The marriage age is set to be raised from 16 to 18 after the existing rules were described as “bewildering” by MPs.
Laws to ban child marriage in England and Wales passed through the Commons on Friday and will now be considered by the Lords.
It come after five years of campaigning by Pauline Latham, the Conservative MP for Mid Derbyshire, who said her Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill would protect “literally millions of young boys and girls in this country”.
“If you’re not old enough to sign the documentation yourself, how can you be old enough to make one of the most important decisions you’ll make in your life?” she said. “It’s just not appropriate in this day and age. It may have been in the 1950s, but it certainly isn’t now.”
Carrying out “any conduct for the purpose of causing a child to enter into a marriage” will also become a criminal offence, punishable by a prison sentence of up to seven years.
End to ‘Gretna Green exemption’
Sajid Javid – who was meant to propose the Bill from the back benches before his promotion to Health Secretary – hailed Ms Latham for showing “exactly why child marriage is child abuse”.
The legislation will put an end to the so-called “Gretna Green exemption” because English or Welsh children who travel to get married in Scotland or Northern Ireland, where the legal age will remain 16, will not have their union legally recognised.
Anna McMorrin, a Labour shadow justice minister, said: “The fact that a young person must remain in education until they are 18 but can marry at 16 is bewildering and has no place in the 21st century.”
The Bill will now go before the House of Lords, where it will be sponsored by Baroness Sugg, a former minister. If approved by peers, it will become the first legislation to prohibit all marriages involving under-18s outright.
Virendra Sharma, the Labour MP for Ealing Southall, suggested the laws should be known as the “Pauline Latham Act” as soon as they receive royal assent.
Northern Ireland is consulting on its own legislation that would end child marriage, Ms Latham noted, urging Scotland to follow suit.
