Say no to forced marriage made easier

Eight days from today the Government closes its consultation on how a marriage is made in England and Wales, and two of its proposals would strip the safeguards out of the ceremony itself.

The first is that in religious and non-religious belief ceremonies, consent could be expressed “through actions as well as words”. Across the consultation and the three assessments published with it – four documents in all – the word “audible” does not appear once. The second is that weddings could be held in private homes. On that, ministers write the danger down themselves – a private home “may not always be a neutral environment and may not offer the same visibility as a public or commercial venue. This could make it harder to identify forced, predatory, sham marriages or wider abuse.”

Taken together, the proposals would allow for secret marriages in private homes, where nobody but close family attend, and a bride never even has to say a word. All this is overseen by an officiant who can be from the community, and the entire thing gets rubber-stamped by the state.

What could go wrong?

Oh, and under the proposals, who vets that officiant? The paper’s “fit and proper” test is left to the “nominating organisation”. It has five requirements: good character, no disqualifying conviction, age over 18, training done, and a grasp of the law. “Good character” is nowhere defined. This would allow for a man who had presided over a religious ceremony that married somebody’s fourteen-year-old daughter, so long as he had no criminal convictions.

But surely that wouldn’t happen in our country, you may ask? Last year alone, the Forced Marriage Unit gave hands-on help in 406 cases of forced marriage or female genital mutilation (15 cases). In 163 of those cases – forty per cent – the victim was seventeen or under, and 87 were fifteen or under.

Asked whether the Government’s proposed checks on couples would apply to every kind of wedding, the minister replied on 10 September that couples would face “a compulsory separate in-person interview with a registrar” when giving notice. But that interview takes place weeks before the day, so cannot take into account anything that happens after. The ceremony itself is the point at which a girl must freely give her consent, witnessed by somebody outside her family. Yet that is the very moment the Government proposes to make silent and private. Why?

Please respond before 24 September. Our full guide on the many other significant problems with these proposals is linked below, but four questions matter most, and here is what to say in each:

• Question 5, answer No – Spoken consent, before witnesses, must be the legal minimum for every wedding. Where someone genuinely cannot speak, let the law accept a signed statement from that person. Rituals may accompany the words. They must never replace them.
• Question 6, answer No – The words the Government proposes for a civil wedding are “I [name] accept you [name] as my [husband / wife / spouse]”, with “spouse” offered, in its own words, for couples who “do not identify with the terms” husband and wife. The words should name husband and wife, and carry a promise – lifelong, as the Government itself calls marriage, and to each other alone. In all four documents, “forsaking all others” appears nowhere.
• Question 20, answer Yes – other safeguards are required. Where a wedding is held in a private home, the officiant must see each party alone, on the day, and record that each freely wishes to proceed.
• Question 30, answer No – The “fit and proper” definition is too weak. Good character must be defined, and never judged only by the organisation nominating the officiant. And believing marriage is the union of one man and one woman must never make anyone unfit.

Please write it as yourself, not as us. Officials have form for counting identical campaign responses as one. The Law Commission, whose 2022 blueprint this consultation follows, once took 122 responses to one of its proposals and recorded that “If the repeat consultation responses from campaigning are counted as one, we received 58 consultation responses”. A paragraph in your own voice outweighs a page of mine, and no one can file it as a copy of anyone else’s.

Our full guide is here. If you want help responding, ask me and I will give it.

Eight days, four questions, ten minutes. For the sake of the girls these proposals could harm, please respond if you can. Click here.