Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill [HL]

Baroness Goldie Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 21st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, for bringing this debate to the House today and acknowledge her work as chair, with Heather Wheeler, my honourable friend in another place, of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health, a committee to which several of your Lordships bring their deep expertise and wide experience.

There can be no doubt that it is the gravest matter when someone is prevented from making a free and informed decision about their future and must suffer consequences that may be abusive, brutal and even fatal. The Government share the noble Baroness’s concerns about this and remain committed to their work in improving the life chances of women and girls around the world.

The UK is a world leader in tackling forced marriage. Internationally, we have demonstrated our leadership through co-hosting the first ever Girl Summit in 2014, which galvanised global action to end child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation. Following the Girl Summit, the UK has supported UN resolutions and advocated a separate target on ending child, early and forced marriage within the global goals.

Child marriage carries specific risks that have been a focus of our international development work overseas, but we know that forced marriage is no respecter of age or boundaries. That is why the previous Government introduced the offence of forced marriage in 2014 and criminalised breach of the existing Forced Marriage Protection Order. To date, over 1,000 orders have been made to protect victims and those at risk, so I suggest there is evidence of protection working.

Stopping forced marriage at home forms an integral part of our cross-government strategy on violence against women and girls, which sets out our ambition that by the end of this Parliament no victim of abuse is turned away from the support they need. Where cases involve a minor, either in the UK or overseas, the Forced Marriage Unit works with the relevant statutory agencies and consular officials to provide advice and expertise to make sure that appropriate safeguarding measures are taken. Last year, the Forced Marriage Unit handled cases relating to 67 countries to which a victim was at risk of being taken in connection with a forced marriage, or had already been taken. Of the 1,220 cases it handled in total, 175 were identified as relating to the United Kingdom.

The Government have committed £36 million towards ending child marriage around the world, including support for civil society organisations working to address a broader range of sexual and reproductive health and gender issues that are associated with child marriage. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for his sensitive and thoughtful contribution in relation to education and the empowerment of women which are absolutely vital, and his acknowledgement of the Government’s progress on forced marriage.

In the UK, we are fortunate that the conditions, customs and laws that give rise to the high prevalence of child marriage in some other countries bear little resemblance to our own experience. In England and Wales, the number of people marrying at 16 or 17 is small and continues to decrease without any legislative encouragement. In 2013, the latest year for which statistics are available, there were over 240,000 marriages in England and Wales, meaning over 480,000 people entered into marriage that year. Out of these 480,000 people, 210 were aged 16 or 17, of whom 33 were boys and 177 girls, amounting to less than 1/20th of 1% of the total.

The number of civil partnerships each year has been in sharp decline since the Government opened marriage to same-sex couples. In 2015, the number of civil partnerships almost halved, from 1,683 the previous year to 861. Last year, not a single 16 or 17 year-old formed a civil partnership. With this background and perspective in mind, I turn to the measures of the Bill.

The Bill proposes amending the Marriage Act 1949 and the Civil Partnership Act 2004 to raise to 18 the minimum age at which people may enter into marriage or form a civil partnership. Statute generally defines a child as being under 18, but it is sometimes necessary to make different provision for children at different ages. The minimum age for marriage, 16, has not changed since 1929, when the Age of Marriage Act raised it from the common-law ages of 12 for girls and 14 for boys. The freedom to marry in England and Wales at 16 has stood much longer. In recognition of the difference between marrying above and below the age of majority, there has also long been a provision requiring parental or other consent for those people who seek to marry before reaching the age at which they could marry as of right. In addition to that, there is a legal requirement to give public notice of the marriage.

The Government believe that the existing requirement of parental or judicial consent for those under 18 continues to provide adequate protection, and they have seen no evidence of any failing that requires raising the minimum age to 18 in England and Wales. To raise this age would introduce a disparity with the minimum ages in the other UK jurisdictions: provision in Northern Ireland runs on the same age lines as England and Wales, whereas in Scotland, people may marry at 16 without the requirement for parental consent. Raising the minimum age would also introduce a disparity with the age of sexual consent across the United Kingdom. The implications of both these disparities require very careful consideration.

Importantly, the position of England and Wales is not exceptional among more developed countries. Many Council of Europe member states allow marriage at 16 on condition of either parental consent, or judicial consent in certain circumstances. Where member states have raised the minimum age, expressly to prevent child marriage, Governments have not reached consensus about the appropriate age to achieve this. Sweden raised the minimum age to 18 in July 2014, removing capacity to marry at a younger age with consent. Spain, however, raised the minimum age to 16 in the following July but kept the requirement for consents for people under 18, in line with the existing law in England and Wales.

It is not clear that a minimum age of 18 would prevent abuse domestically, as it would have effect only on marriages conducted in England and Wales and in compliance with our marriage Acts. We should be mindful that, in many cases, parents will seek to circumvent the law by taking their children to marry abroad or by marrying them at home in an unregistered ceremony. These ceremonies cannot be scrutinised and, without the legal requirement to give public notice, they do not come to the attention of registration officers.

The third clause of the Bill seeks to include civil partnerships within the offence of forced marriage. This offence, which the previous Government introduced in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, was drafted to define marriage broadly, by including,

“any religious or civil ceremony of marriage (whether or not legally binding)”.

Government policy takes as its starting point the fact that there should be parity between the protections available in marriage and those in civil partnerships, where such provision is appropriate. The nature of the social and cultural pressures behind forced marriage, however, makes it unlikely that families and communities will force same-sex couples into civil partnerships, and there is currently little evidence of such abuse. With the declining numbers and the rising ages of people forming civil partnerships, the reach of the forced marriage offence is uncertain. However, I make it clear that we are not complacent. The Home Office is currently working with the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to review implementation of the forced marriage offence more broadly to ensure that we do all we can to protect victims of this abhorrent crime.

I conclude by saying that there can be no doubt that the Government understand, share and take very seriously the noble Baroness’s concerns. No one should ever tolerate the abuse which she seeks to eradicate, and it is right that the UK Government should continue their work to bring this to an end, both here and around the world. However, the Government do not see sufficient evidence that the measures in the Bill would be effective in preventing abuse, bringing perpetrators to justice or offering additional protection. It would be disproportionate to prevent people exercising the freedom to marry or form civil partnerships in England and Wales at 16 or 17 with their full, free and informed consent. Their numbers, already small, continue to decline. People are now marrying much later, not because of the law but because of changes over the decades in society and in the educational, employment and economic opportunities open to them. The Bill would not reach those vulnerable people whom others have shielded from social change and who have been denied the opportunities that are rightly theirs, and it would not achieve a just, proportionate or effective means of enabling us to prevent or remedy the harmful impact on people’s lives that both the Government and your Lordships will not hesitate to condemn.