Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, yes. There can be harassment from the family, the extended family, or the wider community if girls do challenge their parents and family members, and refuse to conform. There may be physical violence. Often more common is social ostracism, as they are rejected and denounced by the families and communities.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it's a combination of both. I don't think you can separate them, because the debates have been going on for much longer, for a few decades actually. Only in the last decade have you had the government doing something about it. The law has strengthened and created further debates.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They're not shared values for many people within or outside of those communities. We would all be equally critical of those values. Communities and cultures are quite quite complex. There are those with conservative cultural value systems and those with progressive cultural value systems.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Not in the same way. First of all, there's been no criminal prosecutions of forced marriage cases so far. I think it has happened in some cases around domestic violence, where there may be a court order against someone who doesn't have a status in the country and is being convicted of a specific crime that may be against certain immigration laws.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think that would be one of the consequences for anyone who is caught up in or knows about polygamous situations. They may well either be caught up and therefore face deportation themselves, or it may be that they are worried about other members of the family being deported. So, yes, it's a big problem that we have already, for example, concerning those who have domestic violence problems in this country and don't have secure immigration status.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I hesitate to use the word “barbaric” because I also think domestic violence is barbaric. I think a lot of practices where people are being abused, and as a cultural basis, often are barbaric practices. It's not just those that exist within minority communities. Of course, I do not accept any of these practices.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The debate has been around both of those issues: criminalization of forced marriage, as well as use of immigration laws to control forced marriage. As I said, both are controversial. There is obviously no prosecution with the criminal law yet. We don't know if it's going to work, and there's a concern that it may make the situation worse.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the Forced Marriage Unit is one of the success stories. It's a government body. It's a joint Home Office and Foreign Office unit, so it is supported by the government. It has a mandate to help British nationals or dual nationals who are taken abroad and threatened with a forced marriage or forced into marriage come back into the U.K.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Do you mean for women's organizations?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There is funding for services around domestic and sexual violence in the U.K. I think the problem is that, because of austerity, there have been cuts from local authorities and central government generally to services and to legal aid. The brunt of those cuts to services for minority women, or for women who are facing gender-based violence, has been to minority women's organizations.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think awareness raising and information, and working in schools and colleges, raising these issues at a very early age and changing attitudes and behaviour, as well as making victims aware and having professionals give them training to prevent issues escalating before it becomes a case of forced marriage, are measures that are important.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay, I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, we are today.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I can.