Uncorrected Evidence 263

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
2.	Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.
3.	Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant.
4.	Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 25 March 2008

Members present

Keith Vaz, in the Chair

Mr James Clappison

David T C Davies

Patrick Mercer

Margaret Moran

Gwyn Prosser

Bob Russell

Martin Salter

Mr David Winnick

________________

Memorandum submitted by Imkaan

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Ms Anjum Mouj, Development Manager, and Ms Sumanta Roy, Capacity Building Manager, Imkaan, gave evidence.

Q451 Chairman: Can I call the Committee to order and ask everyone if they could switch off their mobile 'phones. Can I refer all those present to the Register of Members' Interests which records the interests of Members of this Committee. This is the last session of the Committee's inquiry into domestic violence and forced marriages. We are very pleased to have, for our final two sessions, representatives of Imkaan. We have got half-an-hour for these questions. We are going to be brief in putting our questions and we would be most grateful if you could respond in a similar way. Can I thank you very much for giving evidence in this inquiry. You have obviously had the opportunity, as we have had, to look at the evidence of other individuals and groups as the inquiry has progressed. Either individually or separately, could you tell me in what ways are the needs of ethnic minority women who experience domestic violence different from those who are not from the ethnic minority communities?

Ms Mouj: I think, essentially, the biggest thing that we need to focus on at this point is the experience of racism. What we have found with much of our research is that the needs are more specific, if you like, rather than different. The experience of racism dictates the level of support that they can be offered by mainstream services, and this really highlights the need for specialist support. Often when we talk about racism and we talk about the impact of racism upon a community we talk about the impact on men, and we kind of miss out the impact that that would have on women, and particularly women that are going out for support services. One way of looking at this, if you will allow me to share a quote with you, is in the words of a young woman. We were in conversation with a young woman in one of our research forums and what we found was this young woman was saying to us that she had the experience of, unfortunately, being evicted from a refuge, and it was a specialist refuge. (I am going to use the term "black" and when I use the term "black" or "BME" I would like you to know that I am referring to Black Asian Minority Ethnic and Refugee women. I use the term "black" but it is just a term that I have used for a very long time. What she said was: "Please don't send me to a white refuge". She was unable to stop talking about the abuse that she had suffered. What she said was that when she talked to women from the Asian women's refuge they really had an understanding and a feeling for her experience and did not mitigate it or negate it in any way, but when she went to a mainstream refuge, which she had also been to, she said that there were really the kind of racist stereotypes around her culture and around her background. Essentially, she found that unbearable, and she was a young woman that had been brought up in this country.

Q452 David Davies: I do not want this to come out the wrong way; what you are saying is that it is racist to send an Asian woman to a white refuge. That seemed to be the summary. How would you feel if a white woman said: "I only want to go to a white refuge; I don't want to be treated by Asian women; I don't want any Asians in the building; Asians do not understand my white background"? Would that not actually be the racist attitude to take, and do you not see that we have to be consistent in our approach.

Ms Mouj: I am really not saying that; I am really not saying that to send a black woman, an Asian woman, an ethnic minority woman or a refugee woman to a white refuge is racist. I am not saying that at all; I am simply saying that the experience of racism within those refuges is so well-documented now, is so evidenced, that, essentially, when we are working with vulnerable women to flee violent situations one of the things that we found is that women from the black communities going into generic refuges leave those refuges and go back into violence quickly.

Q453 David Davies: Should white women have the right to go to a refugee for white people only?

Ms Mouj: I think the point we need to look at here, and the word that we need to look at, is "generic". When we use the word "generic refuge" or "generic provision" we generally tend to make the assumption that when the term "generic" is used it is meant to say that it is open to everybody. We would probably say, in turn, that the term "generic" is something that is a specialist service for, actually, people who speak English. So we ask for a specialist service. We are not asking for extra services; we are actually just asking for the same level of service provision.

Q454 David Davies: Are you actually saying, though, seriously, to us that a large proportion of those who work in women's refuges are racist?

Ms Mouj: No, I am not saying that at all.

Q455 Chairman: Can I summarise this point? What you are saying is that there is a variety of agencies on offer for women but, on balance, ethnic women prefer to go to agencies where there are ethnic minority women, for cultural reasons. I think we get that point.

Ms Mouj: An important point to also make is that no, I am not just talking about the staff but I am talking about the fact that also you have residents within those refuges that will show racism. We have just done some work ----

Chairman: We understand the point and we take it. I want to move on, otherwise the whole evidence session will be dominated by this.

Q456 Patrick Mercer: Could you just define "white refuge"?

Ms Mouj: It was not my term; it was your good colleague's term. I would use the term "generic".

Q457 Patrick Mercer: I thought I heard you saying that the woman had referred to "a white refuge".

Ms Mouj: I am sorry. Okay, yes, you are absolutely right.

Q458 Patrick Mercer: What do you think she means by that?

Ms Mouj: I think what she meant was a generic refuge where the residents were from the English-speaking and white communities.

Q459 Patrick Mercer: Fine. That is very clear. What additional steps, therefore, are needed to ensure greater cultural and religious sensitivity amongst mainstream service providers?

Ms Mouj: I think, essentially, what we are saying is that some of the outcomes of the McPherson report really focus very specifically in terms of promoting good race relations and looking at services in a very specific way and ensuring that good race relations exist amongst communities, with particular reference to organisations of over 150 staff members. I think some of the elements of the McPherson report articulately emphasise the need for specialist provision, and monitoring provision. I would say that would be a good step forward in looking at any additional steps. I would say that ensuring that specialist services exist and work alongside the mainstream would ensure that we provided services that were culturally and religiously sensitive. Essentially, I think that for refuge accommodation and refuge users we are really seeing that there is some insensitivity in terms of race, culture and religion and, therefore, those specialist refuges - not only do we need to further fund them but we need to sustain what we have got. What we have seen in recent years is the closure of specialist refuges, so we definitely need to ----

Q460 Chairman: Of course, the one in Southall is under threat itself, for example.

Ms Mouj: Southall Black Sisters, yes, indeed. We are looking at situations where gender and race equality impact assessments have not been carried out properly. Until we use the mechanisms that we have in existence, I think, essentially, we will keep pulling back on services that are absolutely crucial for black women. We also need to look at some outreach services; we need to look at resettlement services. Essentially, if we are really going to work around domestic violence in an effective way we need to work on the issue that prevention is much better than cure, obviously. We want to not just be impacting upon crisis levels; we want to be able to have youth provision.

Chairman: Thank you, that is extremely helpful. Gwyn Prosser.

Q461 Gwyn Prosser: Imkaan have been critical of the Supporting People fund and the way it affects your services. Can you tell us, from your point of view, what effect this has had, in particular upon BME women's refuges?

Ms Roy: I can take that question. Supporting People seems somewhat an ironic name now, given that what we have seen, from our perspective, is a policy that has had quite a detrimental impact on the refuge services that we work with. Unfortunately, Supporting People, as a policy, has led to local authorities having incremental budget cuts which, in turn, has led to refuges having to experience funding cuts and, as a consequence, lose key services; services that are key to supporting women and children who experience domestic violence - for instance, services for children, outreach work, advocacy and counselling services. These are services that are very difficult to fundraise for and have never been recognised as part of Supporting People's strategies. Over the last year or two, I would say, we have witnessed commissioners who are keener to commission services from, we would say, larger organisations - in a sense, creating this culture of super-providers. This is very problematic because these organisations are ones that do not necessarily have any expertise around delivering services for women and children and they certainly, often, do not have any expertise around the needs of black women and children experiencing violence. We have got Supporting People officers that are questioning refuge staff, saying: "Why, in this day and age, do you need a specialist service? Why not merge with a generic service?" There are commissioners that do not understand the value of women-only spaces and the contribution that the women's sector has made for a number of years towards providing effective preventative work and doing crisis-based work, and what is quite unusual is that you have got specialist black agencies who are now being questioned on the basis that they are not, in fact, generic enough - mainstream enough - which contradicts the reason why they exist in the first place.

Q462 Gwyn Prosser: That is an interesting reply. The Minister has written to us explicitly saying that it is not the Government's wish to close down on to single, large providers, and they talk about providing diversity and choice at the local level. Are you saying that that is absolutely contrary to what has been your experience?

Ms Roy: Yes, both policies are operating in a way that is, effectively, widening out smaller, grass-roots organisations that have been effectively working in this field for a long time. The short answer is no, they are not applying principles of diversity. On one hand, Supporting People is cutting the services on the basis of cost and what they perceive to be value for money, and, on the other hand, you have local authorities that clearly do not understand diversity and what it means to provide the services that you need on the ground for diverse communities. For example, we are working with a group in Nottingham, at the moment, around their Supporting People funding and the officer said to them categorically: "We don't need services for South Asian women any more; these communities have moved on. Surely we need to support new migrant communities". We are not disagreeing that you need to provide services for new migrant communities, but decisions are being made about community need on the basis of perceived need as opposed to actual need.

Q463 Gwyn Prosser: Lastly, what should we recommend in our report in order to protect BME and specialist funding?

Ms Roy: We have got quite a few recommendations. One would be around having an integrated violence against women strategy. That is very much needed because what is happening is that there are one-off action plans being developed around isolated issues and that is where you are having poor practice on the ground and a lack of resource in terms of frontline services. So we also think there needs to be some kind of campaign to re-interpret and re-frame issues of honour, forced marriage and domestic violence within the broader framework of violence against women and women from black communities. We think there should be ring-fenced funding for women's services and for black services. We think that local authorities need minimum standards and guidance because they are clearly not interpreting ----

Q464 Chairman: Have you put these representations to the Government? Have you written to them about their proposals?

Ms Roy: We have passed an early day motion and part of the early day motion is that we have been asking ----

Q465 Chairman: What do you mean - you have passed an early day motion?

Ms Roy: As in we have asked for an early day motion to be tabled. I am sorry - wrong term.

Q466 Chairman: Have you written to the Minister to suggest that what he is doing is wrong?

Ms Roy: We have spoken to Linda Riordan, who has tabled the early day motion for us, so she is aware of some of the demands that we have put forward. So it is part of an ongoing campaign, really.

Ms Mouj: Certainly we will take that on board and do that formally.

Chairman: I am not suggesting you should; it is a matter for you to decide.

Q467 Margaret Moran: We have heard evidence in either direction regarding the criminalisation of forced marriage. Do you agree with that?

