Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, how much money has been spent from the public purse on training members of the CPS and its agents on the criminalisation of forced marriage and the breach of forced marriage protection orders since the coming into force of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014; what events took place relating to that training; and how many people attended those events.

The specific offence of forced marriage and breach of a Forced Marriage Protection Order came into force in June 2014 under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. Since then, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has updated its legal guidance, developed e-learning and delivered training to its Area lead forced marriage prosecutors.

Training workshops were delivered jointly with the police on Forced Marriage, Honour Based Violence and Female Genital Mutilation across all CPS Areas between July and December 2014. The workshops included input from stakeholders at a cost of £5,000.

On 13 December 2017, a further masterclass was delivered to all CPS Areas to address the unique difficulties in prosecuting these crimes. This masterclass included input from stakeholders at a cost of £1,633.50. This training will be cascaded by the local Area forced marriage leads.

The CPS’s Prosecution College, provides award-winning courses to CPS employees, and hosts the e-learning course, “Forced Marriage and Honour Based Violence”. To date 231 of its employees who were in post on 8 January 2018 had completed all elements of the e-learning course. The course was developed in-house which enables targeted and consistent training delivered to employees in an efficient and cost-effective way.

The CPS will continue to train its staff in this critical area of work.