UNDER-PRESSURE Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said today that he will investigate reports that his department charged British women forced into marriages abroad hundreds of pounds for their own rescue.

His declaration followed a Times report revealing that such women have had to either pay for plane tickets, basic food and shelter themselves or, if they are over 18, take out emergency loans with the department.

Tottenham Labour MP David Lammy likened the situation to the Windrush scandal as an indication of how Britons from ethnic  minority backgrounds are treated by officialdom.

“A white woman who had been kidnapped, sold into slavery and raped would never have been asked to pay for her freedom,” he said.

It is understood that the forced marriage unit, jointly run by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Home Office, does not profit from the repatriations.

A spokeswoman of the FCO, which claims to be a “world leader in the fight to tackle the brutal practice of forced marriage,” said that it has a duty to recover costs paid by public funds.

The department helped 27 victims of forced marriage return to Britain in 2017 and 55 the year before, according to figures obtained under freedom of information laws.

In the past two years the FCO has lent £7,765 to at least eight forced marriage victims who could not pay for repatriation. Debts of more than £4,500 are outstanding. Under FCO terms and conditions a surcharge of 10 per cent is added if an emergency loan is not repaid within six months.

Last year four young British women sent by their families to a “correctional school” in Somalia, where they were imprisoned and physically abused, were charged £740 each, The Times said.

Left destitute by the loans, two are living in refuges and two have become addicted to drugs since returning to Britain, they told the paper.

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said the situation is “morally repugnant” and accused PM Theresa May and Home Secretary Sajid Javid of “rank hypocrisy” given their statements made in the past about tackling forced marriages.

“The Foreign Office must immediately scrap these charges and write off all outstanding debts owed by women brought home in recent years,” Ms Thornberry said.

Mr Hunt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he wanted to “get to the bottom” of the issue.

“Any interventions that I have had on these consular matters, I have always stressed to embassies and posts abroad that they need to use discretion,” he said.