REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS, DEATHS AND MARRIAGES (SCOT LAND) (AMENDMENT) BILL. (Hansard, 7 May 1934)

§ LORD THANKERTON

My Lords, in moving that this Bill be read a second time, I think I can put in very few words what the hardship is which this Bill is designed to remove. It is a hardship caused by the present system of registration to children who are born illegitimate. Our present system of registration depends on two Acts of 1854 and 1860, and I think I can best illustrate the hardship by telling your Lordships exactly what happens in the case of a child born illegitimate—a child born illegitimate, we will say, without anyone acknowledging himself to be the father. The entry in the register would then be in simple form, giving the child's name, the date of birth, and the name of the mother. Thereafter, according to a system of law which has long been ruling in Scotland, although only introduced as 2 recently as 1926 into England, if the father comes along and marries the mother the marriage dates back in effect, with the result that the child becomes legitimate by the subsequent marriage of the parents.

In that case, under the existing system, the legitimation by the subsequent marriage is put in what is called a Register of Corrected Entries. Similarly, if the mother brings an action in court against the person she asserts to be the father, and the court identifies that man as the father, the decree of court will be entered in the Register of Corrected Entries, and also if the child, neither of the parents having moved in the matter, asserts his legitimacy before the court and gets a decree of court, that again will go into the Register of Corrected Entries, and if that child goes and asks for an extract certificate from the register, this is the kind of thing it gets. It will get on the face of it a copy of the original entry, showing it is illegitimate, which it is no longer, and on the back of it will be written up all these subsequent happenings which will prove the child to be legitimate. That does seem to be a hardship, because when the child wants to get employment, or to be educated and produces its birth certificate, its original history of illegitimacy, which Is now untrue in the eye of the law, will be disclosed, and it is with the object of removing that hardship that the present Bill is proposed.

3 I understand that the Bill is viewed with favourable eyes by the Government, and it certainly was in the House of Commons. It passed through that House with acclaim, I think I may say, and I hope that your Lordships, after hearing a short explanation of the clauses, will also take a favourable view of the measure. Clause 1 provides for doing away with the Registry of Corrected Entries. It merely clears the ground for the provisions which follow. Clause 2 deals with the normal cases where there is no dispute about the subsequent marriage, and no dispute about who the father of the particular child was or that he is the husband who has been married. In that case the Registrar-General, on being satisfied, will make a complete re-registration of the true state of facts as they exist at that date. But, in cases where there is something left which ought to be enquired into, such as cases where the paternity has not been originally recognised, then, so as to identify the husband of the marriage as being truly the father of that particular child, the sheriff will enquire into the matter, the Registrar-General will be satisfied, and re-registration will follow again. Clause 3 deals with the case where the illegitimate birth has not been followed by marriage, but where there has been a, decree of paternity, the father not having been disclosed originally, or there is a declaration of legitimacy brought by the child subsequently, independently of the parents; and this will enable re-registration in that case.

Clause 4 was not in the Bill as originally introduced into the House of Commons, but it was brought forward there, and the reason was this. Having abolished the Register of Corrected Entries, and having provided for re-registration, it was found that an extract of the re-registration disclosed, firstly, the date of birth of the child, and, secondly, the date of the parents' marriage, which showed on the face of it that the birth had been prior to the date of the marriage and that the child had originally been born illegitimate. That, again, seemed a hardship. Therefore Clause 4 was passed in order to obviate that hardship by providing for a briefer form of extract, which would state, as you will see from the clause, the name, sex, date, and place of birth of the child in question. Some of the 4 Government Departments were interested in this matter, but were, I understand, perfectly willing to agree to it on the footing that this should be regarded as an experimental clause. There has been some suggestion that it might possibly be used for fraud. I confess I have some difficulty in appreciating that. At any rate, there can be no harm in it. It is an experiment well worth trying, and I should advise your Lordships to take that view also.

Clause 5 is a very small point. If an illegitimate child is born in a parish which is not that of the domicile of the parents, then under the present law the registrar of the parish of birth has, in the case of an illegitimate child, to send a copy of the entry to the registrar of the domicile of the parents. In the first place, that is quite unnecessary now because, with a general index in Edinburgh—the general register—these entries can always be followed and traced there, and therefore we are really duplicating work by having to send a copy not only to the general index in Edinburgh but to this other parish also. It was quite a common case, or at least a very natural thing, for the mother, when she knew she was about to have a child, to go anywhere except to the parish of her domicile. She would rather seek to go elsewhere; but then, if a copy of the fact of birth has to be communicated to the parish she has just left on purpose, it seems a great hardship, and a thing that serves no purpose. For these reasons it seems quite a wise and fair provision. I think that explains everything that I require to bring to the attention of your Lordships, and accordingly I beg to move.