Public Records (Amendment) (Hansard, 11 May 1994)

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the transfer of certain records in the custody of the Registrar General to the Public Records Office. One of the unsung glories of the United Kingdom is the wealth of archives that this nation has at its disposal. In western Europe there is nowhere, except possibly the Vatican, where documentation illustrating the history of our nation survives, representing so many different institutions and encompassing the history of so many centuries.

There are two broad categories into which the archives might be divided. First, there are the records of the courts of law and the institutions of government. They are held today in the Public Record Office in its buildings at Kew and in Chancery lane, supervised, ultimately, by the Keeper of the Public Records, accountable to my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor. Secondly, there are the records of births, marriages and deaths held at St. Catherine's house in Aldwych in the custody of the Registrar General, accountable to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health.

The history of registration in England can be dated back to September 1538, and anyone who, like myself, has imbibed his history at the feet of Sir Geoffrey Elton will know that the modern administrative history of our land began during the ministry of Thomas Cromwell. It was in 1538 that Cromwell's injunctions instructed every parson, vicar and curate to keep a book to record the wedding, christening and burial of every inhabitant of the parish. The parish was bound to provide one sure coffer with two locks and keys"— one for the incumbent and one for the church wardens—in which to house the register. A fine of no less than three shillings and fourpence was imposed on anyone who failed in his statutory duty to maintain the register.

In 1597 an effort was made to bring the system of registration on to a national basis with a statute ordering that a parchment copy of each parochial register should be sent to the diocesan authorities. In later centuries the history of registration became bound up with the various efforts to establish a system of civil marriage in England and Wales.

Eventually, in 1833 a parliamentary Select Committee reported to the House that a national civil register of births, marriages and deaths should be set up. That gave rise in 1836 to the General Register Act. The significance of that measure could be seen by the fact that the Bill was introduced in the House by the then Home Secretary, Lord John Russell, the debate was replied to by the Conservative spokesman, Sir Robert Peel, and the Bill was introduced in the other place by the then Prime Minister, Viscount Melbourne.

The original purpose of the national system of registration was primarily to enable individuals to prove their identity, to prove rights of succession, and, in particular, to prove title to land. In recent years there has been a new surge of interest in the records of registration, largely as a result of growing and widespread public interest in family history.

In 1993 there were no fewer than 435,000 applications for certificates at the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys at St. Catherine's house and at Southport. That 330 development of family history has brought to light an operational problem. The public have access not to the registers themselves but only to the indices to the registers. In practice, that means that, if I go to St. Catherine's house and wish to search for the marriage certificate of my great-grandfather, I need to identify an entry in the index of what I believe to be the appropriate year, find what looks like the right name and roughly the right date and in what I believe to be the right district. I then have to pay £5.50 to obtain a copy of the original certificate enrolled in the register. I must then wait four working days for the copy to reach me. Alternatively, I can use the 24–hour service from the OPCS, but I must pay £20 for that privilege. If I am mistaken and I obtain the certificate of the wrong man, I am not entitled to a refund.

The only option left open to me is to make a further journey to St. Catherine's house or to write a further letter to Southport and to work again from the index. Someone with my surname probably has a 90 per cent. chance of getting it right from the index, but my hon. Friends the Members for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), who is sitting in front of me and for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell), let alone the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith), might find it more difficult to be certain that they were chasing the right name through an index without access to the original registers. Many amateur family historians who pursue their genealogical researches as a hobby and not as the means of making a living face inconvenience and immense cost in time and money.

My Bill intends to make those records available by transferring registers that are 100 years or more old from the Registrar General to the Public Record Office. There would be no logistical problem involved in making registers available; microfilms of the original registers already exist.

My Bill is not the first attempt at such a reform in Parliament. My noble Friend Lord Teviot piloted a Bill through the other place in 1983, but the intervention of the general election in that year meant that no progress could be made in the Commons and the Bill lapsed. At that time, his Bill had support from the Government and the formidable support and encouragement of the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone.

More recently, in 1990, the Government issued a White Paper on registration which acknowledged the problem, but, sadly, no action was taken to put its proposals into effect. The White Paper proposed an alternative route for making registers publicly available. It suggested establishing a central library separate from the Public Record Office because it was unlikely that suitable premises could be found in central London for a public search room and for the storage of the original registers. If my Bill is unsuccessful, I hope that the Government will press ahead to secure the wider public access promised in 1990 and that they will consider again the means to encourage such public access because, since 1990, things have changed.

In 1996, the Public Record Office extension at Kew will be completed, which will enable mediaeval and legal records at Chancery lane to be transferred to the new building at Kew. That will leave vacant the elegant Victorian building at Chancery lane, the first purpose-built record office in the modern world. It would be appropriate to turn that building into a national centre for the study of family history. The census rooms in the Public Record Office at Chancery lane already attract about 82,000 331 searchers every year. It would be logical to use the space made available in 1996 to make the registers publicly available on microfilm in search rooms in Chancery lane. Any genealogist would tell us that the two categories of record are complementary.

This is a common-sense Bill, which will do some good for some deserving people, and I commend it to the House.