Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many interventions by the Forced Marriages Unit led to criminal prosecutions of people perpetrating forced marriages.

The jointly led Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) leads on the Government’s forced marriage policy, outreach and casework. Figures on the number of cases reported to the FMU via its public helpline and email inbox are published annually and are available on GOV.uk. The figures include a breakdown of cases by age range. The FMU acts in an advisory capacity, and information on the number of cases which resulted in prosecutions is therefore not collated centrally.

We made forced marriage a criminal offence in 2014 to send a clear message that this brutal practice will not be tolerated in the UK. We are encouraged by the first conviction in June 2015, and the Crown Prosecution Service’s (CPS) most recent report shows that the volume of referrals from the police to the CPS has risen from 67 in 2013-14 to 82 in 2014-15. But there is still work to be done, and we will continue to work with partners to lead efforts to tackle this abhorrent crime.