Ms Mouj: No, we do not agree with that. Our member organisations who we deal with on a very daily basis, basically, do not agree with that either. They deal with forced marriages day-in, day-out, and they regard criminalisation as a step that would, essentially, weaken, not strengthen, women's position. More than that, evidently, experience tells us not to look to institutions of criminal law to improve the life of a black woman who is victimised by gender-based violence, including forced marriage. Like in any culture where there is a power imbalance, it is by strengthening women that you will try and realign that balance, and by a sole focus on law against violence against women you will not address violence and abuse. Also, we must recognise that the provision for taking out injunctions already exists under the Family Law Act, so it is critical that we basically look to, as we have been doing, incorporating legislation around forced marriage within the legislation as opposed to looking at something altogether different, essentially. Also, critically - and I know that you have heard this previously - only 24% of incidents of violence against women are reported to the police, and this number is significantly lower when we are talking about black women. So there is a whole issue around, in the process of leaving a situation of violence or forced marriage, how will the additional burden of making a decision about taking legal action in the form of an injunction take place? That will be a critical issue.

Chairman: That is very helpful. Mr Davies has a very quick supplementary.

Q468 David Davies: Surely, if a man commits an act of violence against a woman - whether it is forced marriage, beating her up after a night out at the pub or anything else - you would agree that the law should be invoked.

Ms Mouj: Absolutely, absolutely.

Q469 David Davies: So why not strengthen the rights of women by making forced marriage illegal? Violence against women is quite rightly illegal; why not forced marriage?

Ms Mouj: I think, absolutely, the perpetrators of any act of violence should be ----

Q470 David Davies: And forced marriage is an act of violence, is it not?

Ms Mouj: Forced marriage certainly could be an act of violence.

Q471 Chairman: So why not criminalise it?

Ms Mouj: It could be an act of bullying. What I am suggesting is that rather than have a stand-alone case around forced marriage one should incorporate that into the existing legislation around the Family Law Act, because one of the things that we will do by the current approach to criminalising forced marriage is that, essentially, it will form a racist part of the legislation ----

Q472 David Davies: Why?

Ms Mouj: ---- because of the way that works, specifically targeting particular communities and not looking broadly at the issues ----

Q473 David Davies: Forced marriage occurs in all sorts of communities - Christian communities.

Ms Mouj: Indeed, in every community, yes.

Q474 David Davies: So why would it be racist?

Ms Mouj: I think the current way that it stands is that we need to incorporate forced marriage into the Family Law Act and look very broadly at the impact of bullying ----

Q475 David Davies: So make it illegal but do so by the Family Law Act.

Ms Mouj: Yes.

Q476 David Davies: To make it illegal.

Ms Roy: There is an imbalance here ----

Chairman: If we could take a little bit of control of this session, could you just answer the last question Mr Davies asked you? What was the last question?

David Davies: Should it be made illegal by the Family Law Act.

Q477 Chairman: Just yes or no.

Ms Mouj: Yes, forced marriage should be incorporated, as it has been doing.

Q478 Margaret Moran: I want to clarify: as I understand it you are saying there should not be a specific crime, in the same way there is not a specific crime of domestic violence.

Ms Mouj: Exactly.

Ms Roy: Indeed.

Q479 Margaret Moran: Could you outline for us what you think the implications might be if it were to be identified as a specific criminal offence in itself?

Ms Roy: I think it is in danger of alienating communities that are already feeling quite alienated. As Anjum said earlier, only 24% of women are actually reporting to the police. That is not to say that we do not want to encourage more women to report to the police, but what is happening is that you are focusing very much on the criminalising aspect of it without giving due regard for the mechanisms that you need in place to help women to make those decisions. The other thing is, for example, the forced marriage posters. I know there has been some debate (if I can illustrate by an example) about whether schools should put up specific forced marriage posters.

Q480 Chairman: Yes.

Ms Roy: We think a much more useful intervention would really be about putting up generic posters that tackle issues around abuse, family conflict, etc, etc, and that is the way that we know other organisations work with young women. That would be a more useful way and it would also make them feel that they could come forward and feel comfortable and not be targeted for bullying in schools.

Chairman: We have taken evidence on that. Thank you.

Q481 Bob Russell: Ladies, you have talked about the negative aspects of Supporting People. I wonder whether I can ask you, around the general community cohesion debate, has there been any impact on your member services, particularly following on the views just expressed on the forced marriage issue?

Ms Roy: The community cohesion agenda is very much having an impact on services, and in relation to the issue of single funding it is being connected to community cohesion, so services are struggling, in a sense, to survive and are having to justify their existence on the basis of being ----

Q482 Bob Russell: Is that struggle to survive because there is disillusionment or a lack of funding, or a combination of the two?

Ms Roy: A combination of the two. There is a lack of funding and there is also disillusionment, and there are also commissioners that are questioning the need for these types of services. That seems to be a very prevalent view.

Ms Mouj: There seems to be a real lack of understanding on the part of commissioners to really know about the violence against women agenda and the remit of those services. So we are finding that commissioners are really questioning whether refuge services or services around domestic violence need to exist, and that is problematic, obviously.

Q483 Martin Salter: We have taken evidence a few weeks ago from survivors who have made it clear to us that they were being forced into marriages purely as a way of gaining an entry clearance visa for the spouse, and then when the man had joined the woman as a citizen in this country he showed no interest and then disappeared, having gained entry clearance. Has that been a pattern of behaviour that has come to your attention in the work you have done with survivors?

Ms Mouj: No. We think that it is problematic to put it into the immigration debate in such a way.

Q484 Martin Salter: That was not the question I asked: I said have you had any of that experience in the work that you have done. You have never come across those cases at all?

Ms Roy: In a minority of cases but we would not say the vast majority, and those are the views of over 40 organisations that we also represent from across the country.

Martin Salter: Thank you very much.

Q485 Mr Winnick: The current age for being sponsored into the United Kingdom for marriage purposes, as you know, is 18. Is there a case for raising that, say, to 21?

Ms Mouj: No, we think that this policy would unfairly discriminate against minority groups when, effectively, imposing a higher age for marriage with the chosen spouse than applies to the majority of the population. So, no, I think there is no evidence, really, to say that raising the age from 16 to 18 has assisted in terms of preventing forced marriage. There is no evidence that it has stopped or prevented any cases of forced marriage. One of the things that we will find about increasing the age is that women will stay out of the country for longer; once they stop formal education here at 16 they might be taken out of the country for longer periods of time if the age is raised, and that would have a detrimental effect; women would lose confidence and it would be more difficult for them to come out of that situation once they do come back here or seek help. So I think there is no evidence to say that increasing the age will help in any way. We think, essentially, that it would be a discriminatory practice towards minority ethnic groups.

Q486 Mr Winnick: What do you say to the argument - and it may be a weak argument, I do not know - that there is a difference between 18 and 21; for someone who is 21 may be more reluctant to be involved in these forced marriages than someone under that age?

Ms Mouj: I think forced marriage is something that we feel very strongly is an issue that can be worked with and prevented if we work, as Sumanta was saying, with the generic posters in schools, where we are not just targeting one particular community and we are working effectively. In terms of the Forced Marriage Unit, they report 250/300 forced marriage cases; essentially, there are going to be more cases than that, but even if we look at the number of cases I think that these are cases that we can work on to prevent if we work in a way that is about community dialogue; about talking to people and communities about traditional parenting values. Essentially, that would be a safer bet, a much more economical bet and a much less institutionally racist bet to take this debate forward.

Ms Roy: Coercion can be very subtle, so I do not think we could clearly say that the coercion would be any less at the age of 21 as at 18.

Q487 Chairman: I am very surprised at the answer you gave to my colleague, Mr Salter. Were you implying that you have received no evidence that people are using the immigration rules in order to come into this country under forced marriages?

Ms Roy: That was in a minority of cases, not in the vast majority of cases.

Q488 Chairman: I accept not in the vast majority, but how many cases have you had?

Ms Roy: I do not have an exact figure.

Q489 Chairman: All the evidence that we have received is that in a place like, for example - and this is an example - Islamabad, people are gaining entry. We have had women give evidence where you are sitting today saying that they are frustrated because the Home Office will not remove men who have come into this country under a forced marriage.

Ms Roy: Also, you have to look at the ways in which data is collected on forced marriage, for instance. I imagine, at the moment, you are only getting a partial reflection of what the reality is.

Q490 Chairman: Yes, but how many cases have you had to deal with of this kind?

Ms Mouj: We do not have the exact figure, but certainly from our frontline agencies we could get an approximate figure, in terms of cases, in terms of people coming and gaining entry into the country. I think there is definitely a dialogue to be had there in terms of how do we support people that have been forced into a marriage and had people come into the country. The other issue, of course, is the spouse may not be aware that a forced marriage has occurred; they may just not be aware of that. So, in a sense, we do have a responsibility to deal with that in a particular way. What we are saying is that it is not the major rationale or the major reason, in terms of why forced marriage occurs. Why forced marriage occurs - there are many, many other reasons that member groups are telling us, and a lot of it is, obviously, to do with control and power; it might be to do with sexuality, it might be to do with a parent feeling a young person is going off the rails.

Chairman: I understand that. Thank you for that point. Mr Winnick has one final, tiny question.

Q491 Mr Winnick: Is there a possibility that Members of Parliament play a rather negative role in these matters, in order to try and be helpful to their constituents? If they are seen by a sponsor in the United Kingdom saying someone has been refused, who wants to marry their son or daughter, the MP takes the case up and perhaps has not got the means to check. What do you say to that?

Ms Mouj: I would say that it is an MP's responsibility to respond to any of the needs of their constituents, whatever those needs may be. I think it is also a responsibility to really fully check any case that is taken on. For some people whose spouses have been refused entry into this country it has been a really useful intervention, if they have chosen that spouse - of course it has. Clearly, I cannot comment on whether MPs should be doing their research in a particular way that would be really involving all the parties involved in that discussion, not just from a parental lead about "My child wants to bring in a spouse".

Q492 Mr Winnick: You are saying a Member of Parliament should try and be careful how they go about these matters, otherwise they could be playing the very opposite role to what we would like.

Ms Mouj: I would say that would be a concern for any member of the community; that they might feel that they are being helpful and useful in supporting a family in getting what they think is an arranged marriage, and it might not be that.

Chairman: That has caused Mr Salter to ask another question - he says it is very brief.

Martin Salter: It is not a question, I just want to put something on the record, since this is a public session. It builds on Mr Winnick's observations. Those of us with substantial minority ethnic communities do a substantial amount of casework related to immigration. We have some experience in our casework of the types of stories that are brought in front of us. Chairman, I think it would be useful if we were to write to Members of Parliament asking them to provide a snapshot of their views of the situation drawn from their casework experiences, some of which may be at odds with evidence we have just heard.

