REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS, DEATHS AND MARRIAGES (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]

HL Deb 25 February 1965 vol 263 cc958-1020

5.17 p.m.

Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.

Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Hughes)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

House in Committee accordingly.

[The Lord MERTHYR in the Chair.]

THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD MERTHYR)

May I first say, for the information of the Committee, that I have received a paper which is headed, "Lord Craigton's Grouping", which I think may be of considerable benefit to us to-night if we use it, and that I am much obliged to the noble Lord for circulating it? May I also say that, when the time comes, I shall have to draw the attention of the Committee from time to time to certain Amendments which, if passed, would preclude my calling certain other Amendments. I propose that, when that happens, I should mention it to the Committee as we go along.

Clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 [General Register Office]:

LORD HUGHES

With permission, I will talk to Amendment No. 1 and Amendment No. 3 together, because they cover the same point. During the Second Reading debate it became quite clear, I think, that on one in the House saw any necessity for insisting that the office of the Registrar General should be in Edinburgh. It was suggested that there might be substituted for "in Edinburgh" the words "in Scotland". We felt, on reflection, that there was no need to put in anything at all, and this first Amendment is accordingly tabled to remove the words, "in Edinburgh" from page 2, line 17. Of course, it was similar reasoning that led to Amendment No. 3. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 2, line 17, leave out ("in Edinburgh").—(Lord Hughes.)

LORD CRAIGTON

I am grateful to the noble Lord. This was a little point but an important one, and we did not want to break new ground in legislation. are am pleased to accept the Amendment.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

The retention of the words "or records" would preclude transmission by the Registrar General of certain records to the Keeper of the Records of Scotland which are at present transferable under Section 5 of the Public Records (Scotland) Act, 1937. These records are the administrative files and documents of his office and the Census records extending back to 1841. Under the 1937 Act he has discretion to transmit these to the Keeper of the Records. On this matter it was not intended to alter the present law, and the intention can be restored by omitting the words "or records". I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 2, line 21, leave out ("or records").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

I beg to move this Amendment.

Amendment moved— Page 2, line 24, leave out ("(whether in Edinburgh or not)").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 3, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 4 and 5 agreed to.

Clause 6:

Alteration of registration districts

6.—(1) If a local registration authority consider it expedient that the number, boundaries or titles of the registration districts within their area should be altered they may, after consultation with the Registrar General, prepare and submit to the Secretary of State a scheme for that purpose.

LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (1), after "authority" to insert: or two or more adjoining local registration authorities".

The noble Lord said: I beg to move the Amendment standing in the names of my noble friends and myself. Perhaps it would be convenient if we took Amendments Nos. 5 and 6 together with it. This concerns quite a simple point that are and my noble friends made in the course of the Second Reading debate. It may be that it would be convenient if the local registration office crossed a boundary. In that case it seems that it would require two local authorities, or possibly even more than two, simultaneously to submit a scheme to enable that to be done. Of course, in the course of revising the boundary of local authorities and of local registration authorities it may well be desirable to take a much broader sweep and to make wider changes.

I hope that when the noble Lord replies to this Amendment he will give some indication as to whether it is intended that there should be a fairly wide-scale revision of the size and areas of registration districts or whether it is intended that there should be only minor alterations here and there. In either case it seems plainly desirable that there should be power for at any rate two or more local authorities to combine so far as one or more registration district is concerned. That is the purpose of this Amendment and I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 3, line 14, after ("authority") insert the said words.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)

LORD HUGHES

I am happy to say that I am able to accept this Amendment as, to be quite frank, it brings to light a defect in the Bill. This Amendment will improve the Bill by making it easier for registration districts to be brought up to meet the present needs or future needs of the area. On the subject of what was intended, I think it is not possible for me to give an answer to that because the question is primarily one for the districts themselves; and the extent to which they would wish to join in major or minor alterations must be primarily a matter for them. This will make it possible to meet the position in the most satisfactory way to all concerned.

