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4.53 pm
Mrs. Ann Cryer (Keighley) (Lab): Just five years ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) and I approached the then Home Secretary to ask him whether he would have a problem if we had a debate on forced marriages in our Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities. He answered that he would not have a problem with that, but that we would—and he spoke a very true word. However, we had that Adjournment debate, which was excellent, and the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) led for her party. That was the first time that the question of forced marriages in our Asian communities had been raised in this House. From then on, I have been working assiduously with various Government Departments and, more particularly, with my young Asian women. I say "Asian", but I mean Pakistani and Bangladeshi; the Indian community does not seem to get too involved in this sort of thing.
I was extremely impressed by the response to the Adjournment debate by the then Minister of State at the Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien). I had expected a very bland assurance that the Department would do what it could, but that the matter was very sensitive. I did not think that we would get anything. However, it was not like that at all. The Minister made promises about doing all sorts of things, and very shortly afterwards, during that summer, a working group was set up under the joint chairmanship of Baroness Pola Uddin of Bethnal Green and Lord Nazir Ahmed of Rotherham. The working group went all round the country, and it came up to Bradford and talked to women who had been subjected to forced marriages. As a result, it came up with various action plans, and the Government came forward with various initiatives.
I am proud to say that one of the initiatives that was handed down to West Yorkshire police was designed to help women in these tragic circumstances. Inspector Martin Baines was the chief man; he led the way. A certain Phillip Balmforth, who is a knight in shining armour, is the man who goes in when a woman is under threat and gets her out of that very frightening situation. It is sometimes a frightening situation for him as well.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office eventually set up the community liaison unit, which now has a helpline headed by a couple of very good women. They are very well informed on these issues, and are helping the Government to formulate policy all the time. I
should like, therefore, to pay tribute to Heather Harvey and Fozia Hussein, who have also been very helpful to me.The Home Office has subsequently introduced the domestic violence concession. Hon. Members on the Labour Benches will know precisely what I am talking about here; I am not sure about those on the Opposition Benches. The concession means that a woman who has been thrown out of her home or physically abused by her husband or her in-laws before she has been granted indefinite leave to remain can apply to get that leave to remain. She is then able to get money and go into a refuge, although that is not a perfect solution. I have had six successes using the domestic violence concession. Those of us who deal with these situations have to be a bit careful because we do not want the concession to be abused in any way. I have had one or two cases in which women have tried to abuse it, by telling me less than the truth. However, I got to the bottom of those cases and refused to use the concession.
Despite the fact that the Government have done all that they can to prevent this dreadful abuse of the human rights of these young women, the abuse continues in all sorts of ways. At the moment, I am dealing with at least one case of forced marriage each week. We have achieved a measure of success, however, as have my colleagues in Bradford, but the problem still exists in most northern towns and cities. We are working hard to tackle it, but at the end of the day, it is up to the communities themselves to stop these practices, either through the mosques or through the secular groups in the community centres. They ought to be working hard to persuade parents that this is not the way to behave towards their daughters—it is nearly always daughters who are at the sharp end of a forced marriage.
I have already made one or two suggestions to the Ministers involved, but I think that I have time to go through them briefly again here. They are proposals that might allow the Government to help matters, although, as I have said, it must ultimately be the communities that advise parents against acting in such an un-Islamic way as to force their daughters to marry.
We could increase the lower age limit of 18 to 21, for the purpose of acting as a sponsor for a spouse from outside the EU, and introduce a lower age limit of 21—no age limit exists at present—for applicants for entry clearance for permanent settlement as spouse. In both cases, were we able to delay until 21 the age at which women were being forced to marry and act as a sponsor, they would have a much better chance of taking on their parents, arguing against them and succeeding in getting their own way and having some say in their choice of spouse. Many of them would be happy to go along not with a forced marriage but with an arranged marriage—they simply want to do it in their own time, possibly when they have done A-levels or even a university degree.
If I had a choice, I would introduce a requirement for citizenship for anyone wishing to act as a sponsor for a spouse from outside the EU. The reason for that is that I, and other Members representing northern cities and towns, are encountering an increasing number of problems whereby a young woman has gone along with her family, has done her best, and has brought in her husband; and her husband says, two years down the line, at the end of the probationary period, "Thanks for
that, I'm going. I didn't really want to marry you in the first place, I just wanted my indefinite leave to remain." The day he gets his indefinite leave to remain, he is off.I have many angry young women in my constituency who hate this situation. They feel that they have been used, and their parents are also angry. If citizenship were required before people could act as a sponsor, those young men—it is nearly always young men—would have to be here for five years before they were able to act as a sponsor for another wife to come in. Consequently, they would be a little more circumspect about kidding a girl that they really wanted to marry her, and after two years leaving her and bringing in another woman from Pakistan or Bangladesh.
