Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of children under the age of 18 living in Coventry who have been subjected to a forced marriage in each of the last five years.

The joint Foreign & Commonwealth Office and Home Office Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) operates a public helpline to provide advice and support to victims of forced marriage as well as to professionals dealing with cases. Statistics on the number of cases dealt with by the FMU are published annually, including a breakdown by region and age, and are available online at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/forced-marriage#statistics-on-forced-marriage-collected-by-fmu .

Statistics are available for the region of the West Midlands. Over the last five years (2012-2016) the FMU has handled 933 cases where the victim was in or from the West Midlands.

The statistics cannot be broken down into specific towns and cities and by age for data protection reasons. The FMU must safeguard those it supports. For example, citing the number of cases from a specific town may be low enough to allow a victim to be identified.