LORD DRUMALBYN

I am grateful to the noble Lord for what he has said.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD DRUMALBYN

I beg to move this Amendment.

Amendment moves— Page 3, line 16, after ("area") insert ("or areas as the case may be").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD DRUMALBYN

I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 3. line 23, after ("authority") insert ("or authorities, as the case may be").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD DRUMALBYN

This Amendment is intended to be consequential on the previous three Amendments. Clearly, where you have a joint arrangement you need some arrangement for sharing expenses; and it may be that in certain cases it will be necessary to have a joint committee to do so. Section 119 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act seems to be the most convenient way of dealing with the matter. I am bound to say that I am not sure that it is, and I shall be happy if the noble Lord tells us that this is not necessary. I thought it necessary to find out if it were desirable to have some provision for the sharing of expenses and for a joint committee.

Amendment moved—

Page 4, line 7, at end insert— ("() Section 119 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1947 shall apply to any scheme agreed upon by two or more local registration authorities and submitted to and approved with or without modifications, by the Secretary of State.").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)

LORD HUGHES

I think it is perfectly reasonable and natural that this Amendment should go down as consequential on the others; but I am not in a position to accept it. I think the reasons for refusing it will be found acceptable to the noble Lord. It is unsuitable because Section 119 of the 1947 Act is not an appropriate way of dealing with this position. That Act provides for the combination of local authorities for some continuing function, a joint committee being appointed for the purpose. In the case of a joint scheme under Clause 6, which provides that a registration district in one local registration authority should be combined with a registration district in another local registration authority area, the local registration authority for a combined district would be the authority in whose area the new or enlarged registration office was situated. It would, therefore, not be a continuing joint function. It would, however, be necessary in any joint scheme to provide that the local registration authority for the combined district should be enabled to recover part of the expenditure from the other authority concerned. This however can and will be done under the provisions of Clause 6 (6). I would invite the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, therefore, not to press this Amendment.

LORD DRUMALBYN

I am quite satisfied with the explanation the noble Lord has given. All I was anxious to do was to ensure that the matter was taken care of in some way or another. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 6, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 7:

Senior and district registrars and other staff 7.—

(8) If a vacancy occurs in the office of district registrar for any registration district the local registration authority shall, if for any reason they are unable to fill the vacancy immediately,—

1. (a) forthwith appoint an interim district registrar, and
2. (b) proceed to fill the vacancy as soon as is reasonably practicable;

and if the local registration authority fail to fill the vacancy within a reasonable time, the Registrar General may require the authority to do so within such period, being not less than twenty-eight days from the date of the giving of the requirement, as may be specified in the requirement, and, if the authority fail to fill the vacancy within that period, the vacancy shall be filled by the Secretary of State on the application of the Registrar-General.

5.30 p.m.

LORD HUGHES

This Amendment, I think, falls to be considered along with Amendments Nos. 10, 11, 12 and 13. They are drafting Amendments. The object is to ensure that the local registration authority notifies the Registrar General of the names of persons appointed to fill vacancies in the post of registrar, under subsection (8) (b) as well as under subsection (1) and subsection (8) (a).

Amendment moved— Page 4, line 27. leave out ("the foregoing subsection or under subsection (8) (a) of").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

I beg to move the next Amendment.

Amendment moved— Page 4, line 32, leave out ("(a) ").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

I beg to move the next Amendment.

Amendment moved— Page 4, line 43. leave out ("the foregoing provisions of").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

I beg to move Amendment No. 12.

Amendment moved— Page 5, line 1, after ("subsection") insert ("or to section 5 of the Local Government Superannuation (Scotland) Act 1937") .—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

I beg to move the next Amendment.

Amendment moved— Page 5, line 3, leave out ("the foregoing provisions of").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

This Amendment and Amendment No. 15, by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, and his noble friends, are intended to do the same thing. The purpose of both Amendments is to make clear that a person appointed by the Secretary of State under subsection (8) will be deemed for all purposes to have been appointed by the local registration authority. He will, for example, be deemed to be an employee of the local registration authority under subsection (6) and be paid by them under subsection (10). I should not care to state that the noble Viscount's Amendment would not do exactly these things, but this is a case where the draftsmen prefer this particular form of words, and, in all humility, I would ask: Who am I to disagree with the draftsmen?

