Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 4 June 1964.
Mr Christopher Woodhouse
, Oxford
12:00,
4 June 1964
I assume that my hon. Friend has in mind the marriage of minors to which parental consent is required in England but not in Scotland. I understand that from time to time consideration has been given to the possibility of amending the Scottish law on the lines of my hon. Friend's suggestion, but that no practicable method of preventing such marriages has been found which would not involve a fundamental and unacceptable alteration of the Scottish marriage law.
Laws are the rules by which a country is governed. Britain has a long history of law making and the laws of this country can be divided into three types:- 1) Statute Laws are the laws that have been made by Parliament. 2) Case Law is law that has been established from cases tried in the courts - the laws arise from test cases. The result of the test case creates a precedent on which future cases are judged. 3) Common Law is a part of English Law, which has not come from Parliament. It consists of rules of law which have developed from customs or judgements made in courts over hundreds of years. For example until 1861 Parliament had never passed a law saying that murder was an offence. From the earliest times courts had judged that murder was a crime so there was no need to make a law.
