Councils reluctant to use Forced Marriages Act, says MoJ

The Ministry of Justice's review of the first year of the Forced Marriages Act of 2007 has found that  many councils have been reluctant to use the powers it gives them.

The report, published on 3rd December, also claims that local councils were less aware of the new law than other public services such as the police and the courts.  

The 2007 Act enables a number of family courts to make a Forced Marriage Protection Order to prevent a forced marriage from occurring or to protect the victim and help remove them from a situation where a marriage has already taken place.

Forced marriage is not the same as an arranged marriage where both spouses can choose whether or not to accept the arrangement. In a forced marriage, one or both spouses do not, or cannot consent to the marriage and duress is involved. The Act was driven primarily by the impact forced marriage has had on women with Indian and Pakistani descent living in the UK.

The report found that so far there had been 83 applications to make use of the Act since the beginning of implementation of the law in November 2008 and October 2009.

One key issue was the low level of knowledge of the new law, with courts saying they had become aware of few successful efforts within communities to publicise the new law.

The report states successful efforts were mostly limited to London with the message outside the capital made ineffective because people were scared to broach the subject of forced marriages due to “a PC agenda”. The MoJ also said that the police liked the new legislation as it helped them to protect the victim of an enforced marriage.