Rotherham MP wants change to marriage age to stop forced nuptials
Sarah Champion's started a petition to raise it to eighteen
A South Yorkshire MP wants a change in the legal marriage age to stop teenagers being forced into it against their will.
Sarah Champion, who represents Rotherham, has launched a petition to raise the age you get married to eighteen.
At the moment it's legal to get hitched from sixteen if you've got your parents' consent but there are worries it's leading to forced marriages.
Stats show there are around 350 sixteen and seventeen year olds who get married every year.
Sarah says that's worrying:
"For me that raises a number of concerns because they are child marriages. Yes they happen with the consent of their parents but it also opens the window to the potential of a forced marriage happening.
"For the sake of two years, just to get legal clarity on this, would be a really good step in the right direction."
Sarah thinks sixteen is too young to be making such a big commitment:
"If from a young age you have been effectively been told by your family that you're going to get married at sixteen how much real agency does that child have to make decisions itself?
"Potentially that's taking them away from education, they might get pregnant and have a child, have all the responsibilities of looking after a household. At sixteen do you really know the implications of that?
"There can be domestic violence in those situations, there can be loss of liberty in those situations. All I want to do is make the law very clear that you cannot get married until you are legally an adult."
But some argue the change would infringe on the rights of sixteen and seventeen year olds.
Nev Zaki's a children's solicitor who deals with forced marriage cases in Sheffield for Cartwright King.
She says it would be a helpful move to prevent forced marriage but thinks it'd have to be properly thought through:
"You've got the issue with young people who genuinely wanted to get married being perhaps stopped in that so I think it would need to be carefully considered to make sure that the human rights of those who want that family life have their rights recognised.
"Where families are adamant that they want this for their child they will often find a way and that's why the law has become much more rigid. It would be a step in the right direction but it certainly wouldn't eradicate forced marriage entirely."