UK ministers’ efforts to stop forced marriages are failing because the unit set up to tackle them is undervalued, under-resourced and overly focused on Muslim families, according to a report from Michael Gove’s levelling up department.
Bloom said these included forced marriage – including instances where gay people are forced to marry as a type of conversion practice – substandard religious schools and religious nationalism.
Bloom said: “We need root-and-branch reform of how forced and coercive marriage is tackled by the government, because that mainly happens within the context of faith-based communities. At the moment this remains in the ‘too difficult to do’ box.”
He added: “The forced marriage unit is not working well. It is under-resourced and poorly led, which is the fault of politicians rather than the civil servants who work for it. Also, the unit has an Islamic bent to it, but this is not just a Muslim problem – this happens in Orthodox Jewish and other religious communities too.”
The report was commissioned by Boris Johnson in 2019 and has been delayed several times, first by Covid-19 and then by the multiple changes at the top of government last year.
In the four years since it was commissioned, Bloom has received 21,000 responses, making it one of the biggest government evidence-gathering efforts ever undertaken.
Bloom’s 65,000-word report will deal with almost every aspect of government policy where it affects religious groups, praise the work faith groups do and urge ministers to engage with them more.
Guardian