Q493 Chairman: Indeed, I am sure we can do that. Thank you very much for giving evidence. Though you have said this is the first time you have given evidence, you have performed very well indeed. It must be a very nerve-wracking experience to face all these Members of Parliament. Thank you for what you have said. We will be publishing our report at the end of May and we will send you a copy, but thank you for your help.

Ms Mouj: Thank you.

Witnesses: Mr John Gaskin, Managing Director, Education Bradford, Ms Kath Tunstall, Director, Children's Services, Bradford City Council, and Mr John Freeman, Joint Director, Association of Directors of Children's Services, gave evidence.

Q494 Chairman: Thank you very much for coming to give evidence to us today. Ms Tunstall, you are the Director of Children's Services for Bradford Council, which, I understand, provides its children's services through Education Bradford, which is why John Gaskin is here.

Mr Gaskin: Some of them, Chairman.

Q495 Chairman: Some of them - the ones that are pertinent to this inquiry, anyway.

Mr Gaskin: Yes.

Q496 Chairman: And Mr Freeman is the Joint President of the Association of Directors of Children's Services. Is that right?

Mr Freeman: That is correct, and I am in charge of children's services in the borough of Dudley, in the West Midlands.

Chairman: Excellent. May I begin, first of all, by thanking you for giving evidence at such very short notice. The inquiry was about to conclude when we took from Kevin Brennan, the Minister at the Department for Children and Families, and he came out with a rather extraordinary statistic about the number of children missing from the rolls in Bradford. Taken with a statement made by the Forced Marriage Unit that Bradford and 14 other local authority areas were areas where they were concerned about the high incidence of forced marriages, the evidence of the Minister prompted a whole series of new questions about the relationship between the local authority concerned (not just Bradford but also other local authorities) and the issue of forced marriages. We subsequently heard from the Minister and we published his letter in which he listed another 13 local authorities. That is why Mr Freeman is here today. That is the context of what you are here to discuss with us today. We have a number of questions around those statistics. I want to start with David Davies.

Q497 David Davies: Mr Gaskin, good morning. How many of the 34 children in Bradford who have not attended school for two months or more have you been able to locate since your letter to the DCSF dated 14 March?

Mr Gaskin: If I may, I have three sets of figures here: one from January 31, which I think were the figures that the Minister referred to, of 205 pupils all together on the register; on 7 March there were 192 children on the register, and on 19 March there were 180 pupils on the register. May I, Chairman, very briefly, give the categories that we put the children under, because I think it is pertinent? We have one category of children missing from education. Those are children who have left a school and the parents have not informed the school about where they are going. We have another category of children removed from a roll after extended leave; so children who have applied for extended leave and do not return within ten days of the end of that extended leave, we take them off the roll. So we have that as a category. We have a category of pupils who we know the whereabouts of - they are in Bradford - but they are not on the roll of a school. So we are actively trying to get them on to the roll of a school. We have one other category, which is pupils referred to us by other local authorities who believe that the children might be in Bradford. So we have those four different categories. Clearly, in terms of children missing as opposed to children missing from education, the ones that we know are in Bradford but not on roll are not, in that sense, missing; we are actively ----

Q498 Chairman: We understand your categories, but in answer to Mr Davies question, of the 34 how many have you not been able to locate?

Mr Gaskin: The number 34 on 7 March: 26 pupils that were on the register for more than two months, missing from education, and eight pupils removed from a roll. That figure is now 27 on the March ----

Q499 Chairman: So there are 27 still you cannot locate?

Mr Gaskin: Twenty pupils that are missing from education for more than two months and seven that have been removed from roll.

Q500 David Davies: Not only are 27 missing but, also, presumably, that figure does not include children who have gone on extended leave. How many are actually on extended leave and, to your knowledge, have been taken out of the country?

Mr Gaskin: I could get you those figures. I do not have those figures with me. I can tell ----

Q501 David Davies: Obviously, what we are investigating is the forced marriage, abduction and rape, effectively, of young girls, and many of them will have been taken on extended leave and the reason given will have been that they were going abroad, because there will not be many other reasons acceptable, will there? Is it fair to assume that all those on extended leave will have been taken abroad?

Mr Gaskin: It is not fair to assume that all of them on extended leave are abroad, no.

Q502 David Davies: But most of them.

Mr Gaskin: It may well be, and I would need to get the breakdown of numbers.

Q503 David Davies: Are we talking about over 100 on extended leave, do you think?

Mr Gaskin: Again, I would not like to speculate. I can tell you that we have ----

Q504 David Davies: I am sorry if my tone does not sound as warm and friendly as it should, but it is a serious matter.

Mr Gaskin: There are, at the moment, 15 pupils on the out-of-school roll, removed from roll after extended leave - seven of those have been on for two months or more. I can tell you that as on 19 March, in terms of breakdown of gender and ethnicity - and we have not been asked for any numbers by gender or ethnicity - so all the figures ----

Q505 Chairman: Not been asked by the Department?

Mr Gaskin: No. All the figures that have been bandied around in the press that assume these are all girls - it is incorrect.

Q506 Chairman: Are you going to give us the correct picture?

Mr Gaskin: As at 19 March, in relation to secondary age pupils, there were no girls who are on the register because they have been removed from roll for extended leave. There are no secondary-aged girls on the register.

Q507 David Davies: But there are girls ----

Mr Gaskin: There are some "missing from education" who are girls.

Q508 David Davies: And there are some who are on extended leave who are girls. Until you mentioned it, we have not looked at those on extended leave as being part of the problem. We have looked at those who have not returned from extended leave, but clearly those who are on extended leave are very relevant to this issue. So I think we would appreciate figures on that, with perhaps a breakdown of the sex and ethnicity as well, if possible.

Mr Gaskin: Which I can provide, yes.

Q509 David Davies: What are you doing to try and identify where those who are missing actually are?

Mr Gaskin: We follow all the procedures that are required. So if a school reports that a pupil is no longer at school and they do not know where they are, they are asked to make reasonable inquiries, and it is referred to the Education and Social Work Service that visits their last known address. If after four weeks there cannot be any trace found of those pupils then their details are uplifted to the missing children's database at the DCSF. In relation to children who have not returned from extended leave, inquiries are made at the address and inquiries are also made, where possible, with extended family members to see whether or not they have any information about when the families will be returning.

Q510 Chairman: The reason why Mr Davies is pressing you on these figures is because the figures, originally, came from the Minister, and we were unclear then what they all meant. I have to say I think it is unsatisfactory; I am still unclear about precisely what all these figures mean, and I think we need these figures as soon as possible. What Mr Davies is asking is: what inquiries are then undertaken by the Department?

Mr Gaskin: By the DCSF?

Q511 Chairman: By yourselves. That is why you are here. The DCSF has nothing to do with us; it is all up to Bradford. What is Bradford doing about it?

Mr Gaskin: I will try again. I am sorry if I am not being clear, Chairman. When a notification is made by a school that a pupil has gone missing - they did not know where they were going and they have just left - inquiries are made at the last known address to see whether or not there is anybody there. After a month the details of that child are uplifted on to the DCSF database. We check regularly on that database to see whether or not another school anywhere in the country has downloaded ----

Q512 Chairman: The Committee understands that. I think the concern we have is that we have been given information by the Minister and we are no clearer as to where this information leads us. How many children are you currently concerned about in respect of these matters? Are there any concerns about any of these children or are you absolutely satisfied everything is fine?

Mr Gaskin: If you mean in terms of concerns about whether or not any crimes have been committed, part of the process which the Education and Social Work Service goes through is to look at the individual cases and assess against the criteria in the statutory guidance ----

Q513 Chairman: We understand that.

Mr Gaskin: ---- whether or not there is any concern about a crime ----

Q514 Chairman: Are you concerned today, on 25 March?

Mr Gaskin: No, no.

Q515 Chairman: No concerns about any of the children?

Mr Gaskin: We do not have any concerns about whether or not any of those are victims of crime. We do, as part of our process, after two weeks, write to health, the police and social care to ask them if they have any information about those pupils. We repeat that a month later.

Q516 David Davies: Once those children have reached the age of 16 and are legally eligible to leave education, do they then go off the radar?

Mr Freeman: The position on that is that they are no longer children missing education.

Q517 David Davies: So, basically, a child disappears at the age of 15, inquiries are made for a month or so and then the child's name is put on to a database at DCFS, but as soon as that child's 16^th birthday is reached it does not matter whether they are never heard of again - nobody will actually be looking for them.

Mr Freeman: From the point of view of statutory education, that is correct. Of course, safeguarding concerns remain, but in terms of the database of children who are in statutory education they will not be on that because they are past the age.

Q518 David Davies: I understand that. What is the age of the youngest missing child?

Mr Gaskin: I believe it is six.

Chairman: We need to move on now to the next set of questions.

Q519 Mr Winnick: Mr Gaskin, if we can just clarify the position. You say it is now 27 children who are missing from secondary schools for more than two months. Is that the position?

Mr Gaskin: It is 27 pupils in secondary and primary in the two categories -----

Q520 Mr Winnick: Can you break that down, because we are more concerned over secondary ones. How many of those 27 are missing from secondary education?

Mr Gaskin: Missing from secondary education on 19 March there were six females and eight males.

Q521 Mr Winnick: We are writing that down. Six females and eight males.

Mr Gaskin: And removed from the roll following extended leave, secondary, no females and three males.

Q522 Mr Winnick: So, basically, it is more primary?

Mr Gaskin: No, it is ten in primary, 17 in secondary.

Q523 Mr Winnick: Are you able to give us any information about the ethnic position of those who are missing?

Mr Gaskin: On the secondary?

Q524 Mr Winnick: Yes.

Mr Gaskin: Of the females, four ethnicity not recorded (as you know parents can opt not to state ethnicity on the returns), three white British and one Irish traveller. Of the males, one "any other Pakistani", three not given and four white British. That was on the missing from education on the removed from roll. As I said, there were no females and the males were "any other Pakistani" or Mirpuri Pakistani.

Q525 Mr Winnick: Our concern is only about forced marriage and the possibility, as you will appreciate, that those who are missing are being pressurised one way or another into forced marriages. A moment ago, you said to Mr Davies that you are satisfied that none of those missing have been the victims of crime. Yes?

Mr Gaskin: Applying the criteria, yes. We have no reason to believe that they are, that is correct.

Q526 Mr Winnick: Do you have any reason to believe any of those who have been missing for two months or more could have been involved in forced marriages?