If I had my way, I would also introduce a new criminal offence related specifically to aiding and abetting and/or coercing someone into a forced marriage. We have existing remedies in criminal law in relation to forcing a person to marry, such as bringing charges of abduction, false imprisonment, assault or rape. That does not seem to be working terribly well, however, and forced marriages are continuing apace. Sadly, we are getting not a high number but perhaps eight to 10 cases a year of honour killings, which are nearly always associated with a forced marriage. Were we to introduce a criminal offence of aiding and abetting a forced marriage, it might alert parents to the fact that they are committing a criminal offence—they are doing so already, but because it is not written out in those terms, they do not seem to recognise it. By doing so, we would be slapping them across the face with it or spraying it on their eyeballs—whichever expression one wants to use. It would really help if we were to go along that path.
I have been asked to keep my speech to 10 minutes, so I shall wind up quickly. The silver lining is that many of the young women in my constituency are now going on to do A-levels and go to university. Mums and dads do not like them to go far away, so they are doing degrees at Huddersfield, Leeds or Bradford, but that really is a step in the right direction. An increasing number are doing that every year, but unfortunately, there are still the backwoodspeople who are forcing their daughters to do other than they would wish.
I shall tell the House one story—I do not want to speak much longer. I met the other day a young lady whom I had helped to resist all her family's pressures to bring in a husband whom she never wanted to marry in the first place. We managed to get his visa stopped. She came to tell me that the visa had been stopped, and that her mum and dad had said to her, "You're behind this, aren't you?" She said, "Yes, so what?" That was wonderful, and a real step in the right direction. I have never had a young Asian woman tell me before that she had faced her parents and told them that she was behind such a refusal.
5.4 pm
Ms Dari Taylor (Stockton, South) (Lab): I take great pleasure in celebrating women's lives, and that definitely applies to today's debate. I also take great pleasure in the fact that my party has done so much in government to challenge all the factors that hinder the achievement of equality. I shall not mention them, as I have not the time, but my sisters on the Labour Benches have done so quite adequately.
There is still a strong cultural assumption that family responsibilities should continue to fall on women. That is exacerbated by employers' resistance to the idea of measures that would persuade women, and men, to accept their family responsibilities but also to use their talents in employment. One such measure is the introduction of flexible hours. Last year the 100 best companies outlined their employment policies. I think when they do so again this year their policies will include flexibility, engaging with family responsibilities, and giving women as well as men an opportunity to use their talents. I wish that other employers would follow their lead.
The cultural assumptions that still persist, although they are weakening, tend to turn on the almost universal expectation that women will undertake most unpaid child care, and the belief that men's work is more important than women's. Such assumptions may stem from poverty of aspiration, or indeed from financial poverty. Women may be desperate to keep their families going on whatever is available.
We do, however, see the weakening of those assumptions. Mothers now work in 55 per cent. of families with children under the age of five. Shift patterns are beginning to develop in family life: family and work responsibilities are being combined. In dual-earner families, fathers undertake a third of parental care, and increasingly they are becoming the "second main carers" for their children: they tend not to opt for professional care. That shows that men and women want to do things together in the family, and to share both family responsibilities and work opportunities.
I am delighted that the Secretary of State has returned to the Chamber. I suggest to her that flexible working patterns should be at the core of the next tranche of reforms relating to women and the achievement of equality. We must bear in mind the choices and opportunities that they can provide, along with the possibility of maximising family income. In 96 per cent. of cases, men are prepared to be present for the birth of their children. They are there for their children; they do not want not to be there. We must capture that, and utilise it. It is a baseline for equality. It tells us that men, like women, want to be involved in both family and work.
Last but not least in what is an inordinate gallop, let me say how much I enjoyed my last visit to India. My sister for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) spoke with passion and clarity about the value of meeting other women throughout the world. I should like to persuade the Indian Government to do what the Labour party has done in this country, and to accept that we must provide special mechanisms if we are to convince women that politics and politicians are taking them seriously, and that politics is where they could and should be. I think that women do politics differently. I say that unashamedly. I am not putting the men down; I simply think we are different. We do not play games, and we are most definitely determined to achieve in the realm of politics.
Having met ordinary women who are members of SEWA, the Self-Employed Women's Association, I can say that women from semi-literate or illiterate rural communities have achieved so much despite having so little. Their tenacity, their guts, their determination to do better for their children, their sense of location with
their communities all show that women can deliver. Women are delivering. I recommend that the House never underestimate that fact and that we should encourage—in whatever way, with whatever mechanisms we can—the greater involvement of women in our political life.
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