Schedule 7 - Minor and consequential amendments
Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill [Lords]
9:10 am
Mrs Ann Cryer (Keighley, Labour)
Amendment No. 124 is a probing amendment. Grouped with it are new clause 40, which deals with forced marriages, and new clause 41, which deals with perceived conduct and honour crimes. First, I will speak about honour crimes—mainly, honour killings—because there is a clear connection between crimes of honour and honour killings and forced marriages.
The problem with honour killings is that they go unrecognised. A couple of weeks ago, there was a conference in The Hague, which has been mentioned in various contexts. Earlier in Committee we talked about domestic homicide reviews; such reviews would be useful in identifying killings related to crimes of honour. About a year ago, I did a report for the Council of Europe Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men. I was asked to be the rapporteur on honour killings in the 52 states of the Council of Europe. It was traumatic to go into all the details of the issue, but the worst thing was that it was extremely difficult to get information on the subject: because none of the states of Europe identify honour killings as such, it is extremely difficult to get facts and figures.
At the conference in The Hague, police officers said that if we do not know which killings are related to crimes of honour it is extremely difficult to establish patterns. Police forces in areas with large ethnic communities would be helped if, on sentencing or at some point during the proceedings, mention was made of honour killings, and if honour killings were specifically treated as such. The amendment mentions
''a connection to an offence aggravated by the victim's perceived conduct as defined under section 145A'',
and new clause 41 refers to an
''Increase in sentences for offences aggravated by the victim's perceived conduct (honour crimes)''.
I am not pushing for all of that; I simply point out to the Government and the Minister that if we could identify such crimes, police forces throughout the country would know what they were looking for. Social services departments, schools and colleges would all be in the picture about things that might go wrong for a particular girl or woman, and could identify those things before she was killed. That is what I really want to ensure this morning. I want to make the Government aware and I want them to look into the issue.
When I prepared the Council of Europe report 12 months ago, I heard again and again that people
did not know what was happening, even though all the warning signals were present beforehand. Even though things were going wrong in a girl's life, she lacked protection because people did not know the pattern. In fact, they were not even establishing patterns. The clause on domestic homicide reviews will help greatly to identify what things were going wrong in a girl's life before she met a horrible end. Colleges, schools, social services departments and the police will therefore know where to look.
New clause 40, which embodies the main thrust of my arguments, would deal with forced marriages. It begins:
''A person commits an offence if he causes or attempts to cause another person to enter into a forced marriage.''
The Government have done some pretty brave and imaginative things to protect girls from forced marriage, but thus far we have not really carried with us the various communities that go in for forced marriage, even though they have been sympathetic and made all the right noises—certainly the communities in my constituency have done so, although five years ago, when I first raised the issue in an Adjournment debate, I was told that there was no such thing as forced marriage; my constituents said that I had dreamt it up. Now, every week a girl comes to me to ask for help in putting a stop on her husband's entry clearance.
We have a term for such girls now: reluctant sponsors. Reluctant sponsors know very well the difference between a forced and an arranged marriage. One of the points that keep being put to me is that I do not understand the culture and that the marriages are arranged, not forced. There is a clear difference; yet the issue of forced marriage has kept raising its ugly head during the five years in which I have been dealing with it. My hon. Friends the Members for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney) and for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh) deal with as many as two cases a week of girls who are reluctant sponsors.
Such girls have the support of many of the community leaders and of many other women in their community, and they certainly have the support of the Government and. Almost immediately after my Adjournment debate five years ago, the Home Office set up a working group, jointly and very capably chaired by Baroness Uddin and Lord Ahmed, to consider the causes and the results of forced marriage. As a result, all sorts of changes were made to the way in which the various statutory authorities worked. I am proud to say that West Yorkshire police, who might not come off terribly well in the league tables, have really blazed a trail in protecting these unfortunate women, for example, they have established extremely good relationships with the police in Mirpore and Pakistan. In addition, there are some terrific people working in the Foreign Office consular division in Islamabad helping such girls. We are doing all that we can.
More recently, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children issued strong guidelines to social services departments. Since then, the guidelines have been sorted out and thinned down and have been sent to most schools, school governors and education authorities. Such action will help to cut back the
number of forced marriages, but if there was a specific criminal offence of forcing to marry, we would start to have a real impact on the perpetrators of these terrible acts, who would realise that they were committing an offence not only against every aspect of Islam, but against our criminal law. I hope that the Minister will tell us that progress is being made and that, eventually, we will have some form of criminal law that will deter such parents—who, I stress, are in a minority.
Week after week in my constituency I help young men and women who are very pleased with their arranged, genuine marriages and want to bring their husband or wife into the country; my office and I give them that help. However, a minority of young men and women—nearly always women; men seem to have their own way around these problems—are being forced into marriages. We must win the hearts and minds of those people. To say that forcing another into marriage is a specific criminal offence would go a long way in that direction.