 professionals. The Government also provides a free e-learning course about forced marriage for professionals, a victim-focused leaflet available in 12 languages, and a handbook for survivors.

The Government supported the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022, which expands the scope of the forced marriage offence to cover all instances of causing a child to marry, even when coercion is not used. The Act is planned to come into force on 27 February 2023.

To understand the scale of forced marriage in the UK, as set out in the July 2021 Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy, the Home Office is exploring options to estimate the prevalence of forced marriage (and female genital mutilation) in England and Wales, given their hidden nature and the lack of robust estimates.

In working to safeguard victims of forced marriage the Government pays attention to a range of sources of information, including responses to consultations and other engagement with stakeholders and experts.