Young people are reluctant to get married due because they feel under pressure to have expensive wedding ceremonies, Iain Duncan Smith has claimed.
Giving the keynote address at a conference organised by campaign group the Marriage Foundation, the Work and Pensions Secretary said:
“Reinforced by a glitzy celebrity culture and the glossy spreads of the various glossy magazines, the focus is too often on the ceremony itself, the celebration of that event.
And now, I understand, by some estimates, it costs something in the order of about £20,000 to establish that.”
He added:
“Some, as I understand it, [do not want] to take that decision because they are not able to afford the kind of celebration that they think is expected of them. “
In addition, the Minister claimed, signficant numbers of young people have a distorted understanding of marriage – “an incredible fairy tale view of what will happen”.
“Starting married life therefore with that problem or with the overhang of debt but without the understanding, the real deep understanding, that marriage requires at its heart compromise to overcome real challenges that two people face when they choose to live together, all of this puts huge pressure on new married couples from the start.”
The point of marriage, he concluded, was “love, commitment and that stable environment in which you can bring up a family”.
I wish Ministers and other politicians would confine their comments to matters which are the proper business of government and which they can, directly or through legislation, affect. This fails both tests. How much people spend on their weddings is their business and we have not had sumptuary laws since the time of Cromwell.
Unnecessary micro-management in other words. The market is perfectly capable of dealing with this issue. How about a registry office or combining a $100 ceremony in a two week holiday to Las Vegas? Duncan Smith does have this annoying habit of preaching sometimes. Does an alternate career as minister beckon for the afterlife?
I ought to have said that Duncan Smith – nice bloke that he is – does not seem to know what type of minister he wants to be.
IDS spouting rubbish again. young people don’t get married because marriage has little to offer today, it’s unlikely to last for one thing.
I also disagree with this minister on this subject. It doesn’t have to cost a lot at all to get married. Getting divorced is a lot more expensive. You can’t get divorced if you don’t get married, thus the financial incentive not to married. Time the politicians stopped ducking the real issue.
He sounded good in opposition. UC, CSA, couples tax penalties, all aren’t so good in reality.
Its harder to do things in reality then say you will do them before you do.
Reluctantly I am saddened by this as I really hoped he would do well and was and am on his side on these subjects. He has let me down though and needs to go though in favour of someone who can deliver. Sad as I liked him and like him and the sound of his promises. The sadness is that he cannot deliver and for the sake of the peoples trust in politicians – as with the chief constable of the Thames Valley police force – he needs to go to maintain the peoples trust in the position.
If people can’t do what they are supposed to do then they need to go. Agree with Paul. And I am not being a hypocrite as I have said on here a few times over the years that I hoped it worked out for him as I really did like the sound of his promises.
Dismal Duncan-Smith is making all sorts of statements here which do not seem to have evidence to back them up.