Mr Gaskin: We do not have any reason to believe that, no. May I just extend that answer, very briefly, Chairman? I do think we need to relate this to the wider child protection procedures. Our child protection training, which is quite extensive, does cover forced marriages as one of the issues in there, and the guidance that we give to schools about forced marriages talks about the kind of indicators that people should look for. So we know that people are aware of it and we know that they know what to do if they have concerns.

Q527 Bob Russell: Mr Freeman, I think the Committee, at its last meeting, may have felt it had inadvertently stumbled across a major scandal and while the numbers may not be as great as we were led to believe, nevertheless, there is something of serious concern, I think, that I would like to put to you. How good are children's services at identifying the warning signs of children who are about to be taken abroad for a forced marriage, for example, during the school summer holidays?

Mr Freeman: As has been said already, and I can reflect this at a national level, local authorities have policies in place around this area of activity. My own has, through its own safeguarding board, as has Bradford, and as has all other local authorities. There is training in place, of course, and the training includes issues around the warning signs: behavioural changes, under-achievement at school, sudden changes in demeanour and low self-esteem - things of that sort. Schools and responsible teachers are well aware of all that. The same is true of colleges. In terms of the practice, as with the previous response, there is no evidence that I am aware of, and I have done some checking across a number of the local authorities - the 14 and some more as well - around incidents of concerns about forced marriage. The incidence is relatively low, with only a small number of young people either disclosing or having concerns raised about them in this respect. I think my concern in the context of the question, which is not being quite clear about how many children are concerned, is that the evidence from local authorities is that the number is relatively limited. Indeed, I am aware, across the country - and this is not a national survey but it is across a survey of the 14 authorities plus a few more - of two children who are currently going through some sort of safeguarding procedure because of the fear of forced marriages. There are some issues there about where the FMU gets its data from and how it all gets collected.

Q528 Bob Russell: Was the Committee, at our previous meeting, inadvertently misled into thinking there was a problem where, this morning, the indications are there is not a problem?

Mr Freeman: I cannot tell what happened at the previous meeting but it certainly has been the case that forced marriages are part of local policies and procedures and have been for a period of years. The predecessor association for ADCS, the Association of Directors of Social Services, worked with the Government to produce some guidelines in 2005, and they have been well disseminated. Those guidelines talk about social care practice and education practice in the context of the warning signs that one might look for.

Q529 Bob Russell: Mr Freeman, you are before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, so I am going to ask you: are the procedures good enough to respond in such cases? Here is an opportunity for you to say how those procedures could be improved if you feel they ought to be improved.

Mr Freeman: I think, generally, the information I have is slightly inconsistent. Let me explain that because I think it is an important point. The information I have from local authorities - indeed, my local authority - is that polices, training and practice are pretty sound. There are some children who we do not know where they are, but investigation will take place and we are reasonably content. If a child is missing there is always a concern - I do not wish to minimise that. Having said that, across the country, FMU says that there are something like 250 cases a year, and probably more than that. That gives me some concern because the information is inconsistent. Certainly, as an association, in the light of the work of this Committee and the evidence that has been given to you, both this morning and previously, we want to work with the Departments on some research on case studies (you have heard some particular testimony): what did the local authority know and other agencies; what could they have known; what was done, what could have been done, what should have been done and some statistical information around actually the numbers, the ages and from where and to where they were taken.

Q530 Bob Russell: If your organisation would care to write to the Committee with suggested recommendations, I am sure that would be very helpful. Mr Gaskin, you have covered in part the question I am about to put, but I think, for the record, I will do so. The Committee is being led to believe that the most vulnerable age for forced marriage is the age group 16 to 24. Bearing in mind that you have responsibilities for the lower end of that age range, is there anything that can be done to track and identify children at risk from age 16 and above? Do you feel that schools could introduce special training for those turning 16 or finishing compulsory education?

Mr Gaskin: I can give a specific example of one of our schools in Bradford that does make sure that pupils aged 16 and above do cover this in the curriculum and are given information about who they can contact locally if this is an issue for them.

Bob Russell: I will ask you if you could arrange for that to be sent to the Committee because I think that might be useful. Thank you.

Q531 Martin Salter: Probably my first question is to Kath Tunstall and John Gaskin. There has been a lot of talk in the media about numbers, and some of it has been inaccurate. A child missing from a school register, clearly, does not necessarily equate to a forced marriage, but that does not stop us, as a Committee, from trying to get some clear idea of the extent of the problem. Bradford has been highlighted, both as an authority where a lot of support services are in place but it has also been highlighted as an authority where the practice of forced marriage has been known to occur, with perhaps a higher incidence of it than elsewhere in the country. How many young people over, say, the last four or five years, do you think - just as a rough, ballpark figure - may have been forced into marriages against their will, and how many instances, to your certain knowledge, have there been where the issue has been reported to the police or to child protection authorities?

Ms Tunstall: Thank you. Yes, I am the Chair of the Safeguarding Board in Bradford, as the ADCS. Over the last three years we have had three cases of forced marriage of under-18s.

Q532 Chairman: In Bradford?

Ms Tunstall: In Bradford, yes. The point that John was making earlier, I think, is a valid one, that we do have very robust training, undertaken on an interagency basis in conjunction with the FMU, who are very helpful in delivering that training. We have two courses a year; it is open to the voluntary sector and the statutory sector and we have had over 70 people trained. The issue here is about awareness, it is about prevention, it is about everyone being aware in order to help support young women and make sure that young women and pupils, particularly in our secondary schools, have access to information where they know they can talk safely and in confidence to a trusted adult. It is a priority in our children's plan that every young person does have a trusted adult that they can turn to. It is important to have that training in place to create that awareness. It is equally important to have very robust procedures in place so that one can respond effectively when reports are made to us. I am confident, of the three cases that we have dealt with, that procedures have been complied with. We review our procedures every six months on forced marriage, they are on our website and they are available, and we discuss those with the Forced Marriage Unit.

Q533 Martin Salter: Just for the record, you said three cases in the last year.

Ms Tunstall: The last three years.

Q534 Martin Salter: So one case a year.

Ms Tunstall: Yes.

Q535 Martin Salter: Can I follow up on that? On your website, the BSCB website, you have got a very, very helpful link (?) which is, effectively, advice to agencies involved in this field. Of the use of national resources highlighted at the end, forced marriage does not appear to be here, which seems strange, given that the document was drawn up in conjunction with the Forced Marriage Unit. Is that purely an oversight? You say, at the end here, Ms Tunstall, "Use of national resources: Foreign and Commonwealth Office" and then you go on to list the NSPCC, a range of national organisations and a range of local organisations.

Ms Tunstall: If you go to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, there you will get the FMU details because they are located within the FCO. That is the route into the FMU.

Q536 Chairman: The point Mr Salter is making is that the Forced Marriage Unit has obviously been set up to assist in trying to discover these forced marriages. What contact have you all had with the Forced Marriage Unit? Have any of you ever visited the Forced Marriage Unit? Have any of you ever had the Forced Marriage Unit come to visit Bradford and give information about what is going on?

Ms Tunstall: Yes. Mr Freeman mentioned earlier about the development that involves directors of social services in setting up the education guidance that was issued in 2005. Bradford hosted a conference with the Forced Marriage Unit that actually helped set up and deliver that guidance and those procedures. So Bradford has been in very close contact with the Forced Marriage Unit for a number of years. As I said, they are one of the trainers on our interagency courses.

Q537 Martin Salter: I was very interested in what you were saying about the need to give young people the confidence and to empower young people to speak out. Would you encourage us in our report to emphasise the crucial nature of the empowerment of young people in dealing with this particular problem and issue?

Ms Tunstall: Absolutely I would, whether it is a discussion about training materials, whether it is about posters, whether it is about cards to hand out, so please involve those young people in designing those posters and cards because they know exactly what young people will respond to.

Martin Salter: That is very, very helpful indeed; thank you very much.

Q538 Margaret Moran: You referred to three cases in Bradford in the last three years of which you are aware. I do not know if you are aware of the report from Luton?

Ms Tunstall: Yes.

Q539 Margaret Moran: And if there are any implications there that you would like to draw out. Are you aware how many cases have been dealt with by the voluntary and community sector within Bradford during the periods to which we are referring?

Ms Tunstall: We work very closely with the voluntary and community sectors, both through delivering the training and through the development of the procedures. Clearly if there were any cases that required intervention and child protection procedures needed to be involved, I am confident that the voluntary sector would bring that to our attention. The issues to me are protecting the young person and the need to secure the protection of that young person, and the voluntary sector and the community sector are very well aware of that, and I am confident that they would bring those situations to the attention of the statutory authorities if they felt that protective action was needed to be taken.

Q540 Chairman: What worries me, Mr Freeman, is that in the letter that the Minister sent to this Committee we talked about the 14 local authority areas. In that letter the Forced Marriage Unit talks about the high incidence - and you mentioned three cases - of forced marriages in those 14 local authority areas. Was that the first time you heard about that information?

Mr Freeman: That 14, certainly; that is correct.

Q541 Chairman: The first time you heard about it was when the Minister gave evidence to this Committee?

Mr Freeman: From the FMU. I think there are some questions that we need to hear about and find out about in the research, for example what is the age of the young people concerned?

Q542 Chairman: We understand that, but that is the first time you heard about that information?

Mr Freeman: Yes, that is correct.

Q543 Chairman: And what have you done as a result of hearing that there are 14 areas of the country where there is a high incidence of forced marriage?

Mr Freeman: I have personally spoken to or contacted the Directors concerned, and also some other areas as well, with a view to assessing whether the position is as stated. Generally, I would have to say, as I responded earlier, that the incidents of forced marriages, as you heard from Bradford just now, is relatively low.

Q544 Chairman: Yes, I understand that. I am talking about the information now. I understand all the points you have made. Have you therefore subsequently contacted the Forced Marriage Unit and asked them where they got these figures from, which have resulted in so much additional work for yourself and the other 14 local authorities?

Mr Freeman: That is an action I have not yet taken but it is on my list to do.

Q545 Chairman: So you will be contacting them. Will you also be contacting the Minister to explain the figures that you are going to give?

Mr Freeman: Yes, indeed, Chairman.

Q546 Chairman: Is there anything else that you can tell this Committee that is going to be helpful for us, other than what you have already said, in respect of this inquiry?

Mr Freeman: In terms of the children missing education and forced marriages I have asked the question of all the 14 authorities and others as well and none of them have come forward with any evidence to link specifically children missing education with forced marriages in the context of current fears about forced marriage.

Q547 Chairman: So we will still try to find out why the Forced Marriage Unit came up with these 14 areas?

Mr Freeman: Indeed.

Chairman: Thank you very much for coming to give evidence at such short notice; we are extremely grateful.

