Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether there have been any child marriage convictions in the UK since the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022 came into effect in February 2023.

The UK is a world leader in the fight to stamp out the practice of forced marriage, with our dedicated Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) leading efforts to combat it both at home and abroad.

The new legislation which came into force in February this year is intended to proactively close potential loopholes and make prosecution under the existing law easier by removing the need to prove the use of coercion, which may require evidence from the victim. The FMU has undertaken a range of activity to raise awareness of the extended offence.

Data on convictions for criminal offences is published by the Ministry of Justice. The latest publication is to December 2022, before the extended offence came into force.

Additionally, we protect both adults and children with our Forced Marriage Protection Orders (FMPOs) and have criminalised the breach of FMPOs once in place. The number of forced marriage protection orders made in (1) 2019, (2) 2020, (3) 2021 and (4) 2022 can be found in the table attached.