Marriage and Civil Partnership: Minimum Age

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the minimum age for marriage and civil partnership.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I thank our new Minister for replying to this important debate and look forward to his response. The debate is about whether the House should consider increasing the legal age of marriage and civil partnership in the UK to 18.

Whatever our differences, I confidently predict that everyone in the House believes that it is sacrosanct that we protect our children; indeed, I suspect that all agree that we should be at the forefront of protecting children across the world. Laws in this country rightly consider young people differently until they are 18, and in the wider world the United Nations convention on the rights of the child relates to those under that age. It is clear that 16-year-olds are not adults. Some may outwardly appear more mature, but the reality is that they are still developing in both body and mind. In their teens, boys and girls are still guided by parents and teachers; after all, it was us who insisted that they need to be in full-time education until they are 18.

Could Members possibly imagine the 16-year-olds they know—their own children or grandchildren—getting married at that age? My granddaughter will be 15 later this year, and the idea of her getting married in just over a year’s time is mind-boggling, and she would agree. She will not be forced into marriage, but sadly that is not true of all young people, either in the UK or, just as importantly, across the globe, and specifically in countries where this country, and indeed this House, still hold significant sway.

The ability to marry under the age of 18 with the consent of parents is an important legal anomaly; I would argue that it is an absurdity. The reality of child marriage is extremely complex and wide-reaching.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point. Has she looked at minimum ages around the world? There seems to be quite a large variation, particularly in places such as Africa, where it can be as low as 13 in some countries. Has she looked at comparative ages in the rest of Europe?

[Mrs Latham]

I have not actually looked at comparative ages in the rest of Europe. However, certainly in Africa and other developing countries, there is a wide range. We ask African countries and anywhere that we send development money to not to allow children to marry, and to set the minimum age at 18. They turn to us and ask why they should listen, because we allow children to marry. That is another very good reason why we should increase the age to 18.

The problem cuts across religions, regions and cultures, and it happens at home in the UK too, in the 21st century. The fact that it is possible to marry at 16 effectively means that child marriage is written into British law, which is held up as a guiding light in legal systems across the world. By not changing it, we give regimes an excuse to say, “What’s good for the British is good for us.”

I previously advocated changing our marriage law to increase the legal age to 18—with no exceptions—through a ten-minute rule Bill. Unfortunately, I had to withdraw it on Second Reading. Among the arguments I made in the House in support of the Bill were those relating to maturity levels, negative social implications, meeting international standards and helping to prevent forced marriages. I will reiterate all those arguments in more detail in this speech, to stress the importance of increasing the legal age of marriage in the UK.

Statistics on marriage among 16 and 17-year-olds are limited, but a limited dataset can be found on the Office for National Statistics website. It shows that 40 boys and 200 girls aged 16 to 17 married an opposite-sex partner in 2014, which is the most recent period for which we have data. Same-sex partners can now also marry at 16, but there is no recorded data on same-sex couples getting married at 16 or 17, which might be because there are so few cases, or none at all, of same-sex couples marrying below 18. The numbers might be relatively low, but the negative impact on the individuals involved in the marriage are large and wide-ranging.

Hon. Members should keep in mind the wider influence that our laws have. Increasing the marriage age in the UK to 18 has been gathering political momentum for some time. It should be noted that in 2017 Parliament considered the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill, which sought to raise the minimum age of consent to marriage or civil partnership to 18 and create an offence of causing a person under 18 to enter into a marriage or civil partnership. Unfortunately, the 2016-17 Session was prorogued and the Bill made no further progress. I attempted to reignite the process with my ten-minute rule Bill, but this failed on Second Reading.

Frustratingly, previous efforts to amend the existing law have been rejected or delayed for a number of reasons. One argument is that the number of people who get married under 18 is so low—and ever decreasing—that it is not worth the legislative time to change the law. However, for those who get married at such a young age, the social impact is enormous, and as we have not legislated for more than a month, we could have fitted it in. The reality is that the largest body of people that this change in the law will protect are not foolish, love-struck teens but vulnerable young women forced into marriages permitted by their own families for a host of social and cultural reasons.

As a nation, we have a moral duty to do everything in our power to reduce the number of forced marriages and close loopholes that make it possible to obtain such marriages by legal means. This relatively simple and straightforward change to the existing law would have a significant impact on young people. Marriage is a major life decision for which children are not emotionally or physically ready. Marriage is intended to be a lifetime commitment and should not be rushed into. Setting the minimum age of marriage at 18 provides an objective, rather than subjective, standard of maturity, which safeguards a child from being married when they are not ready.

I passionately believe that it should be our priority to protect children, and that may mean from themselves as well as from potential dangers from others. The very fact that children of 16 and 17 need the consent of their parents to be married shows that they are not mature enough to make the decisions themselves—they are children. Increasing the age to 18 ensures that teenagers do not recklessly and naively rush into marriage, but it also protects them from the demands of parents who try to push their offspring to marry early. I say this as somebody who believes in marriage; I am not trying to stop marriage, just for those who are too young. In both cases, child marriages suffer from complications that too often end in divorce.