Witnesses: Meg Munn MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Consular Affairs, Mr Mark Sedwill, Director, UK Visas and Mr Rob Macaire, Director, Consular Services, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, gave evidence.

Q548 Chairman: Minister, Mr Sedwill and Mr Macaire, thank you for coming. We now go to the last session of our inquiry into domestic violence and forced marriages and we are very pleased to welcome the Minister at the Foreign Office, Meg Nunn, and Mr Sedwill and Mr Macaire from her Dept. Minister, perhaps I could start by asking you a question based on evidence that has been given to this Committee. Jagdeesh Singh, the brother of Surjit Athwal, has suggested to us that the United Kingdom Government affords greater priority to white citizens in intervening with foreign governments than to Asian or other BME citizens. How do you respond to that very serious accusation?

Meg Munn: I respond by saying that my understanding - and obviously I was not the Minister at the time - was that the consular services provided to the family in that situation were exactly the same as would have been provided to a white family. So I reject that accusation.

Q549 Chairman: Is there any monitoring that currently goes on in the Foreign Office, in the consular services section where people make complaints of this kind? Because apparently he made the complaint to the Foreign Secretary himself, Jack Straw. Was there anything done to follow up on that complaint?

Meg Munn: I will perhaps bring in Rob Macaire in a moment to give some more details on that. But if I can say that in a number of consular situations people do indeed make complaints. In situations where people are missing, murdered, it is obviously extremely serious, but it is also very difficult because we are not empowered to investigate crimes that have taken place in other countries. We do liaise obviously with other governments and with police forces and we always push very hard for action to be taken, but that can be very frustrating for families in many situations, so it is certainly not the only family to make complaint in relation to that, but they often focus around what is seen as our inability to intervene in what are essentially investigations. Perhaps I can ask Rob Macaire to respond specifically?

Mr Macaire: One thing I would say is that in all our training and in our guidance to consular officials there is a great stress placed on providing consular assistance impartially and without any discrimination. We track that in introducing the possibility for people to register and monitor their ethnicity, to record their ethnicity as part of our customer satisfaction procedures. We do not actually try to record ethnicity as we give assistance - I think that would be a difficult thing to do. That is something that has come out of our looking at how much we can monitor this, which partly comes out of the conversations that Jagdeesh Singh had with Jack Straw.

Q550 Chairman: But what has happened to his complaint? He has raised it with the Foreign Secretary; he has raised it with this Committee. Is he now satisfied? Has someone been to see him? When people make very serious complaints of this kind are they followed through by the FCO?

Meg Munn: Of course they are.

Q551 Chairman: They are. So it is now concluded, is it - somebody has seen him?

Mr Macaire: We have not seen Jagdeesh Singh recently; we would be very happy to see him, and indeed to see anyone who has allegations like this. I would be very happy to talk to them.

Chairman: That would be very helpful.

Q552 Mr Clappison: I understand the constraints which there are on you in these cases and that the expectations of the families involved may run ahead of what you are actually able to do, but looking at the history of this from his point of view then the point of view that he has come to does not strike me as being completely unreasonable, I have to say. Are you prepared to revisit this case and have a look at it and write to us giving your side of the history that has taken place, because he has given us his history and, as I say, he does not strike me as being somebody who is unreasonable in his account of what has taken place? Would you be prepared to that?

Meg Munn: Of course, and that is something that I would do as a matter of course if people want further details on that and of course if Mr Singh is happy for us to do that. In addition to which, it is certainly not unusual for me to have meetings with families; it is usually the Minister who has responsibility for that part of the world who will meet with a family where there is a consular issue, and it is certainly my practice - and I have no reason to think that it is any different for any other Ministers - that if the Member of Parliament for the particular person approaches the Minister and wants to discuss issues then the general position would be indeed to have a meeting and to try and get to the bottom of what those issues are. As you rightly say, sometimes we will end up disagreeing because the family feels that we should do more than we are actually able to do and, as I say, that particularly relates to investigations and legal processes where we cannot intervene in the investigations in another country.

Q553 Mr Clappison: You can write to us giving us the history - a blow by blow account of what has happened and what has been done?

Meg Munn: Absolutely.

Chairman: That would be extremely helpful.

Q554 Margaret Moran: As you said, you do not meet with the families in relation to individual cases but where there are cases of forced marriage do you get any feedback from either organisations directly involved with FMU or families who have been trying to assist their relatives in relation to forced marriage? Do you get any feedback at all?

Meg Munn: Are you asking at ministerial level or within the Forced Marriage Unit?

Q555 Mr Clappison: I am asking at ministerial level but you can answer about the Forced Marriage Unit as well.

Meg Munn: So far nobody has approached me and asked to have a meeting in relation to an incidence of forced marriage or attempted forced marriage; so it is not that I would not meet with families or a victim or a survivor, I would very happily do that if a request were made and there was a specific focus to that. In terms of the unit, perhaps I can ask Rob Macaire again to respond in terms of how we monitor the quality of the work and how we get the feedback from the people involved who have experienced attempted forced marriage.

Mr Macaire: I think fundamental to the work that the Forced Marriage Unit does is its very close relationship with a number of NGOs who are active in this area, and I think we get a lot of useful feedback from them as to how effective government interventions are and how effective the work of the Unit is in dealing with the problem, and I think it is fair to say that we are learning all the time, and the Unit has been in existence since 2005 and the forerunner of it has been around since 2000 and over that period we have learnt an awful lot about dealing with these problems and a lot of that has come from feedback from the individual casework that we deal with, which is one of the biggest areas obviously that teaches us how to deal with these cases, and from our interactions with communities, with practitioners, and with NGOs. It is an ongoing process of improving how we do it. Certainly, coming back to the earlier question, there is no doubt that we have learnt an awful lot since 1998 when Surjit Athwal disappeared.

Q556 Margaret Moran: Could I just clarify, do you get systematic feedback from those who are trying to assist forced marriage victims and survivors and what information then do you produce for the Minister, on a systematic basis?

Mr Macaire: We do not send out a survey for systematic feedback, we get feedback as part of an ongoing contact with the people we are dealing with, and obviously if we get any complaints we will look into those and deal with those accordingly. We do not have a survey, if that is what you mean.

Margaret Moran: I am just asking about any systematic feedback.

Chairman: We will be coming on to the Forced Marriage Unit at the end, Ms Moran, so we can ask the Minister then. David Winnick has some questions on consular powers.

Q557 Mr Winnick: Minister, obviously we are concerned as to what protection can be given to a British citizen who has been forced into the sort of marriage that we have just been speaking about. So what protection can be given to a British citizen in such circumstances?

Meg Munn: Are you talking about a British citizen here in the UK or abroad?

Q558 Mr Winnick: A British citizen abroad who has been forced into this type of artificial marriage?

Meg Munn: A great deal of assistance can be given. If the person approaches the Embassy or High Commission then they will be interviewed, or even if somebody else does we can go and rescue people - we have good relationships in particular areas where there are a number of these circumstances where the police can assist and will go and rescue them. We will help people to return to the UK and we will help them on their return to the UK with all the issues that arise from a situation where perhaps they are estranged from their family and their community, including financial support and assistance like that. I have Mark Sedwill with me who has been in Islamabad and can give some more detail if you would like that.

Q559 Mr Winnick: How many of these rescue operations have occurred, say, in the last couple of years? And do I take it that this would be on the Indian sub-continent more than anywhere else?

Meg Munn: The figures are predominantly there but not exclusively.

Q560 Chairman: What are the figures? How many rescues did we undertake in the last year?

Meg Munn: We have been trying to get these down because the situation is that ---

Q561 Chairman: Who has them?

Meg Munn: If I could just explain? The situation is that there are numbers that will be seen through the Forced Marriage Unit in the UK and then there are additional figures that are seen in other places. Mark or Rob - I do not know who has actually got them here.

Q562 Mr Winnick: If we could just take the Indian sub-continent, the figures for the last two years on the Indian sub-continent where rescue operations have been coordinated by the British authorities?

Mr Macaire: Last year we dealt with 168 overseas cases of forced marriage. Not all of those were actual rescues. I do not have the figures here but we can provide them for you.

Q563 Mr Winnick: A total of 168.

Mr Macaire: A total of 168 overseas cases last year.

Q564 Chairman: For the calendar year last year there were 168?

Mr Macaire: Yes.

Q565 Mr Winnick: And mainly on the Indian sub-continent out of those 168?

Mr Macaire: The majority, yes; over 85% in the Indian sub-continent.

Q566 Mr Winnick: That is very useful information.

Meg Munn: I think it would be helpful at this point if Mark Sedwill also explained that those were the consular cases in relation to the visa applications.

Mr Sedwill: Chairman, thank you. The consular cases of course involve British citizens, as Mr Winnick was just asking about. In Pakistan, for example, last year we had 450 cases which related to family abuse - not all of those of course are forced marriage necessarily, but they are cases of which forced marriage is a proportion. 250 of those were reluctant sponsors, which is generally the way that forced marriage issues come to the notice of the immigration system; but we had 86 vulnerable adults, for example, as well. Then in Bangladesh - the numbers are much less - it was around 30 and in India it was around a dozen, and that is partly because of the awareness campaigns we have had in Pakistan with NGOs, people are more likely to bring these cases to our attention.

Q567 Mr Winnick: On these rescue operations the procedure is obviously that the British authorities can only ask the local police outright - the British authorities can do no more than ask for the full cooperation of the police in the given country; am I not right?

Meg Munn: Yes; and the situation is that where these situations are arising relationships are being built up with the agencies in those countries so that when there is a need for this action to be taken there is a good understanding of what is required and then that action goes ahead.

Q568 Mr Winnick: Would it be right to say that the Indian, Bangladesh and Pakistan authorities, the immigration and police authorities in particular, are helpful?

Meg Munn: Yes, I think that is my understanding of that. I do not know if Rob can give a little more detail?

Mr Macaire: Yes. What would typically happen is that our High Commission would go to the place where the individual was about whom we were concerned; they would rely on the support of the local police to go there and find the location, but it would be probably the High Commission and consular staff who would go in and talk to the individual concerned and talk to the family as necessary. It does rely on the cooperation from local authorities and we do get that.

Q569 Mr Winnick: Which you are getting?

Mr Macaire: Yes.

Q570 Mr Winnick: You were a little hesitant.

Mr Macaire: No. I think they are positive about it. It happens very much at the working level; it is about getting policemen in a particular area to be helpful and supportive on forced marriages.

Q571 Mr Winnick: In the main you are satisfied with the level of cooperation, would that be right?

Mr Macaire: Yes.

