Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether the Government plans to introduce a statutory definition of incestuous marriage for the purposes of marriage law.

The Marriage Act 1949 prohibits marriage between certain close relatives; this is referred to as marriages within prohibited degrees. The prohibited degrees of relationship are listed in Schedule 1 of the Act, and include parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren and aunts/uncles and nieces/nephews. These existing statutory provisions already make clear that such marriages are not valid in the eyes of the law.