© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Sarah Lee/The GuardianPauline Latham MP will ask the House to back a bill criminalising child marriage and civil partnership before the age of 18. She will argue that current legislation is at odds with the legal requirement since 2013 for young people to remain in education or training until then.
She told the Guardian that banning marriage with parental consent would protect young people from being coerced into early marriage – after being groomed or because they lack the will or capacity to report a forced marriage.
Official figures of those marrying at 16 and 17 in England and Wales have fallen steadily over the years, with 43 teenage boys and 140 teenage girls marrying with parental consent in 2017. Scottish law allows marriage from age 16 without parental consent, but numbers are low, with just 118 16-19-year-olds marrying in 2019.
Latham said: “While these marriages are not recognised under British law, they can be just as harmful, or even more so, for the young person involved.”
Categories: Europe, Europe and Australia, UK
First of all: we are of course against FORCED marriage.
Secondly: The problem is that the ‘Western people’ do not relate the sexual activities with marriage. Because if we consider that sexual activities only should be kept within marriage than the banning of marriages below 18 does not make sense.
Because: quotation: “About a third of young people had first had sex before 17, the legal age of consent in Northern Ireland at the time (now amended to 16), and over a quarter before 16. The average age at first sex was 15.6 years (15 for men and 16 for women), about the same as in Great Britain”
By the way: I got married in England before 18, with parental consent. Just saying …