Q572 Mr Winnick: Just finally, where rescue operations have taken place, say in the last two years, what has actually happened in practice? Has the UK citizen come back to Britain?

Mr Macaire: By and large, yes.

Q573 Mr Winnick: Without being involved in any marriage whatsoever?

Meg Munn: We do have some case examples which we have looked out, if the Committee is interested, which we can either talk to or we can send you subsequently, whichever you prefer.

Q574 Martin Salter: To what extent is forced marriage, in your view, Minister, used as a tool to get entry clearance for people into the UK?

Meg Munn: That is certainly one of the reasons but it is not by any means the only reason. There are many other reasons why forced marriages take place, sometimes to do with family, sometimes to do with community issues, so we would not make an assumption that a situation that was brought to our attention either in the UK or elsewhere was primarily for that reason; it would need to be based on the evidence in that particular circumstance.

Q575 Martin Salter: Many years ago we got rid of the Primary Purpose Rule, which was much hated by minority communities in this country and was seen as an excessively harsh tool for keeping families apart. There was only argument I ever heard at the time in favour of the Primary Purpose Rule, and that was that it potentially provided a bit of a safety buffer to prevent forced marriage. I never heard that argument then expanded or justified but I do think it is worth just sticking that into the public domain again in the context of this inquiry. Have you had a chance, Minister, to reflect on whether the Primary Purpose Rule did give any protection at all against forced marriage?

Meg Munn: I do not what the actual figures were at that time because I have not researched back on that - I think it was 1997 and one of the early things that the new Labour Government did. I think we need to remember that although forced marriage is clearly very serious and although we are absolutely clear that what we are seeing is not the full extent of it - with all these issues there will be a lot of hidden cases that we are not seeing - on the other hand forced marriage is still only a tiny proportion of marriages that take place. So I am not sure that it would be particularly helpful to move back to that. What we do use - and Mark will give me the exact terminology for this - is as to whether the marriage is a genuine marriage and the parties intend to live together permanently.

Q576 Chairman: We will be coming on to the marriage and the spouse issue in a second. Do you want to respond to the first of Mr Salter's points, Mr Sedwill?

Mr Sedwill: Of course the Primary Purpose Rule was abolished before we really started to do forced marriage casework in an organised way, so we do not have a real example against which to test it. It could have been a pretty blunt instrument, to be honest, in this case. As the Minister says, there are quite strict requirements anyway for a spouse or fianc�(e) settlement: the marriage has to be subsisting, the partners have to have met, they have to be over 18 and so on, and they have to be able to maintain and accommodate themselves. So we have a range of tools within the immigration rules as they stand, which are broadly equivalent to a test that essentially requires us to establish whether the marriage was genuine. Primary Purpose rather put the burden of proof the other way around and that might have helped with some forced marriage cases, but of course would have had much wider consequences as well.

Q577 Martin Salter: Just one follow-up question, did I hear you correctly, Mr Sedwill, that you were talking in terms of 450 cases of reluctant sponsors, is that right, from Islamabad?

Mr Sedwill: 450 cases which we handle essentially as family abuse cases; around 250 we define as reluctant sponsors. There are other categories where it is the other way around - we have reluctant applicants where essentially the victim of the forced marriage is actually the applicant rather the sponsor. And we have around I think 86 vulnerable adults where we have people who are severely disabled who are somehow involved in a marital case of this kind. So it is 450 in total, 250 reluctant sponsors in 2007.

Chairman: We will now move on to immigration and specifically this point, but it would be very helpful, Mr Sedwill, if the Committee could receive those figures over the last five years as soon as possible as we intend to complete our inquiry by the end of May.

Mr Clappison: Which figures are those, Mr Chairman?

Chairman: On forced marriages, that Mr Sedwill has just referred to.

Q578 Bob Russell: Chairman, I would like to continue the line of questioning started by Mr Winnick and continued by Mr Salter. The Committee has been told that in 2006 - we do not have the figures for 2007 - that 47,100 people were admitted to the UK as a spouse or fianc�(e) for the two year probationary period - 960 a week - and almost 17,000 of those were from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh collectively. When a British citizen applies for a marriage visa for their non-British spouse why is the spouse interviewed but not the sponsor? You have fielded that one, have you?

Mr Sedwill: I wondered if the Minister wanted to start.

Q579 Chairman: It is an issue of policy but there are practical implications. What is the policy behind this, first of all?

Meg Munn: The policy would be the sheer volume of the situation in terms of what the issues are, but let us be clear that neither am I an immigration minister either; but let me move on to get the detail of this.

Mr Sedwill: I simply wanted to let the Minister start. Essentially the Immigration Rules are configured around the applicant and that has been a principle of the Immigration Rules for quite some time. We are changing that a little now with the point based system - institutional sponsors have more legal obligations on them as part of the current visitor consultation, indeed the marriage to partners overseas consultation - and there is in a sense a philosophical shift which might require the Immigration Rules to concentrate formally on the sponsor, but the Immigration Rules are set up so that essentially the legal contract is with the applicant rather than the sponsor. In these cases we would not conduct a formal structured interview with sponsors - apart from anything else that might, particularly through the immigration process, alert the family to the fact that the sponsor has tipped us off that there is something wrong with the marriage. That contact with the sponsor would usually happen in advance of the formal visa application and would be handled through the Forced Marriage Unit or the consular side. Then we conduct a very detailed interview with the applicant, just as we would for other settlement cases.

Q580 Bob Russell: Mr Sedwill, the Select Committee has tried to get to the bottom of the awful situation of forced marriages and there is almost a "Not me guv!" type answer there. Is that an unfair observation?

Mr Sedwill: I think it is an unfair observation, if I may say so. It is actually the other way around. We have to handle the victims very carefully in these circumstances; very many of them do not wish the fact that they have tipped us off that there is some impropriety in their marriage, a forced marriage to come to the attention of their families. That makes handling these cases that much more difficult as it would with any case of domestic violence because if the victim will not make a public statement then, inevitably, the evidential process is that much more difficult. You asked about the general issue of how we handle settlement visas and what I was explaining was the framework within which we operate. Operating within that framework, when we are dealing with a forced marriage case we deal with it in three phases and perhaps it would be helpful, Mr Chairman, if I briefly explained that. The first phase is to get as much information as we can from the sponsor, and that would usually be handled, if it is a British citizen, either here in the UK or by a consular unit overseas because they are responsible for the relationship with the British citizen and we get as much information as we can about the spouse. We get an awful lot of tip-offs which then do not necessarily lead to information that is, if you like, hard enough for us to deal with. That information is then put on a local watch list so when the visa application comes in it is flagged up as a potential forced marriage case. In those cases we will then call in the applicant and they will be given a very thorough forensic interview - and in Pakistan of course we have the greatest number of these - and that will be an interview of 50, 100, maybe even more than that, questions to try and drill down into exactly what underpins the application. But we have to be very careful in the way we handle the sponsor. If we put the sponsor through a structured interview of that kind that might either alert the family to the fact that the sponsor has provided us with some information; it can be very distressing for them in those circumstances - these are people who have often been through a very distressing time; and of course they may often be in the UK.

Q581 Chairman: But the problem that Mr Russell is highlighting - and that may be the system - is that the ECO and the ECM may never meet the sponsor, will never meet the sponsor under the system.

Mr Sedwill: May or may not meet the sponsor.

Q582 Chairman: How will they meet the sponsor if they are not going to interview them?

Mr Sedwill: They do not necessarily go through a formal process of the interview; it depends on where the sponsor is. If the sponsor, for example, is someone who has been rescued in Pakistan and is prepared to give a public statement, is prepared essentially to go on the record and say that they have been forced into marriage, then the ECO may well, in those circumstances, meet the sponsor. But very often in the most difficult cases the sponsor wishes to remain incognito, for obvious reasons, and we do not then call the sponsor in for a formal interview. We do the formal interview with the applicant and we refuse the application.

Q583 Bob Russell: You refer to the distress of the sponsor but my concern is with the distress of the spouse. I still do not understand why both the spouse and the sponsor cannot be interviewed - not at the same time - separately by Entry Clearance Managers so that there is more likelihood they will decide whether the marriage is genuine or forced and therefore whether to grant the visa or not?

Meg Munn: Can I clarify? Are you saying that in every situation there should be an interview?

Q584 Chairman: I think what Mr Russell is suggesting is where, for example, the sponsor is being forced into a marriage and wants those representations to be brought before the ECM or the ECO there should be a mechanism by which the sponsor should be interviewed, either in Islamabad - for example Islamabad, I am not saying it is all Islamabad - or in the United Kingdom with the immigration officers going to see her or she being made available to see immigration officers. What is the practical difficulty in doing that?

Meg Munn: I think there has been some misunderstanding then in terms of what we are saying. If a reluctant sponsor comes forward then that is taken very seriously, and what we are saying is ---

Q585 Chairman: We understand that, Minister, but under what Mr Sedwill has correctly said they are not necessarily interviewed, are they?

Meg Munn: What we are saying is that the situation is such that they could be interviewed, they could have some contact, but each circumstance is looked at as to what is right for that situation. The intensive interview then takes place with the other party who may or may not be a willing party to this, and the assumption is that it will be refused.

Chairman: Indeed. I am going to let a couple of other Members come in on brief points if Mr Russell has finished his main thrust.

Q586 Bob Russell: I have not, Chairman, because we are talking about 47,100 in one year but on the evidence we have just had we have had no evidence that were any forced marriages in Australia with 1,130, so therefore it could be narrowed down to those countries where perhaps it is more likely - not in every case but more likely? So we are not talking about the whole 47,000.

Meg Munn: But you are still suggesting that we should interview every sponsor as opposed to those which have indicated in some way to us that they are reluctant sponsors?

Q587 Bob Russell: Let me turn the question round and my last question is this, which will hopefully help the Minister to answer what I have to say I think is almost an element of complacency on this serious issue. How many applications for marriage visas have been turned down on the grounds of a forced marriage?

Meg Munn: If I can just say that I am not at all complacent about this; all I was trying to do was to clarify because we seem to being asked two questions: one, do we interview if people have indicated in some way that they are reluctant; or two, do we interview everybody? I am not clear, and that is all I am trying to do.

Chairman: Minister, I think all the Members sitting around this table have experience of immigration crises, and indeed Mrs Cryer was very keen to be here because it was her idea.

Bob Russell: How many have you turned down on the grounds of forced marriage?

Q588 Chairman: I think what Mr Russell is suggesting is that it should be those cases where the trained ECO or the ECM has concern, or where somebody has indicated, even mildly, that this might be a forced marriage, not interviewing the entire number of people who make applications for spouses because we are running into hundreds of thousands there. I think that is what Mr Russell is suggesting.

