Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill

Debate between Anthony Browne and Virginia Crosbie

Friday 25th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)]

I am pleased to speak in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) on introducing this important Bill, which I support.

This is an incredibly complex Bill, and it has been a real team effort. I thank the Ministers and officials, and I pay particular tribute to those in the Public Gallery and other tireless campaigners for raising awareness of this child abuse.

Many of us are parents, and we have all been 16, albeit for some of us it is a distant memory. When I was 16, I thought I would marry David Cassidy. I thought we would have kids called Kylie and Jason and a dog called Freeway. We know how grown-up and responsible we felt at 16, but we also realise just how much we still had to learn and experience at that young age.

In the UK, the average age of marriage is now 30. The fact that official figures for the marriage of 16 and 17-year-olds in the UK continue to fall is evidence that, in general, our society recognises that marriage before the age of 18 is not necessarily the great idea it might seem at that age. It is widely recognised, however, that the official UK data does not reflect the full picture. It does not take account of child marriages enacted through religious and customary ceremonies that are not legally recognised, and there is, of course, currently no way of monitoring the misuse of the loophole that permits parents in the UK to use parental consent to force their children into matrimony.

My hon. Friend’s Bill expands existing criminal law on forced marriage to make it illegal for a person to arrange the marriage of anyone under the age of 18 in England and Wales. Importantly, the offence will apply to any religious or civil ceremony of marriage, whether or not it is deemed legally binding in the UK and whether or not coercion is used.

The amendments debated today add further weight to the Bill, making it more targeted and offering more protection to young girls by removing significant loopholes in the current legislation, including deception, in England, Wales and elsewhere. Elsewhere is important, as marriage is devolved and a child can be taken to Northern Ireland or Scotland to marry. I was pleased to support amendment 4, and I state for the record that Northern Ireland is consulting on the age of marriage. I hope Scotland will do the same, as it is important to remove this dangerous loophole so that all children in the UK are covered.

These changes align with the Government’s tackling violence against women and girls strategy and will provide unequivocal protection to young women in the UK.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech about the need to raise the age of marriage. Does she agree that if somebody is judged too young to buy an alcoholic drink in a bar, drive a car or buy a firework, and too young to be trusted to vote in an election or to consent to a marriage, they must be too young to marry?

[Virginia Crosbie]

I thank my hon. Friend for his powerful words. He makes a powerful statement with which I wholeheartedly agree.

The UN estimates that 110 million girls will marry before their 18th birthday in the next decade. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommends that there should be no legal way for anyone to marry before they turn 18, even if there is parental consent. In 2016, it made the recommendation that the UK

“raise the minimum age of marriage to 18 years across all devolved administrations, overseas territories and Crown dependencies.”

The UN sustainable development goals require all countries to eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation by 2030. It is a duty of the UK Government to take a lead and clearly demonstrate that they take the matter seriously and that child marriage, under any circumstances, is wrong. In doing so, the Bill will not just serve the girls of the UK but help to tackle child marriage globally.

It is a privilege to be the Member of Parliament for Ynys Môn. I entered politics to try to make tomorrow a better day for as many as possible and to try to be a voice for those who have no voice, particularly children. We now have a Bill to protect some of the most vulnerable in this country and around the world, and I am proud to give it my support.

Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Anthony Browne and Virginia Crosbie

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th November 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Virginia Crosbie]

Q In the 1950s and ’60s, the UK used to lead the nuclear sector on the global stage. When people across the world look at us they say that we have all the pieces of the jigsaw: we have the fuel; we have the large reactors; we have decommissioning; we have the supply chain. They are looking at us to put all those pieces of the jigsaw together to make that jigsaw puzzle. Is the RAB nuclear financing model the one piece of the puzzle that is missing so that we in the UK can once again compete on the global nuclear stage?

Chris Ball: I would observe that it is about making sure that companies come together as one, and that there is leadership in the industry. If a RAB model supports and encourages that, fantastic. Looking at nuclear nations around the world, those that have been successful in the decades since—the 2000s and ’90s onwards—we tend to find a clear industry lead. Sometimes that is the operator, and sometimes it is a reactor vendor, behind which everyone else is corralled. It is probably that leadership that we used to have in the UK in decades gone by, and behind which everyone corrals, that has aided a successful industry, particularly in overseas exports. That is the piece that is missing at the moment, but that does not mean that industry should not come together and do something about it itself. It probably should, and I include myself in that comment. If RAB encourages that, all the better, but that is an observation that I would make.

