Stamford Hill, London - A Move To Crack Down on Forced Marriages Will Affect The Orthodox Community

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Stamford Hill, London - The Home Office, Foreign Office and UK Border Agency all acknowledge that there are no forced marriages in the Jewish community in Britain. This undisputed fact only becomes interesting in the light of the Home Office's announcement that it is to raise the age for marriage visas from 18 to 21.

The move is described as part of a crackdown on forced marriages in the UK but it will also impact disproportionately on London's strictly orthodox Jewish community where consenting international marriages between young people are common.

This will result in hundreds of young haredi (strictly orthodox) Jews having to move abroad to get married. Over time, it is feared that this will lead to a slow exodus of this community. This is an upsetting situation for family-centred communities such as the haredi community in Stamford Hill (North London) founded by central and European refugees fleeing persecution in the 1930s and 1940s. It is thought that around 100 families a year will have to set up home elsewhere, presumably in the United States or Israel where the majority of sponsored spouses come from.

Strictly orthodox Jews tend to get married young and over half of the marriages in the 20,000 Stamford Hill community are between British Jews and non-EU nationals. The hassidic and haredi groupings tend to use arranged introductions to meet each other and many of those are within the same groupings that can often be quite small. Some groups number only a few hundred in London and so matches between prospective couples need to be found in Antwerp, New York and Jerusalem.

Immigration minister Liam Byrne is quoted as saying: "British citizens have the right to marry whoever they choose. But we want newcomers to succeed in our society and sign up to the standards we have in common. That means freedom, not being forced to marry someone, and it means newcomers quickly acquiring a command of English, with consequences for those who break the rules."

I agree with that and so does the Jewish community. Judaism abhors forced marriages and indeed they are forbidden in Jewish law and are a reason to immediately dissolve a marriage. Marriage must be between two consenting adults and as such I welcome measures that outlaw forced marriages such as the Forced Marriages (Civil Protection) Act passed last year that allows victims to sue. I would have been happy to see elements of this Act evolve into a criminal offence.

However, I do not understand measures that impact on the right of British citizens "to marry whoever they choose", their right to religious conscience (which is the basis for marriage under the age of 21 in the Jewish community) or their right to family life.

As Rahila Gupta highlighted in her Cif article on Friday, "There is also evidence that raising the age limit does not work. The measure does not even purport to stop all forced marriages and there is much evidence that it will simply export the UK's problem to other countries. This will lead to increasing the casework load of the Foreign Office Forced Marriage Unit looking into abductions of young UK citizens abroad.

The announcement is accompanied by a 100-page document that tries to give a number of reasons for this change to the law, including the explanation that "it will provide an opportunity for individuals to develop maturity and life skills and "it will provide an opportunity to complete education and training". These are interesting arguments that might be used to justify increasing the permissible age for all marriages but it would be unjustifiable, unworkable and unpopular. However, this is in effect what is going to happen to the haredi Jewish community. It is a law that discriminates against a community where there are no forced marriages, where family values are strong and the institution of marriage is seen as sacrosanct.

Both the extended family and the community at large support young families in Stamford Hill. Intergenerational relations are important, embodied in building developments such as Schoenfeld Square where the elderly care home overlooking the nursery school playground. The thought of sending all young people to Israel or the United States to set up home is painful for this community.

Home Office officials and the immigration minister have had a dialogue with the Jewish community. One official echoed the feeling of the Home Office when he described the measure as having an "unintended consequence of impacting on legitimate Jewish marriages". This is not the latest measure that has the potential of impacting on the Jewish community. Again and again, we are told that there cannot be any exemptions or schemes because that would not be fair or administering objective measures might cost too much.

The devil will be in the detail. The Jewish community came up with an alternative proposal that would ensure self-regulation or regulation. The couples could be simply interviewed separately by marriage secretaries or officials for the purposes of establishing whether there is consent. There is no cost implication if marriage secretaries in synagogues undertake this function. The costs of having officials doing this would be minimal.

I hope that when draft legislation is published that the government will look at imaginative ways of overcoming these problems and perhaps take on board some of the suggestions that the Union of Hebrew Congregations and Board of Deputies made to the immigration minister and his officials several months ago. Those losing out, as Liam Byrne signposts in his statement, are British people who want to marry the person of their choice.

All too often, the Jewish community is being told that new legislation or regulations with one intention have an unintended consequence of impacting on the Jewish community: schools admissions, welfare provision, community cohesion, changes in charity laws and now immigration.

The London Jewish Forum is very concerned about the impact this measure will have on the Stamford Hill community. I am supportive of the Board of Deputies' and Union of Hebrew Congregations' campaign to ensure that this is resolved and to quote one rabbi that I spoke to this week: "Normally, as a community, we would not make a fuss but this is really going to impact on our families and our way of life. Perhaps, we should respond this time. Enough is enough …"