Meg Munn: Perhaps if I can ask Mr Sedwill just to clarify what exactly we do because I think you will find that we are doing more than you think we are doing.

Mr Sedwill: Mr Chairman, I think there is slight language confusion here and I apologise if I am contributing to that. In all of these cases where a sponsor has let us know that, for whatever reason, forced marriage or indeed other reasons, the marriage has collapsed or become violent - and I think the Committee has heard an example of that, which was not a forced marriage but then essentially collapsed - the sponsor will be interviewed either by telephone or in person. It is not an immigration interview but they will be interviewed either by consular colleagues who of course are trained in dealing with distressed British citizens or by the Forced Marriage Unit in the UK, in order to gather the information that enables us to then make the immigration decision. That is the decision at the first phase of the process. The second phase of the process is when the applicant comes in and we use that information from the sponsor, which may or may not include an on the record statement, if you like, to conduct a forensic interview with the applicant, essentially to penetrate whether the applicant, who could equally be a victim or a perpetrator, is genuine about the marriage, and that is the basis on which we can then refuse an application.

Bob Russell: Mr Chairman, can I ask for a third time then how many marriage visas have been turned down on the grounds of a forced marriage? How many marriage visas have been turned down on the grounds of forced marriage?

Q589 Chairman: Last year.

Mr Sedwill: The policy is to refuse all of them.

Q590 Bob Russell: How many?

Mr Sedwill: This is the difficulty with definition. We had, as I said, in Pakistan 450 cases last year of family abuse cases - not all of them were forced marriage - and all of those visa applications were refused. We also refused, say in Pakistan ---

Q591 Chairman: How many, in answer to Mr Russell's question, relate specifically to forced marriages? We have had lots of figures for family abuse; you must have the figures for forced marriages?

Mr Sedwill: The difficulty is that forced marriage covers a range of things - vulnerable adults, reluctant sponsors, and reluctant applicants.

Q592 Chairman: How many of those?

Mr Sedwill: It would be wrong to say that all of those are the 452. It is the majority of the 452 that are forced marriage cases but there are other cases, I have said, which would be included in those figures where the marriage itself was not forced but where it has somehow gone wrong.

Q593 Chairman: So roughly 400.

Mr Sedwill: In Pakistan.

Q594 Chairman: 400 in Pakistan.

Mr Sedwill: That is the sort of order of magnitude.

Chairman: Are you satisfied? That is a rough figure, Mr Russell, it is not the figure that we want.

Bob Russell: It could be more precise than that; it would be nice to have it.

Q595 Chairman: Can you possibly write to us and give us some more specific figures?

Mr Sedwill: I can give you the best data that we have but inevitably these are not binary - it is not a forced marriage or not a forced marriage, it is a range of very delicate social issues that we deal with through this process.

Q596 Mr Clappison: You have told us about the sponsors who have come forward in the Indian sub-continent because they are reluctant. Presumably they have come forward of their own accord to say that they are reluctant? They have come forward and said, "We are unhappy about this"?

Meg Munn: That would be part of the discussion from that process. Sometimes it might also be somebody else getting in touch and saying, "I know somebody who is going through this and they may be reluctant."

Q597 Mr Clappison: That leaves the impression in my mind that this is only part of the picture that you are dealing with there and that there might be other people who are unhappy and who do not have the great courage that it would take to come forward in these circumstances?

Meg Munn: Yes, and it is our assumption - which is why such a lot of the work of the Forced Marriage Unit goes into raising awareness about this and raising awareness with other agencies - that there are a greater number of forced marriages than we see. One of the things we have seen over the years that the Forced Marriage has been in existence, and prior to that, is an increasing number. Your own inquiry, which has been very helpful in raising this issue when we have, in any case, seen a rise in numbers since January, and the kind of publicity that your inquiry has very helpfully given to this issue has got more people coming forward.

Q598 Mr Clappison: You have told us - and this is very easy to understand - that where somebody comes forward it draws attention to them and people may be reluctant on account of that and that is one of the facts that you take into account. So would that not be an argument for having an interview of the sponsor in every case, so that it is not something that somebody does that will bring attention to somebody but it is something that automatically happens?

Meg Munn: I think the difficulty there is the wide ranging numbers.

Q599 Mr Clappison: A practical problem. The marriage visa, as Mr Russell said, I think it adds up to about 17,000 for the Indian sub-continent - I do not know whether you would be prepared to do it on that basis or not? There may be other places where this happens.

Meg Munn: There are other places, it is not purely the Indian sub-continent, and I think we have not looked at that.

Q600 Mr Clappison: But you are interviewing all of the spouses out of those 17,000.

Meg Munn: Yes, and that was the arrangement that Mr Sedwill explained about the format and the arrangement of the immigration situation.

Mr Sedwill: We do not interview in all settlement cases. We now process almost all of these applications in all categories on the basis of paper evidence. In the Indian sub-continent we refused about 5,400 cases last year of spouse or fianc�(e) settlement - that is around a quarter of the total. I think it is reasonable to assume, as the Minister was suggesting, that within that 5,500 there are quite a number of undeclared cases where there has been some sort of compulsion within the marriage. We refused those cases because the couple cannot maintain or accommodate themselves but also, for example, they had not met or they are under 18. We do not know for sure in those cases whether there has been any violence or compulsion but it is reasonable to assume that a significant proportion has. So the formal part or the recorded part of the forced marriage picture is, as the Minister says, only a fraction of the overall casework with which we deal when we refuse those cases essentially on the basis that we do not consider the marriages to be fully valid.

Q601 Margaret Moran: I want to ask about indefinite leave to remain. How many cases of indefinite leave to remain where, obviously as you have indicated, very often the spouse that is being forced does not indicate this anywhere else except at the point at which very often she is being forced to sign that the marriage is subsisting, how many letters on that do you get from MPs and why do you not do anything about them?

Mr Sedwill: We do not handle indefinite leave to remain overseas. I would not be able to tell you how many letters we get from MPs, Ms Moran. Indefinite leave to remain is handled by the Home Office. When we give a spouse settlement visa, as you say it is for two years and then they would apply for indefinite leave via the Home Office.

Q602 Margaret Moran: So you do not have those figures, you have no idea how much that is?

Meg Munn: No because that would be dealt with by a different department.

Mr Sedwill: We can ask the Home Office to provide figures.

Q603 Margaret Moran: Does the Forced Marriage Unit know this?

Meg Munn: In terms of the Forced Marriage Unit and the situation with which we would get involved at that point, if it was notified to us.

Mr Macaire: I do not have those numbers.

Q604 Chairman: But Ms Moran has raised a very important point about coordination of information because you are right the application is made to the Home Office, but what she is saying is, is that information then transmitted to the Foreign Office?

Meg Munn: In terms of if there was an issue about forced marriage at that point, yes.

Chairman: It is. So you have those figures for us today?

Q605 Margaret Moran: Could you give us the figures as to how many incidences you have where somebody is saying that they are being forced to sign for indefinite leave to remain on the basis of a forced marriage?

Mr Macaire: I do not have the figures here; I do not know if we have those figures.

Q606 Margaret Moran: Does the Forced Marriage Unit routinely get those figures and why does the Forced Marriage Unit or the Home Office not intervene or acknowledge or assist MPs that raise these issues with them?

Meg Munn: I am not aware of any situations where if an MP had raised with the Forced Marriage Unit the need for assistance in a forced marriage that we have not responded - I am not aware of that at all.

Q607 Chairman: Minister, what Ms Moran is suggesting is that we come to the end of the two years; the applicant in this country having gained admission then wants to apply for indefinite leave the sponsor is reluctant to have him here because he or she - mostly he - has gained admission as a forced marriage. Do you have those figures?

Meg Munn: We do not have the figures today.

Q608 Chairman: Are you able to get us those figures?

Meg Munn: We will get you the range of figures that we have, yes.

Q609 Margaret Moran: Why do we routinely get letters back from the Home Office - presumably they are not passed on to the Forced Marriage Unit - that say that there is nothing that can be done, that leave must be granted because the MP is a third party, despite the fact that we are alerting to forced marriage?

Meg Munn: I cannot respond as to why the Home Office does not respond ---

Q610 Margaret Moran: Sorry, I thought the Forced Marriage Unit was supposed to be a joint Home Office/Foreign Office unit?

Meg Munn: Yes, and if a case was notified to the Forced Marriage Unit then we would respond.

Q611 Margaret Moran: So in these instances where MPs are writing to say, "This person has been subject to a forced marriage; she is being forced to sign for indefinite leave to remain and she does not want to, she may be subject to abuse or violence in that process," that is not routinely passed to the Forced Marriage Unit, nor are an MP's representations routinely acted upon? They clearly are not because we know that they are not.

Meg Munn: We can only respond from the Forced Marriage Unit if something has been notified to us.

Q612 Margaret Moran: So the Home Office do not notify the Forced Marriage Unit ---

Meg Munn: I do not know whether they have or not.

Q613 Margaret Moran: ... when a letter from an MP says, "There is an issue of forced marriage here."

Meg Munn: I do not know.

Margaret Moran: Could we have some clarification on this?

Q614 Chairman: Minister, if I could sum-up so far on this I think the Committee does feel that the evidence we have received so far is unsatisfactory. We feel that there is a lack of information that ought to be given to the Forced Marriage Unit, which would be helpful in our deliberations. Mr Sedwill, you were both the Deputy High Commissioner in Pakistan and you are now head of UK Visas as the Director of UK Visas. We all realise that there are rules about interviews but with some blue sky thinking here we are interested in the practical implications. We have had victims come before us who have basically begged this Committee and said, "If only the spouse was not allowed in the country my life would be much easier." So the contact point is the post abroad. What can we do practically to help the victims in those circumstances?

Mr Sedwill: The most practical thing we can do is to have people like those who come before the Committee to alert us to the situation. Without that alert then we do not have a basis on which to proceed, and of course that would be true of any case - in any case you need to know what the situation is.

Q615 Chairman: But you have some pretty sensible people in Islamabad, very well trained ECOs and ECMs who can actually know a forced marriage when it comes before them.

Mr Sedwill: When they are alerted to one we refuse the application; we refuse the visa application of the Pakistani national who is seeking to come to the UK through this route. So in those cases - which are all of the cases that are notified to us - we are able to give exactly the assurance that those people have asked for before the Committee and we stop their spouse coming to the UK. Essentially, unless they try to come through some clandestine route, that is an absolute prohibition on them getting into the UK, unless they win an appeal, of course.

Q616 Chairman: When you were in Islamabad you attended interviews, obviously?

