Last week the Daily Telegraph and others carried reports of the prosecution of a south London vicar who conducted a “conveyor belt” operation for sham marriages, extending over the period December 2007 and March 2011 and involving 494 illegal immigrants. Although the prosecution is on-going, [see update, below], it is nevertheless timely to summarize the development of the legislation and the changes that are about to be introduced.

Whilst involvement in sham marriages is not restricted to the Church of England, its common law duty to conduct marriage combined with the (present) exemption from the “civil preliminaries” make it particularly susceptible to abuses such as those reported. Lord Hardwicke’s Act was introduced in 1753 to overcome a similar problem of “clandestine weddings”, a key component of which was the mandatory calling of the banns.  Ironically, the problem of “sham marriages” is formally addressed through s 57 Immigration Act 2014 which, when brought into force next year, will exclude the procedures of calling the banns and common licences where one or both of the couple is not a relevant national, i.e. a British citizen, EEA national or Swiss national. Continue reading →