§ 31. Mr. Chatawayasked the Minister of Health by what criteria the Registrar-General in Somerset House grants and refuses permission for historians and genealogists to consult the census records subsequent to 1851.
§ Miss PittInformation from these records up to 1921 is supplied only with the consent of the parties concerned or their descendants.
§ Mr. ChatawayIs my hon. Friend aware that my understanding is that up to and including 1851 these records are available to anybody and that many researchers understood that as soon as a hundred years had passed they would be open to them? The 1861 returns have not yet been revealed, which is an annoyance and an embarrassment, apparently, to many researchers.
§ Miss PittThere was no pledge of confidentiality, I understand, for censuses up to 1851, but for the succeeding decades such a pledge has been given and the records are available only for specific purposes.
§ Mr. ChatawayIs that in perpetuity? Does that pledge last for ever?
§ Miss PittNot necessarily. I think that perhaps at the end of a hundred years the matter might be considered, but it is a matter for the Public Record Office.
§ Sir G. NicholsonWill my hon. Friend answer a Question about it in a hundred years' time?