Marriage of Convenience

Home Department written question – answered at on 18 June 2014.

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Photo of Keith Vaz Keith Vaz Chair, Home Affairs Committee, Chair, Home Affairs Committee

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many marriages reported as suspicious or sham were (a) same sex marriages, (b) heterosexual marriages and (c) civil partnerships in each year since 2009.

Photo of James Brokenshire James Brokenshire Minister of State (Home Office) (Security and Immigration)

Sections 24 and 24A of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 place a duty on registration officers to submit a report to the Home Office where they have reasonable grounds to suspect that a marriage or civil partnership is a sham being entered into for immigration purposes. Table 1 shows the number of section 24/24A reports received in each year since 2009. Same sex marriages only came into effect this year, so there are no data relating to this period, or for civil partnerships before 2011.

The Home Office Intelligence Management System (IMS) records allegations from the public regarding immigration-related offences. Since 30 September 2012 we have recorded the following numbers of reports relating to sham marriage as set out in Table 2.

These figures relate to reports identified by the public as possible sham marriage.

Table 1
    Of which:
  Number of section 24/24A reports Refer civil partnerships
2009 561
2010 934
2011 1,741 28
2012 1,891 28
2013 2,135 25
Table 2
  Number of reports relating to sham marriage recorded on IMS
2012 (from 30 September) 984
2013 6,909

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