The Bishop of Manchester asked a question on preventing forced marriage and pregnancy as barriers to women’s education during a discussion on official development assistance on 4th November 2025:
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, while we are on the theme of supporting women, as I travel around I find that one of the greatest impairments to young girls completing their education is that they are forced into pregnancy—sometimes by their families—at a very young age, pre leaving school. What can His Majesty’s Government do to help prevent young girls being made pregnant, usually by older men and in very difficult circumstances?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington: We know that the single most significant protective factor against that is education and being in school. We work with countries to try to enable that. Separately, I think that we are now the largest contributor to the UNFPA, which distributes contraceptive devices and products. Those do not always reach the people that the right reverend Prelate talks about, of course, so the work that we do on education is incredibly significant when it comes to preventing what none of us wants to see: very young girls starting their families sometimes years before they would have finished their education.
The Church of England in Parliament 
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