This year marks 101 years of the suffragette movement. We should recall that it was pressure from those brave campaigners that brought about the Age of Marriage Act 1929. Until then there was no defined minimum age, and making it 16 was seen as protecting children. However, 90 years ago, most young people aged 16 would have been working, probably since they were 14, unlike now, in England, where they must stay in either full-time education or training. My own mother started work at 14, so it would not have been unreasonable for her to get married at 16. She did not; she waited until she was 19, which in my view is still too young. However, life has changed. In other words, that was then and this is now, and we need to move with the times. Culture has changed, and so has our commitment to protecting young people—or at least it should have done.

There are a number of negative consequences from marrying at 16 or 17. Research has shown that child marriage is often associated with leaving education early, limited career and vocational opportunities, serious physical and mental health problems, developmental difficulties for the children born to young mothers, and an increased risk of domestic violence. A clear example of that is that if married children drop out of school and fail to finish education and training, they can subsequently be locked into poverty. It is clear that that phenomenon disproportionately affects girls. Child brides in particular are often isolated, with limited opportunities to participate in the development of their wider communities and reach their full potential in modern society. It is difficult for child brides to pursue education, employment or entrepreneurial opportunities. Child marriage therefore hampers efforts to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development goals. It leaves young brides at risk of premature school drop-out, sexual activity—often without consent or contraception—and the myriad health-related consequences that accompany teenage pregnancy.

The Campaign for Female Education notes that teenage birth rates are highest where child marriage is most prevalent. When girls become pregnant before their bodies are ready, they are at high risk of complications during pregnancy and childbirth, which endanger the life of both mother and child. Human Rights Watch noted that girls who marry are at higher risk of domestic violence than women who marry as adults. The Campaign for Female Education supports that assertion.

It is interesting to note that, in general, fewer people are getting married at a young age. For marriages of opposite-sex couples, the average age for men marrying in 2015 was 37.5 years and for women it was 35.1 years. People are less likely to settle down quickly when they are young.

There is a far greater focus on education for both men and women now. Quite rightly, ambition and expectation are higher for many young people in the modern day and age. The late teens and early twenties are seen as key development years to study, travel and consider options for the world of work. Historically, women may have got married younger, but in the modern world their education and employment prospects are far greater. Some 37.1% of young women go to university, which did not happen in previous years.

The Campaign for Female Education states that women who are employed reinvest 90% of their earnings in their families, lifting themselves, their children, their siblings and relatives out of poverty. However, when a girl is married as a child, that can often mean the end of her education and impede her ability to become financially independent. The campaign concludes:

“One girl’s potential to lift an entire family, and even a community, out of poverty disappears. This is happening millions of times over. As the inter-generational cycle of poverty continues, youth unemployment and economic instability can lead to migration, conflict and violence.”

Every child bride could have been a doctor, teacher, scientist, entrepreneur or politician even. There is a huge social as well as economic cost to child marriage.

British law should act as a gold standard internationally and reverberate around the world. That should be the case with child marriage. We should be using our influence with other countries to end child marriage. Unfortunately, the UK is out of sync with other western countries and ignores the advice of the international human rights conventions on this issue. The international human rights conventions on women’s rights and on children say that countries should end the practice of enabling child marriage below 18. The UK is violating those commitments. Under the UN sustainable development goals, countries around the world have pledged to end child marriage—any marriage in which one or both spouses are under 18—and we have promised to do that by 2030. Human Rights Watch has asserted that the EU could do more to help to end child marriage, and I understand that the European Parliament is working towards that.

Many countries’ legal systems prevent marriage before the age of 18. I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) that I had not researched the position in Europe, but I have looked at Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain, because they recently reformed their laws on child marriage, as did the US state of Virginia. Similar laws are pending in other US states, but not in this country yet. Other countries permit marriage among the young only for certain groups. For instance, according to the US State Department’s human rights report on Trinidad and Tobago from 2014, the official marriage age is 18 for men and women, but Muslims and Hindus have a separate Marriage Act.

International law is very specific about who should be allowed to marry. If a country wants to permit exceptions to the minimum age of 18, “mature, capable” children are allowed to marry, but only “in exceptional circumstances” at age 16 or older, when

“such decisions are made by a judge based on legitimate exceptional grounds defined by law”

and

“without deference to culture and tradition.”

By allowing 16-year-olds to marry without consent from a judge, the UK is in reality breaking international law. However, the great hypocrisy here is that we ask other countries, in the developing world, to abide by international law and ensure that the legal age of marriage is 18. I believe it is vital that the UK live by the standards that it is keen to advocate for in the developing world.

Following the first Girl Summit in 2014, the Department for International Development allocated up to £39 million over five years to support global efforts to prevent child marriages. There is a vast body of work to do, as globally 15 million girls under 18 are married each year. By its proactive contribution, the UK recognised that child marriages result in early pregnancy and girls facing social isolation, interrupted schooling, limited career and vocational opportunities and an increased risk of domestic violence, so why are we not leading the way by increasing the legal age of marriage in this country?