Marriage isn’t on next Thursday’s ballot but threats to it are
Next Thursday, 7th May around thirteen million voters across Scotland, Wales and the English local authorities go to the polls. Marriage as an institution is in almost no manifesto. But marriage, the lifelong union of one man and one woman that the Coalition for Marriage exists to defend as the gold standard for families and society, is under pressure from policies moving through Westminster, Holyrood and the Senedd. So is the child’s right to a relationship with both biological parents that marriage most reliably protects.
At Westminster, three threads pull in the same direction. The Courts and Tribunals Bill announced on 7 March will repeal the presumption of parental involvement from the Children Act 1989, removing the legal starting point that a child generally benefits from a relationship with both parents. C4M has set out the case against the change in detail, framing it as treating parenting as a state privilege rather than a right, and as underlining exactly why marriage matters: marriage binds a mother and father to each other and to their children before any crisis. Secondly, the Government postponed the Law Commission’s surrogacy reforms in April 2025, but the proposals remain live: intended parents become legal parents from birth. And thirdly, the long-promised Ministry of Justice cohabitation consultation, due this Spring, will decide whether new cohabitant rights come by opt-in (a conscious choice) or opt-out (all cohabiting couples would be granted the same rights as those who are married).
In Scotland, the SNP government has lined up three proposals against the family before Thursday’s vote. Legislation passed in 2026 has removed parents’ right to withdraw their child from religious education, and gives children themselves an independent right to override parental wishes on religious observance. Plans would extend DIY divorce to families with children under 16. The same Scottish Government family law consultation, which closed on 21 April, is considering broad expansion of cohabitant rights on separation.
The Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling of last April established that “sex” in the Equality Act means biological sex. In Wales, Plaid Cymru’s manifesto commits to gender self-identification by devolution, in direct defiance of that ruling. The Welsh Greens want puberty blockers restored for children, against the Cass Review evidence and the UK ban that followed. Only the Welsh Conservatives explicitly pledge to restore parents’ right to withdraw their child from sex education and religious education.
The latest ONS Families and Households bulletin shows married couples still make up 65.1% of UK families, and that 80.5% of couples raising dependent children are married or in a civil partnership. The cohabitation share of UK families has barely moved since 2015, a change the ONS itself describes as not statistically significant. No major party on the ballot in any of the three jurisdictions has a marriage promotion policy. And the legal climate is hardening against those who support real marriage: in November the High Court in Smith v Manchester City Council held that a council could lawfully reject an evangelical Christian couple as foster carers because of their views on marriage, sexuality and gender. Marriage is not on the ballot, but the policies that erode it are.
Coalition for Marriage does not endorse political parties. We urge our supporters to put four questions to their candidate – in person, by email, or at hustings:
- Will you keep the legal distinction between marriage and cohabitation, so that any new rights for cohabitants are clearly lesser than those of married couples?
- Do you support a child’s right in principle to a relationship with both biological parents, and did you back or oppose the repeal of the parental involvement presumption?
- Will you defend parents’ statutory right to withdraw their child from sex education and from teaching on gender identity?
- Do you accept that “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 means biological sex, and will you apply that consistently in council services and single-sex spaces?
How a candidate answers these four questions tells you, far more reliably than a party rosette, whether they will defend marriage and the child’s right to both biological parents in the chamber they are seeking to enter.