§ MR. MANSFIELD (Lincolnshire, Spalding)I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that the Registrar-General has issued a notice to registrars of births and deaths not to supply lists of deaths to the Press; is he aware that the practice of supplying such lists has been working for years; and can he state the reasons given for discontinuing the list.
§ THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. WALTER LONG,) Bristol, S.I am aware that in a certain number of cases lists of deaths have been supplied to the Press by registrars of births and deaths. This, however, has been done in contravention of the regulation on the subject. The Registrar-General has received complaints as to the publication of particulars which may lead to the identification of individuals, and he considers that any such publication tends to make persons unwilling to furnish information for registration purposes, and consequently to impair the reliability of vital statistics. He has recently issued a circular with a view to a strict observance of the regulation in future.