Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Friday 25th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I express my very sincere congratulations to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), who got the ball rolling on this, but principally to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) on her heroic work in getting the Bill to this point. My congratulations go to her family in the Gallery—she married at a respectable age—and most of all to the campaigners. It is a tremendous thing that they have done, and I am very much in awe of their campaigning and their work, so many thanks and congratulations.

As my hon. Friend says, if someone is too young to consent to marriage, they are too young to marry. That is an absolutely inviolable point. I am glad that we are honouring the declarations of various international bodies, such as UNICEF, which says that child marriage is a violation of human rights; our own commitments to the sustainable development goals, which committed this country to eliminate child, early and forced marriage; and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which says that there should be no legal way to marry before 18, even with parental consent.

I understand that in 2018, the last year for which data has been collected, there were only 147 marriages of people aged 16 or 17, of whom 80% were female—girls—which tells a tale. Of course, our real concern is about the marriages of children that take place abroad and can then be recognised here in the UK. I echo the point made by my hon. Friend and many other hon. Members that the legislation is not about criminalising the actions of children; it is about seeking to stop adults organising child marriage.

I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), who spoke so well, passionately and with enormous sincerity about his own mother and the work she did, having been a child bride herself, to found a school in her village to educate girls. What an inspiration she must have been both to her own daughters, who grew up to have professional careers, and to the hon. Member himself. I am grateful to have heard that story.

I applaud the commitment in this legislation to remove what my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire calls the Gretna Green exceptions. I am very pleased to hear that Northern Ireland is consulting on raising the age of marriage, and I hope that Scotland does so, too. I am sure that they will want to align with the sustainable development goals as soon as possible.

I think I speak accurately when I say that I am sure my hon. Friend is not being anti-marriage with this legislation; I know that she has the opposite attitude. We need more marriage in this country. I recognise what the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall said about the life-limiting effects of early marriage, but we can overcompensate as, to a degree, we have in this country. I was dismayed and concerned to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire say that the average age of marriage in this country is now over 30. We have organised the economic and social rewards in our society to put off marriage and children until very late, which I regret. The decline of marriage in our society should be a cause of great regret, as it is a cause of much distress to adults.

We are talking about the rights of children, and the greatest right a child has is to a secure home. We know that marriage is the best means of ensuring this. There are many economic pressures on families in our society, and we have the smallest houses and the longest commutes in Europe. What does that do to family life? We have steadily removed the fiscal support for marriage over the past two generations, and there is a cultural or ideological attack on marriage and the family. There is an assumption that marriage is a patriarchal institution that is inherently abusive and unequal. We have heard stories today of where that can be the case, so we need to remove the danger of fulfilling that false stereotype of marriage.

Marriage is a public act for a reason, and in the Anglican service we are asked to give any just cause or impediment for why a couple should not be married. This Bill removes the possibility of abuse and the opportunity for child marriage. Marriage is fundamentally about the responsibilities of adulthood, and it is the foundation of our society. This Bill restores the integrity of the institution, and I am very proud to support it.