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It being Six o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
DELEGATED LEGISLATION
Ordered,
That the Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations 2004 (S.I., 2004, No. 1031), dated 1st April 2004, be referred to a Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation.—[Mr. Ainger.]
PETITION
Pneumococcal disease
6 pm
Keith Vaz (Leicester, East) (Lab): I wish to present a petition on behalf of 3,000 of my constituents in support of a campaign launched by Scott Fewster, headmaster of a school in my constituency. His son Lachlan died from pneumococcal meningitis. If the vaccine Prevnar had been made available, Mr. Fewster and his family believe that the young boy would have survived.
The petition therefore calls on the Government to provide that vaccine. The petitioners request that the Secretary of State introduce the vaccine Prevnar to combat pneumococcal disease.
To lie upon the Table.
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Registrars and Civil Marriages
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ainger.]
6.1 pm
Mr. Stephen Pound (Ealing, North) (Lab): I wish to draw the attention of the House to an issue that will not be new to most right hon. and hon. Members. However, it is of such urgent concern and so deserving of a positive response from the Government that I make no apologies for detaining the House with it this evening.
Sham or bogus marriages are entered into by coercion, threats, bribes or other mechanisms, almost entirely for the purpose of remaining in the United Kingdom when all normal citizenship application mechanisms have failed. The problem is especially prevalent in London and the south-east, but it is certainly not unique to our part of the world. In fact, of the 80,000 ceremonies conducted annually, the Society of Registration Officers, the professional body that represents registrars throughout England and Wales—I am delighted that its patron, my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) is here today and can attest to the scale of the problem—estimates that one in five marriages celebrated, if that is the word, in a register office are bogus. I am indebted to the respected journalist Lewis Smith of The Times of London who, in an article on 3 May 2004, described some of the appalling situations that arise. Once a marriage has been notified to the registrar, and even if the registrar sees acts such as money changing hands, the putative bride kissing the wrong man or even one of the witnesses, wedding rings that do not fit and grooms unable to remember the name of the person they are about to marry, he or she cannot stop the marriage. It will continue, providing participants with access to the benefits of citizenship of this country.
I mentioned that bribes are often offered. One registrar said that £3,500 changed hands and one woman admitted that she had asked for a bogus or sham marriage, but was offered a generous discount if she would let the prospective groom sleep with her. She considered that and rejected it.
The Marriages Act 1836 and later legislation provide grounds on which a registrar can refuse to proceed with a marriage, but only if the couple are too closely related, are of the same gender or one or both of them are already married. Any other circumstances, such as bribes, coercion or threats, are not grounds on which the registrar can stop the marriage.
Were you to come with me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to the gracious Edwardian building that we call Ealing town hall, which is, sadly, just outside my constituency, but despite that serves a great many of my constituents, you would find in the wedding suite there a superb building, wonderfully gracefully appointed and staffed by excellent highly qualified and skilled staff, but those staff are angry. They are desperately depressed by the present circumstance in which they feel that they are, in effect, colluding with a system of sham and bogus marriages and unable to do anything about it. One of the senior officers estimated to me that, in the past 12 months, about 80 of the marriages that they were asked to celebrate were, in their opinion, bogus.
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If the registrar has severe doubts, he or she can supply all the details to the Home Office investigation section, which is conveniently located in Noble drive, Hayes, also just outside my constituency, but in the other direction. Of the large number of files that have been sent to the Home Office investigation section in the past 12 months, not one has been acknowledged or acted upon. In every one of those cases, a professionally qualified registrar had severe doubts about the validity of the marriage, supplied the information to the Home Office investigation section, and nothing happened.
I have spoken to LACORS—the local authorities co-ordinators of regulatory services—which discussed the matter at its management committee on 26 March. It confirms that there are significant numbers of potentially bogus types of notices being given, not uniquely but in many cases in London local authorities. It is important to put it on record that one of the extremely unfortunate side effects of the preponderance of bogus marriages is the effect that that has on genuine marriages between British citizens and citizens of other countries, because they often feel compromised by the perception of falseness when someone marries a British citizen. In the majority of cases, as we know, that is not so.
LACORS feels seriously restricted in its ability to deal with the issue. If the Home Office does respond, as it has in some boroughs, though not in the borough of Ealing, in many cases it is to set up a trap in the register office, with immigration officers present. The prospect of an arrest or detention taking place during a marriage ceremony and somebody being bundled down the steps of the town hall into a waiting black Maria instead of a white Cadillac is deeply regrettable and paints a most unpleasant picture. Registrars do not want to be part of that process. If they have doubts, they want to be able to stop the wedding there and then.
I accept that the Government are acting on the matter. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made a welcome statement on 22 April, in which, pointing out the action that the Government were taking, he admitted that every time he took a step to address the abuse,
"organised criminals behind the exploitation of normal, legitimate routes find a way round it."
