A joint British Home Office and Foreign Office task force deals with cases where teenagers are taken abroad and forced, usually without notice, into marriage. Some 1,200 British moslem children are forced into marriage every year, usually abroad and during the summer holidays. Sometimes, the perpetrator can be an older brother who is British-born, but clings to the old way of doing things. There is a government instrument called a Forced Marriage Protection Order that can be used against parents to ensure that, if children are to be taken overseas, they return on an agreed date and are not forced into marriage. They are helped by charities which deal with the repatriation of young people hijacked into marriage against their will. That this task force has to exist at all is quite shocking.

If one single teenager is made to marry someone they have never met before, whether in the UK or abroad, it should be a human rights offense, punishable by jail. If moslems, jews or anyone else, want to practice their religion and keep it to themselves, that is their affair. But when it comes to support for jihad, forced marriage, or clitorectomy – in other words, affecting or harming others – there should be no tolerance shown.

The latest news is that funding for the Home Office Task Force, and for the charities mentioned above, is being severely cut. What on earth is government for? Government should be there to protect actual human beings, especially young ones. This is not just about enjoying your life, as Epicurus wished; it is about having a life at all.