Forced Marriages OK in the UK

The custom of forced marriages, practiced almost exclusively by Britain’s Muslim community, is given an official pass by the British government: Forced marriage law ‘not needed’.

The Home Office has decided a specific law to ban forced marriages in the UK is not needed.
Ministers had asked groups and individuals if there should be a law criminalising the act of forcing someone into marriage.
Most thought the disadvantages of a new law would outweigh the advantages, and possibly drive the practice of forced marriages underground.
Britain's track record on documenting and dealing with forced marriage is marred ultimately by two factors - politicians' desire to woo the Muslim vote preventing actual legislation, and a climate of political correctness. There is a politically correct notion which assumes that arranged marriages are somehow "culturally acceptable", even though these marriages are a back-door means of increasing immigration into Britain's already overcrowded shores. But Britain is not alone. These desires not to "offend" or "alienate" are the reasons why so far, only Norway and Belgium have legislation against forced marriages in the ENTIRE WORLD.
Over the past four years, the UK Home Office has dealt with 1,000 cases of forced marriage. On Wednesday, 27 October, 2004, the BBC reported that the Home Office was planning a consultation exercise to consider if forced marriages should be banned.
Baroness Scotland, Home Office minister, said: "Forced marriage is part of no one's culture and I think some people conflate arranged marriage, which is consensual and perfectly proper, with marriages where people are forced into it. No religion, no cultural norm says that is OK. It is a breach of human rights."
Baroness Scotland is unaware, it seems, how closely arranged marriages are to forced marriages. I knew Muslim women whose parents used every conceivable emotional blackmail, with the ever-attendant threat of violence from cousins and other relatives, to force their daughters to marry on the parents' terms.
There were an estimated 300 cases of forced marriages between April 2003 and April 2004 in Britain.
In 2005, the notion of making forced marriages illegal once again was set forward by the UK parliament, but once again, nothing has been done. No parliamentary motions have been tabled, and considering the politically correct temperament of Tony Blair's Labour Party, such moves are not likely to happen in the duration of this parliament.