Foreign Office staff have been 'inundated' with distress calls from teenage girls trying to flee forced marriages, a conference in Bradford heard.

The conference at the Carlisle Bus-iness Centre in Manningham last night, organised by the Bradford Minorities Police Liaison Committee, attracted hundreds of delegates.

Speakers stressed the difference between the healthy tradition of arranged marriage, where the couple genuinely consent, and forced marriage, where they are threatened or blackmailed by their families.

Heather Harvey, who works at the Foreign Office, is a specialist in forced marriage.

She said consular staff, whose job it is to help British people in trouble abroad, did not know what to do about the problem when they started receiving distress calls from girls three or four years ago.

At first the issue was dismissed as a 'domestic problem' but now staff are trained to offer assistance and in some cases can swoop and rescue youngsters and return them to Britain. They only act when asked to do so by the young person themselves.

Ms Harvey said the pressure brought to bear on a young person - usually, but not always, a teenage Asian girl - ranged from physical violence and locking them up, to more subtle emotional blackmail.

"Fifteen-year-old girls are told: 'if you don't do this, your sisters will never get married, we will lose our land in Pakistan, I will die of a heart attack, or you must do this as your grandmother is dying'," she said. "That is still forced marriage, an abuse of human rights."

She said some youngsters ended up in a downward spiral of self-harm, anorexia or suicide. "If they refuse the marriage, they may be tracked down and murdered," she said.

Chairman of the liaison committee Yemi Fagborun said the practice of forced marriage was not limited to members of one community.