Tories plan ban on forced marriages

The Conservatives have promised to outlaw forced marriages if current legislation fails.

Tory leader David Cameron said on Thursday that the custom is "frankly unacceptable" in modern day Britain.

He was holding a meeting of his shadow cabinet in Bradford in Yorkshire, a town known for its large Muslim community.

And along with shadow women's minister Theresa May and shadow minister for community cohesion Baroness Warsi, Cameron campaigners and victims of forced marriage of his pledge to criminalise the practice.

"Forced marriages are the practice where girls - some as young as 11 - are bullied, psychologically pressured, assaulted, sometimes kidnapped and taken abroad, and forced to marry someone they don't want to," he said.

"It seems utterly bizarre, and frankly unacceptable, that this goes on in Britain - but it does."

Around 300 forced marriages are reported to the government's dedicated unit on the matter each year.

But Cameron warned that: "The truth is the figure is more likely to be well into the thousands, rather than hundreds."

However he also stressed that he is not seeking to curb arranged marriages.

"These [arranged marriages] involve children putting their trust in parents to find them a partner - in many cases these marriages are long, successful and happy," he said.