Clause 1
Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill [Lords]
10:45 am
Bridget Prentice (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Lewisham East, Labour)
I do not have the exact figures on how many intermediaries have been used, but I want to mention what else we can do to encourage the courts to use intermediaries, the officials lists, or other appropriate people. I will come to that in a moment.
The court can use other measures. They include screening victims, video links and giving evidence in private. It can ensure that a young or vulnerable victim has proper breaks during the proceedings and is helped and protected in that way. Of course, family proceedings are generally held in private, which is quite controversial among some of our colleagues. However, the court has important discretion to allow, or not to allow, other people in. Those special measures are used in many of the 30,000 or so domestic violence injunctions that are processed every year.
In addition, we will consider, with the Courts Service, the provision of interpreters for women and men in forced marriage cases. In any application made by a third party, it is vital to ensure that the wishes and feelings of the victim are taken into account to ensure that well-meaning people do not make unwanted applications. Enabling third parties to apply for orders is an essential provision that offers protection to those who are not able to make applications themselves owing, as the hon. Member for Beaconsfield said, to fear or intimidation. Alternatively, the victim may have been imprisoned against their will.
Allowing a third party to make the application removes the burden from the victim, who not surprisingly may feel inhibited and may not feel confident enough to ask the court for help themselves. An important element of that is that it removes a victim’s sense of blame about raising such an issue when applying for an order that may affect other members of their own family. There are many ways in which that can be done so that the court is able to satisfy itself that it is hearing properly what the wishes and feelings of the victim are. For example, the victim can write a supporting statement or letter, and various other things can be done.
The hon. Lady is right that it is important that we encourage the courts to use the powers that are available. The forced marriage unit is drafting guidelines for social workers dealing with vulnerable adults, in consultation with professionals and the professional bodies, and guidelines for social workers dealing with children and young people are being developed. I will certainly discuss with the president of the family division, Sir Mark Potter—who will, I know, be very supportive of what we are doing—whether it would be appropriate for him to issue a practice direction promoting the use of intermediaries for vulnerable people in appropriate cases. I hope that that goes some way towards reassuring the hon. Lady and the organisations that have raised that important issue.
Finally, on registration, one of my fears is that we could be in danger of being disproportionate. Many marriages abroad of British nationals are perfectly legitimate and are entered into willingly. We would not want to over-burden people who are in that situation. We also have to be careful that we do not send out a message that only English registrars are capable of deciding whether a marriage is entered into willingly.