Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, for what reason her Department’s Forced Marriage Unit has changed its recording practices in preparing the 2021 statistics; what assessment she has made of the potential impact of those changes on the ability to directly compare those statistics to previous years'; and whether the Forced Marriage Unit is taking steps to produce statistics that can be used to monitor changes year on year.

The Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) changed its recording practices in 2021 to better reflect the nature of incoming referrals. Full details are available in https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/forced-marriage-unit-statistics-2021. FMU statistics are not an indication of the prevalence of forced marriage, but a reflection of the number and nature of referrals received by the FMU through its public helpline or mail enquiry service.