Commentary on provisions of Act Section 2 – Offence of conduct relating to marriage of persons under 18
This section amends section 121 of the ASBCPA 2014.
	Subsection (2) inserts new subsection (3A) into section 121. This provides that a person commits an offence under the law of England and Wales if he or she carries out any conduct for the purpose of causing a child to enter into a marriage before the child’s eighteenth birthday (whether or not the conduct amounts to violence, threats, any other form of coercion or deception and whether or not it is carried out in England and Wales). Following existing subsection (4) of section 121, a marriage is defined as any religious or civil ceremony of marriage, whether or not it is legally binding.
	Subsection (3) specifies that, for the purpose of the new offence inserted by subsection (2), a child is a person who is aged under 18 years.
	Subsection (4) amends subsection (6) of section 121. Subsection (6) of section 121 provides that if someone uses violence, threats or any other form of coercion for the purpose of causing another person to enter into a marriage, as is required for a person to be convicted of the offence in subsection (1) of section 121, the violence, threats or other form of coercion need not have been directed at the person whom it was intended to cause to enter the marriage, but could instead have been directed at another person. Subsection (4) would make similar provision for the new offence inserted by subsection (2), meaning that, if a person carries out conduct for the purpose of causing a child to enter into a marriage before the child’s eighteenth birthday, that conduct need not have been directed at that child, but could have been directed at another person.
	Subsection (5) inserts new subsection (7A) into section 121. Subsection (7A) would provide that an offence under new subsection (3A) (whose content is described in paragraph 23) is committed only if the conduct carried out for the purpose of causing a child to enter into a marriage before their eighteenth birthday is for the purpose of causing the child to enter into a marriage in England or Wales; or at the time of the conduct, at least one of the person carrying out the conduct or the victim is habitually resident in England and Wales; or at the time of the conduct the child is a United Kingdom national who has at some point been habitually resident in England and Wales and who is not habitually resident or domiciled in Scotland or Northern Ireland.