Alan Woods: I would say that for us to be seen as a global leader in nuclear again we need to own the technology as a nation. We need to own the intellectual property; we need to export it; we need to be the country that other countries come to when they are thinking about wanting to deploy and exploit nuclear solutions in their home markets. I think that we will get there. With SMR, we will definitely get there. I think that that is what differentiates us.

You only need to read the news—there is an awful lot of noise around SMRs. There are a lot of vendors out there, and there is a lot of confusion about what is near-term and what are future technologies. I can speak at first hand, as I was in the Czech Republic yesterday, and they said that there is one thing that differentiates us. They believe that we can and will do it—and that is not true for everyone they look at. Having our own technology, coupled with the heritage that we have as a nation, we can and will grow back our position of being seen as a global leader in nuclear technologies around the world, without a doubt.

Dawn James: I think your question, Virginia, is about the magic key to unlocking or getting back to that fabulous heritage that we have in the nuclear industry. At this moment in time, yes, it is, and we really welcome the legislation that is moving forward. I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am finally to see my industry moving forward at pace. I started in the nuclear industry when Sizewell B was commissioned—at the back end of the construction of the last power station in the UK—yet we still have a really thriving nuclear industry. This is the key to unlocking and creating an industry that will thrive for many years to come.

Cameron Gilmour: A couple of points. I think that it is probably a question for the developers about gigawatt plants—could they raise the capital required without RAB? Probably the answer is no. There is a bigger issue at stake, which is sustaining the advantages in the ’60s and ’70s that Virginia talked about, and being able to have a new build programme that is both gigawatt and SMRs—EMRs in due course. That helps us to sustain expertise and knowledge, and help people with the careers that Dawn and I have had, for apprentices and for graduates in modern history. Without that funding we do not have a programme, and without a programme we do not have an industry with a future.

[Anthony Browne]

Q Chris, I want to pick up on something that you said earlier. You talked about needing—my words, not yours—every tool in the tool box, or every weapon in the armoury, to get to net zero. You have mentioned carbon capture and storage a couple of times. That is not within the scope of the Bill, but I wondered whether you thought that the RAB model would be suitable for carbon capture and storage, and whether the Bill could possibly be widened so that it applied to things other than nuclear.

Chris Ball: Again, that is probably not my area of expertise. The way I have looked at this is to look at every technology, and where the challenge is around enabling mass deployment of that technology. With CCS at this point in time, the key issue is not necessarily about the financing but about how the market is going to be structured and the quality of demonstrator projects.

There are different models, of course, but if you believe some of the modelling out there, we would need to capture and sequester within the UK four times the current world capacity. That is not without its challenges. So in answer to your question, I would suspect that, of course, it can be applied to that, but I actually think there are other key focus areas that need some attention to start that market moving—not least the deployment of demonstrator projects in the near term hopefully as well.

[Virginia Crosbie]

Q There has rightly been a lot of talk today about the cost to consumers and the nuclear fleet mentality. Is the reality not that RAB will facilitate a fleet of nuclear, which will in turn be good news for the consumer?

Chris Ball: I think that is absolutely right, if you look at the RAB modelling. You have got to look at this from the concept of managing risk. How do we manage risk in the best possible way? You manage that risk through commonality and through ensuring that capability remains within the industry. We might deploy that commonality as pressurised water reactors. It might be a fleet of a couple of different designs, for instance, instead of one. From a risk perspective, it starts to consolidate down to a smaller number of different designs, with a level of commonality, where we can really drive risk and take the lessons from more projects to the next as well.

Alan Woods: A fleet clearly drives cost benefits. That is absolutely true of SMRs, despite the fact that they are factory produced anyway. We need that throughput in the factories. I would go back to the point I raised at the start. We welcome RAB. It is a mechanism that helps reduce cost of capital, but from our perspective we see there are alternative mechanisms, such as leaning on the CfD mechanism, and pace is important for us. We need to start thinking about delivering this fleet now, and that is what we are doing. Therefore, we have to look at mechanisms that are available for us now. We believe we can do this from a CfD to start with.

Dawn James: A fleet approach, without a shadow of doubt, drives down costs to the consumer by driving up our ability to replicate and driving in lessons learned from one station to the next. That security of work allows us to develop our workforce and to bring more people in. The more people you bring in at the bottom end, the more you drive down your costs, because you can spread the workforce across a number of different projects. It drives down costs in so many ways that, ultimately, that does get passed on to the consumer.

Cameron Gilmour: Yes, I agree with that. I will just bring a people angle to this as well. When I talk to some of the amazing, talented young apprentices and people in our business and we talk about this exciting future, there is no question that, without RAB, we will not have that opportunity to create that future for them, which would be a huge waste of talent. RAB is the enabler to getting that certainty and continuity for that next generation.