Government recognises polygamy with no idea of numbers
Successive governments have undermined almost every aspect of marriage. The part that still stands? A man may have only one wife at a time. In the UK, a married man who marries again commits bigamy, a crime punishable by years in prison. Yet the Government itself shows the way round this rule. The Ministry of Justice has told MPs that a polygamous marriage made abroad “will normally be recognised” here, if it was lawful there and in both spouses’ home countries. So a man can live here with multiple wives, and the State not only recognises them but Pension Credit even pays extra for each additional one. Yesterday, Richard Holden MP led a debate in the House of Commons on stopping the benefits system recognising these marriages.
The Government admits it has no idea how many men here have more than one wife. It “does not collect data on polygamous marriages”. It says even counting the claimants in polygamous households would be “disproportionate in cost”, yet calls the number “very small and declining”. On Monday, Neil Duncan-Jordan MP asked the Department for Work and Pensions how many pensioners in polygamous marriages are entitled to extra Pension Credit and Housing Benefit. The answer is due today. But in June, the Department admitted it “does not hold information in respect of Pension Credit”. It told MPs that “Polygamous marriages are illegal in the UK”, but that it has “no plans to change the existing benefit rules” that recognise them anyway.
And the Government’s own weddings consultation proposes silent brides. Ministers envisage that at religious and humanist weddings a bride need not say a word. An action would do, so long as “the couple, the officiant and the witnesses share an understanding” of what it means. And that officiant could be one picked by the religious or belief group itself. They are also minded to allow weddings in private homes, which they admit “could make it harder to identify forced, predatory, sham marriages or wider abuse”. What are they doing, and why? Recognising a second wife, and marrying a bride without a word from her, are both terrible for women. Both must be stopped.
English law’s classic definition of marriage was written in a case about polygamy. In 1866, an Englishman who had married in Utah under a system that allowed a man several wives asked the English courts for a divorce. Lord Penzance refused, ruling that such a union had no place in English marriage law, because marriage is “the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others”. A second wife is the very person those words exclude. Yet this March, the Government raised the weekly Pension Credit rate for each additional wife to £125.25.
The wives and children in these households are the ones most wronged. The United Nations Human Rights Committee says polygamy “violates the dignity of women. It is an inadmissible discrimination against women”, and “should be definitely abolished wherever it continues to exist”. The UN also warns that it causes “emotional and material harm to children”.
The answer is simple: Britain should recognise only a man's first wife, never a second while the first marriage stands.
Please write to your MP today and demand three things:
- Britain must recognise only a man’s first wife, in law and in every benefit.
- Your MP must back Mr Holden’s call to end the recognition of polygamous marriages in the benefits system.
- Every bride must say her own ‘yes’ before witnesses, or sign it if she can’t speak, so no woman is married without words.
Put them in your own words, or they get ignored. The free WriteToThem website finds your MP from your postcode.
Keeping up the pressure until no second wife is recognised anywhere in our law is the work your support makes possible.