He was speaking particularly about bogus marriages. He referred to them as "a real scandal." I entirely agree.
Mark Rimmer, who has been appointed by the Government to investigate sham weddings, has interviewed registrars around the country. He found that 9,000 cases a year are reported to the Home Office team, which consists of six people—9,000 cases to six people. I now understand why the traffic between Ealing register office and Noble drive, Hayes is one-way.
Registrars say that, where they have been trying to fend off fake marriages, the threats of official action are, in many cases, empty threats. The cunning, well-organised people operating in such a highly profitable area know that the threats are empty. The Home Secretary said that registrars might be given new powers to refuse to conduct marriages if they believed them to be a sham carried out for immigration purposes. I look to my hon. Friend the Minister for confirmation that that action is being taken. I understand that the Government also intend to designate only certain
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register offices as authorised for marriages involving foreign nationals. That is greatly to be welcomed if, as I very much hope, that is the case.
My brief research for this modest contribution to the warp and weft of the national legislative tapestry has led me into some strange areas, in particular, to the Marriage With Foreigners Act 1906. There are those in the House who are familiar with the Act; previously, I was not. The Act contained the right to demand a certificate of no impediment from someone getting married in the UK. It was superseded by the Marriages (Scotland) Act 1977. If someone from the north of Ireland or from Scotland wishes to get married in England, they must produce a certificate of no impediment, which provides, if not a cure, a filter for bogus marriages. However, somebody from within England marrying in England—wherever the person they are marrying comes from—does not need to provide such a certificate.
In a remarkable fit of generosity, the 1906 Act specifically excludes what subsequently became the Commonwealth countries from the definition of "foreigners". It has to be said, regrettably, that Ghana and Nigeria are two countries that provide a large number of people who are considered to be involved in bogus marriages, and are, in some cases, convicted, yet those countries are excluded.
I realise that there are those in the House who are wiser in the ways of the world than me but, apparently, the Civil Partnership Bill permitted the making of an order in council to allow the issue of certificates of no impediment. Up until then, I thought that the 1906 Act was almost analogous to the Easter Act 1928, which set by statute the day each year on which Easter could fall—a good piece of legislation, which I am sure was passed with the good will of the House, but it was never implemented, simply because it was outside the authority of this House.
The 1906 Act—it was disapplied in Scotland and superseded by the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977, with which I know my hon. Friend the Minister is familiar—was also provided for by order in council in relation to clauses 175 and 179 of the Civil Partnership Bill. We have legislation that we can use; we could require a certificate of no impediment that would provide the extra filter for false marriages.
We have a problem at present, in that an extremely skilful, widely respected and professional body of men and women are in despair at what they see as the abuse of the act of marriage as performed by civil register officers in town halls and up and down the country. People are being victimised. My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) is dealing with some particularly horrific cases where people have been physically threatened, bullied and coerced into undertaking such marriages. We must address the issue and I recognise that the Government take it seriously; I pay credit to them for that. However, we must give the registrars the tools with which to address the problem.
Where there is a blatant and ludicrous abuse—where money changes hands, the ring does not fit or the wrong person is kissed—is it too much to ask to authorise the
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registrar to stop the process there and then because, in his or her professional opinion, the marriage should not proceed? It could then be referred to the Home Office or to any other agency that we wish. But we must set in train a process whereby we recognise the skill, professionalism and expertise of our registrars and the fact that they are acutely aware that their authority and functions are being abused by people in this way.
Sham marriages may have a slightly comic aspect, but although there may seem to be something funny about this issue, it is deeply serious. It is organised criminality and it could have severe and horrendous consequences, given the present state of the world and the war on terrorism, if people are allowed to access all the freedoms of this country by an entirely bogus and indefensible route. We have to stop it.
I am not some starry-eyed romantic who still believes that marriage is such a wonderful institution that nobody would ever corrupt or dilute it, or allow commerce or anything else to interfere with it. Personally, I have been happily married since 1976; I would have got married the year before, but Fulham got to the cup final, and there are certain priorities. I took marriage very seriously, and my wife, judging by her expression most nights, takes it equally seriously. However, the fact remains that, for some people, the institution of marriage is a key to the lock of the United Kingdom, as it allows them access. That is fine; it is all well and good if the marriage in question is real and subsisting, and legal and honestly contracted, but at the present time, far too many marriages—possibly 20 per cent. in my part of the world—are not valid, which taints the whole process.
We have to address that issue. I am confident that the Government are already doing so, but I would simply ask them to do a little bit more to ensure that certificates of no impediment are introduced, that registrars are given authority and that we continue to give Government time, resources and attention to recognising that we have left registrars out on their own for too long. They have been trying to do an impossible job. They cannot do it, and they need our help. We in this House need to address this issue tonight.
6.16 pm
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