Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Friday 19th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

For many people I speak to, it is a shock for them to learn that child marriage is not illegal in this country already, and it happens far more often than one might think. In the last 12 months, the national charity Karma Nirvana has responded to 76 known cases of child marriage in England and Wales, with the youngest case concerning a seven-year-old girl. We know all too well the devastating impact that child marriage has on vulnerable children.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend on the work that she has done over six years to bring this important Bill to the House, in collaboration with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid). The current marriage laws enable 16 and 17-year-olds to marry, with permission from their parents, but this can lead to children being coerced into marriage. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to prevent children from being victim to this?

[Mrs Latham]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. The whole point of the Bill is to stop young people being victims, because they are. Even if there is a prosecution, we should not expect them to be criminalised, because it is not their fault; they are the victims in these situations. We should be supporting these young children.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Tom Pursglove)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) for introducing this important Bill. It was terrific to have the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), with us at the start of the debate. There was what I would characterise as an immaculate baton passing from him to my hon. Friend to allow this private Member’s Bill to progress in this Session. I look forward to her taking the Bill further and hope to see it complete its journey so that we can bring this law to the statute book. Perhaps all hon. Members will accept that, in the last few weeks, we have seen a lot of adversarial politics in the Chamber. I think it is refreshing that, this morning, the country sees a House of Commons coming together to deliver an important reform that we can all support.

The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) spoke eloquently. I also found it chilling when she spoke of the experience of her friend. What her friend went through was horrendous, and it is right that we are coming together to take action to stop young people going through such experiences in future. It is impossible for anybody not to be hugely troubled by those experiences. The hon. Lady put her case well and effectively.

My hon. Friend the Member for Member for Mid Derbyshire did a brilliant job of laying out the provisions of the Bill, the purpose of which is to end child marriage and civil partnerships in England and Wales. There are two ways in which children can currently marry. First, they can have a legal ceremony at 16 or 17 with parental or judicial consent. That includes both civil and religious ceremonies such as those in the Church of England. That aspect of child marriage would be solved by raising the minimum age to 18. Secondly, children of any age can take part in marriage ceremonies that are non-legally binding, which often take place in a community or traditional setting. Those unregistered marriages will be addressed by expanding the offence of forced marriage to make it illegal to arrange for a child to enter marriage where coercion is not used.

Statistics demonstrate that girls are more likely to enter a legal marriage under the age of 18 and, therefore, more likely to be impacted by the adverse effects of child marriage that were so helpfully set out by my hon. Friend. In 2018 in England and Wales, 28 boys under the age of 18 married, compared with 119 girls.

[Mr Mohindra]

I welcome the Minister to his place—it is the first opportunity that I have had to do so. Does he think that Northern Ireland and Scotland will follow suit?

[Tom Pursglove]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. We are, of course, considering measures that relate to England and Wales. That sends out a very clear message about what our intentions are in this House and, as has been mentioned several times today, the point about the international example that we want to send out is an important one, too. I want the United Kingdom to live up to the rhetoric towards which we ask others to work. That is made more challenging when our law in this country does not reflect what we are asking others to do.