Mr Sedwill: I have observed interviews. Of course, as you know, the Entry Clearance Officer conducts the interviews. I observed interviews when I was Deputy High Commissioner.

Q617 Chairman: Is it not possible to identify from those observations a forced marriage case?

Mr Sedwill: What, without any prior information?

Meg Munn: I think from the figures that we were giving earlier - and we will get those clarified for you - is what we are saying is the number which were identified through reluctant sponsors was something around in total whatever we got to - 252. But then in addition to that a much larger number, which I think you said was something over 5000, were not allowed. So, yes, there are processes there which mean that where there are concerns about not just whether it is forced but whether it is a genuine marriage they are refused, yes.

Q618 David Davies: What action are you taken to enable reluctant sponsors to make a statement? How can you ensure that that statement is taken full account of? Can I also ask you simply whether you automatically refuse a visa to any aspiring couples who have not actually physically met? There was something else that Mr Sedwill said, and I am not clear about this, but I assume that all applicants within the country - let us say Pakistan - are interviewed, but then you said that some are not and it is all plainly done by paper. What percentage of applicants is actually interviewed? I am sorry that is a series of questions but quick answers will suffice.

Meg Munn: There were a couple of questions in terms of what we do in terms of reluctant sponsors coming forward and having their statements taken.

Q619 David Davies: Yes.

Mr Sedwill: If we get information about a reluctant sponsor then the reluctant sponsor is contacted. They will not usually be contacted by the immigration officer, they will be contacted by the consular officer or indeed by the Forced Marriage Unit or one of the NGOs we work with, and we gather the evidence from the sponsor and that is the first phase of the process. We then use that information without revealing to the applicant, who of course would be the Pakistani national in this case or the Bangladeshi or whatever, that we have that information, and that is quite a tricky thing to do in a forensic interview. We then go through it and essentially try to find a reason to give us a solid refusal notice. Obviously if there is a public statement from the sponsor - but that is a very difficult thing for them to do - then we have that. If there is not we then try essentially to penetrate what in effect is a cover story by the applicant.

Q620 David Davies: That begs the question how often do you fail in being able to do that, with the best will in the world? In what percentage roughly of cases do you have to grant a visa?

Mr Sedwill: We refuse all applications at our stage. We are currently getting around about a quarter of these cases going to appeal and we are losing around a third of those cases at appeal, and that is because of course an Immigration Tribunal is, like all court proceedings, a public forum and if the victim, the sponsor is unwilling to make a public statement faced with having to do so in front of their family our refusal notice is therefore inevitably weaker because we have had to concoct it on whatever evidence we can create.

Q621 Chairman: Ought there to be a confidential way in which the reluctant sponsor can hand a letter or give a letter to the judge which will not then be published? Should we be looking at something like that?

Mr Sedwill: That is an issue that I think this Committee raised in an earlier inquiry and of course it is slightly beyond my remit to discuss the proceedings or indeed the basis on which tribunals and the courts operate. In some cases we have a good enough relationship between the presenting officer and the immigration judge to be able to indicate informally that there is more to a case than meets the eye, but of course that is not a comprehensive system.

Q622 David Davies: I think that is really important. So you turned down many applications based on confidential information?

Mr Sedwill: Yes.

Q623 David Davies: Around 400 a year you were saying earlier on.

Mr Sedwill: Yes.

Q624 David Davies: About a quarter of those are appealed, so that is around 50; and you lose around a third of them.

Mr Sedwill: Yes.

Q625 David Davies: I appreciate that these are rough figures but that means that 14 or 15 people a year are being coerced into a forced marriage at the behest of the courts, despite having made representations to yourselves.

Mr Sedwill: I can probably give you slightly more accurate figures, if that is helpful. The 452 cases - this is again not just forced marriage cases, family abuse cases in Pakistan in 2007 116 were appealed and 37 of those appeals were allowed.

Q626 David Davies: Despite there being information?

Mr Sedwill: Yes. And almost all of that 37 are in cases where the information that the reluctant sponsor, the victim has provided, is not disclosable to the tribunal because they do not wish it to be.

Q627 Chairman: And possibly the reluctant sponsor has to turn up and give evidence on behalf of a husband that she does not want to bring in?

Mr Sedwill: Absolutely. This is the real tragedy of this situation - sponsors are forced into a position of supporting the spouse.

Q628 Mr Winnick: In such cases where you say some 37 have been upheld, on the figures you have given us, the Home Office can appeal, can they not, against the decision of the immigration judge, on a point of law?

Mr Sedwill: Only on a point of law, exactly, as the Chairman knows.

Q629 Mr Winnick: And one would have thought there would be a point of law involved. It would not be difficult for lawyers to find the grounds?

Mr Sedwill: This is an area we have looked at very thoroughly. The tribunals, as all tribunals do, except in very special circumstances, essentially conduct their hearings in public. In those cases we will usually try to speak to the sponsor again and see if they will then be prepared, if you like, to take a leap and make a public statement, in which case we can still, despite the appeal, refuse a visa on new grounds.

Chairman: But if the presenting officer then goes to the victim in the middle of the hearing or at the end it could be disastrous.

Q630 Mr Winnick: Of those cases where it has been upheld by the immigration judge has any of that happened?

Mr Sedwill: I do not know whether we have been able to do that.

Q631 Mr Winnick: Could we have information about ---

Mr Sedwill: I will try to get that.

Q632 Mr Winnick: ... where entry clearance has been refused for the reasons you have explained and yet these cases have been upheld by the Immigration Tribunal. Can we have that?

Mr Sedwill: As I said, in Pakistan alone it was 37 allowed out of 116 appeals against 452.

Q633 Mr Winnick: What I want information on is whether there has been any follow-up on those 37 cases upheld. What action has been taken, if any? If we can have that within the next week or so?

Mr Sedwill: I will try to do that.

Q634 Mr Clappison: The very interesting question that Mr Davies asked you was one that I do not think we got an answer to - but there were a number - are applications automatically refused where the parties have not met?

Mr Sedwill: Yes. That is actually set out in the Immigration Rules; it is a legal requirement.

Q635 Mr Clappison: And steps are taken to find out whether they have actually met or not?

Mr Sedwill: Yes, and that would be in any case; that of course does not just apply to cases where there has been some compulsion.

Chairman: I am sorry to have kept you so long but your evidence is fascinating, and it saves you a trip to Islamabad, which of course we cannot go to. Margaret Moran will conclude on the Unit.

Q636 Margaret Moran: The Forced Marriage Unit. As you will presumably be aware what we call the Luton Report was launched last week, which shows that there is evidence of much larger figures of forced marriage than the Forced Marriage Unit is dealing with. What assessment have you made of the data available; in other words, what data is collected across the board - and I think I have highlighted a gap already in relation to the Home Office - from different agencies to estimate the size of the issue; and what assessment is made of the impact or effect of guidance that the Forced Marriage Unit puts out?

Meg Munn: If I can just respond on that and also to respond to your earlier point? There is some work going on at the moment to produce guidance and information for Members of Parliament because we are aware, again, that they are an important part of alerting the Forced Marriage Unit. We do not have current estimates on the total likely figures; that is not something that the Forced Marriage Unit has done. In relation to guidance, as you will be aware with the new legislation that is coming through, which the Ministry of Justice is leading on, there will be coordination around the production of guidance for various agencies. Then in relation to those agencies we will expect as to whether they are following that guidance to be part of the normal processes of inspection which would follow. So, for example, if we are talking about schools, if we are talking about Ofsted, if we are talking about social services it would be part of the social services' inspection regime to check whether those processes were being followed. It would not be the Forced Marriage Unit that does it; it does not do that and it does not have the resources to do that, nor would it make sense in terms of the overall approach.

Q637 Margaret Moran: When you are determining the resources for the Forced Marriage Unit how do you assess what resource is needed if: one, you do not collect data on the extent of forced marriage; two, you do not appear to evaluate as a unit the outcome of the guidance; and three, you just do not appear to have any assessment of the overall need?

Meg Munn: Where we are on where we assess the resources is that there is a plan - all parts of the Foreign Office have plans every year for what they are going to do. We are half way through a two-year strategy and the strategy has three elements to it in terms of awareness raising, working with agencies and also obviously responding to forced marriages. So that is quantified as best they can at that point. If the number of referrals to the unit goes up then we would seek more resources and at the moment we are in discussion with the Home Office about some more resources into the Forced Marriage Unit from the Home Office because the number is going up. So that is how we do that. The other thing to remember is that a lot of the work from the Foreign Office site which goes into the Forced Marriage Unit is not within the Forced Marriage Unit, it is resources overseas where the consular services are responding to that just as they would respond to a range of other consular issues. So that is the mechanism for doing that. We have no doubt, as you will be very aware, that just as the domestic violence incidents are reported to the police that the forced marriage incidents about which we currently receive information are not the full picture - the nature of these situations which take place within families, that they are kept secret, they are not brought out into the open. So the work that is being done to raise awareness and to challenge the practice of forced marriage is enormously important, both in bringing to light more examples of forced marriage but also in trying to change and get rid of the practice.

Q638 Margaret Moran: Can I be clear in terms of the data that is available out there are you content that the Forced Marriage Unit has a comprehensive picture of the extent of forced marriage in the UK?

Meg Munn: I do not think anybody has a picture of the extent of forced marriage in the UK.

Q639 Margaret Moran: The question therefore is twofold: one, what is it that you intend to do to ensure that the Forced Marriage Unit, as the only repository that I am aware of within government dealing with this issue, has that information in order to be able to properly assess the need and the resource and prevent the problem? Secondly, given that the nature of forced marriage is such that there is often a need for ongoing support, it is not just a crisis at the point overseas or at the point of entry, it is an ongoing crisis, what resource is the Forced Marriage Unit putting into supporting community and voluntary organisations that provide that ongoing support?

Meg Munn: Your question gets to the very heart of this issue in that forced marriage is one issue which a range of government departments deal with, such as domestic violence, human trafficking, etcetera, and there is the inter-ministerial group on domestic violence which sits above all this; so in terms of how we respond to it, it is not the Foreign Office on its own or the Forced Marriage Unit, it is the relationships across government which are working on this issue which will then respond to the wide range of issues which you rightly identified as being matters which flow from the concerns about forced marriage.

Chairman: Minister, can I thank you very much for coming with your officials. The information that you have given us has been extremely helpful. I am sorry if we seem to be aggressive but we are very concerned to try and get a solution to this problem and, as you say, get a complete picture of what is happening. I know we are about to enter recess but it would be very helpful if we could have that information as soon as possible, and we may come back to you with further information. Thank you so much for coming today.