A LEADING member of East Lancashire's Asian community today slammed a government working party set up to look at forced marriages as "do-gooders" as he told them: "There's no need".

Secretary of the Lancashire Council of Mosques Rafique Malik spoke out as the Home Office unveiled plans to develop a detailed strategy to protect women from being forced into marriage against their will.

The working group, led by Baroness Uddin and Lord Ahmed, will consult with ethnic communities across the country as part of the Government's drive to stamp out domestic violence, family breakdown and social exclusion.

But Mr Malik said the Government had got its priorities wrong.

He said: "There is an assumption that Islam cultivates forced marriages and that everyone is forcing girls to get married, but it is not the case.

"In Islam, no marriage can be contracted out of force. It is not what we believe and it is not what our religion says.

"I have no qualms about this working group because we agree with what they say but, with 33 per cent of children being born out of wedlock, I think their first priority should be to set up a working group to deal with that.

"This is just a group of do-gooders raising the question at national level and I think they should be looking to educate people about other things first because that is what's needed, not an alarmist resolution like this. There's just no need."

Baroness Uddin, an experienced social worker who worked in the London borough of Tower Hamlets and played a key role in developing the local health authorities' equal opportunity policy, welcomed the Government's willingness to address the issue of forced marriages as the working group was launched today.

She said: "We want to hear from the communities the extent to which forced marriage is a problem for them."

Lord Ahmed went on: "The great majority of arranged marriages do work very well but a very small percentage are forced and this reflects poorly on the whole community.

"The practice is morally, ethically and culturally wrong and must be stopped immediately."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.