How the Civil Service sabotages the campaign against forced marriages

I heard something astonishing the other day. I’m not easily astonished, and still less by the vagaries and abysmal stupidities of the Civil Service in which I spent 20 years of my life. But this one fair took my breath away. I’m assured it’s true, and my knowledge of the bovine inflexibility of the bureaucratic mind does not incline me to doubt it.

As we know, there is a problem in this country regarding forced marriages. Some families, generally originating from the Indian subcontinent, attempt to remove their children, usually daughters, from the UK in order to marry them off to someone from their country of origin. Our government, laudably, takes this problem seriously, and has established a unit in the Home Office dedicated to rescuing these unfortunate girls and bringing them back to the UK.

The sensational news I heard was that these girls are expected to pay for their own flights home. And, if they do not have the money, they can be given a loan to buy their ticket, but they must surrender their passports until it is repaid in full, thus preventing them from leaving the country in which they are in danger. This demand is made in the name of consistency, as all other Brits needing help with repatriation are treated the same way.

Now, I have no quarrel with the principle of self-funded repatriation. If you get into trouble in a foreign country, you should not expect HMG to pick up the tab for bailing you out. Embassies and consulates are not made of money, and, besides, it creates a moral hazard if cock-ups are allowed to be cost-free.

But can’t these people see that forced marriages are an entirely different case from the tourist who had his ticket nicked when he was plastered? The moral hazard argument falls away, because the girls did not choose to put themselves in such a position. And the demand for money creates far more difficulties for these girls than it would for tourists. Most tourists can drum up money from somewhere, whereas if you are going to kidnap your daughter and marry her off abroad, the first thing you do is make sure she doesn’t have access to the price of an air ticket home. And, if the tourist has no money and needs to borrow some, who is usually the first port of call? His family. Get the point?

The reality, in most cases, is that the girl will have no one to turn to for money; even friends from outside the family may let her down for cultural reasons. So, with no way out in sight, she may see no alternative to going back to the family and submitting to their wishes. What sort of concrete-headed zombie can’t see this?

There remains the argument, mentioned above, that the Government is not made of money. But let’s look at the figures involved: the Forced Marriages Unit repatriates about 300 young girls per year. These days you can fly almost anywhere in the world for £500. So the government stands to save £150,000 (probably rather less) by this measure. The total cost of the Forced Marriages Unit, with its overseas network, must run into several millions, money well spent in my view. But talk about spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar!

I once got carpeted for calling one section of the Foreign Office, in writing, “a bunch of brainless jobsworths”. I took my lumps and made my apologies with good grace, as no useful purpose can be served by addressing colleagues in that way. But does anyone really believe that the Civil Service is not full of brainless jobsworths? Where do they get them from? And don’t get me started on the MoD’s decision to take legal action to reclaim compensation from two seriously injured soldiers, undoubtedly at a cost greater than the sum being reclaimed…