Healthcare workers have been told to stop discouraging first cousin marriages, as parents only have a “slightly increased” risk of having children with genetic disorders
The NHS has been instructed that medical professionals must not issue blanket warnings against marriages between first cousins.
The National Child Mortality Database (NCMD), a government-funded monitoring organisation, has advised healthcare workers against routinely discouraging such unions. They now assert that parents face only a “slightly increased” risk of having children with genetic disorders.
The guidance stated: “Action at community level may help people to understand and act on [our] advice; but this is only acceptable if information is balanced, non-stigmatising and non-directive.”
First cousin marriages remain legal across the UK, with no laws preventing cousins from marrying or having children together.
Consequently, under British law, they are not classified amongst the prohibited relationships for marriage but there have historically been concerns about a higher rate of birth defects.
Section 1 of the Marriage Act 1949 sets out that any marriages that take place within prohibited degrees of relationship are void. Under the legislation, prohibited degrees of relationship for marriage include marriages to a sibling, parent or child, but not marriages between first cousins.
Such marriages occur more commonly within the British-Pakistani community than amongst white British parents.
Operating from the University of Bristol, the NCMD has been allocated over £3.5m in taxpayer funding to collect and analyse data on child deaths. The document was published in 2023.
In 2024, Richard Holden, then a backbench MP and now shadow transport secretary, put forward proposals to ban first-cousin marriages.
Mr Holden told The Times: “Our NHS should stop taking the knee to damaging and oppressive cultural practices. This guidance turns basic public health into public harm.
“First cousin marriage carries far higher genetic risk, as well as damaging individual liberty and societal cohesion.
“Pretending otherwise helps no one, least of all the children born with avoidable conditions and those trapped in heavy-handed patriarchal power structures they can’t leave for fear of total ostracism.”