Amendment moved—

Page 5, line 29, at end insert— ("Any person appointed by the Secretary of State under this subsection to fill a vacancy shall be deemed to have been appointed by the local registration authority concerned.").—(Lord Hughes.)

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, can accept the principle of our Amendment. Far be it from me to differ from the advice he has had on the preference of one as against the other. The only thing that does surprise me is that we should have this subsection starting at the beginning of a sentence, which is not the usual thing to happen. This is what my Amendment sought to avoid.

LORD CRAIGTON

Would the noble Lord prefer to accept our Amendment?

LORD HUGHES

As a matter of fact, I have the answer to that, in the sense that I have been told it, but I am afraid I have completely forgotten it.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

This is a drafting Amendment. It deletes words which are made unnecessary because of the definition of "appointment under this section" which it is proposed to insert in subsection (12).

Amendment moved— Page 5, line 33, leave out ("the foregoing provisions of").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

5.32 p.m.

LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (10), after "that authority" to insert, "with the consent of the Registrar General". The noble Lord said: I beg to move this Amendment, which would make subsection (10) read: Any person holding, or deemed to be holding, an appointment under this section and any person employed by virtue of the last foregoing subsection shall receive from the local registration authority such remuneration and allowances as that authority with the consent of the Registrar General may determine.

The point here is that, as I tried to explain on Second Reading, we are setting up something in the nature of a national service and the Registrar General has considerable powers of discipline. He is responsible for the efficiency of the service, and Clause 1 lays down that he shall have power to do all such things as appear to him necessary or expedient for maintaining the utility of the registration service in Scotland. So it would seem to be desirable, with a view to maintaining as close a uniformity of salaries throughout the service as possible, that, where appointments are made, and changes made in the scales of salaries, by particular authorities, the consent of the Registrar General should be sought and obtained.

It seems to us that the best way of maintaining uniformity and fair play as between registrars and officers in one district and another is by providing that the consent of the Registrar General should be obtained. In this way, he would know what was happening and could do everything in his power to keep the scales of salaries in line throughout the service.

Amendment moved— Page 5, line 37, after second ("authority") insert ("with the consent of the Registrar General")—(Lord Drumalbyn.)

LORD HUGHES

I am sorry, but I cannot possibly accept this Amendment, which would be as unacceptable to local authorities as I myself, a former local authority man, find it. It is not the case, as the noble Lord said, that we are setting up a national service. In this Bill we are not setting up any service at all. The service is there, and it is being continued more or less as it is. At the present time, the staff of the registration offices are local government employees and they will continue to be so. The negotiation of a satisfactory salary structure is a matter for normal Whitley negotiating machinery. It would be inappropriate that the application of such rates as may be agreed should be subject to the consent of the Registrar General, particularly as the cost must be borne by the local authorities.

This would be going back to a doctrine which was never very enthusiastically received, when first suggested in relation to something else—namely, that "the gentlemen in Whitehall know best". The substitution of "the gentlemen in Register House" does not necessarily improve it. I doubt very much whether any local authority would accept that they should be allowed to pay only such salaries as were to be approved by a civil servant, however highly placed or highly respected he might be. I may add that a certain civil servant has no desire to have this responsibility thrust upon him. He will, however, be very willing in the future, as he has been in the past, to make available to local authorities any information about workload falling upon registration staffs, if this will assist the employers and staff sides to reach agreement. I do not doubt also that, if any staff feel that a reference to such a work-load would be helpful to them in their negotiations with local authorities, such information will be provided.

So I think the position is that the Registrar General will be helpful to local authorities trying to ensure, what I have no doubt the noble Lords have in mind in this Amendment, that there ought not to be any unfairness between men doing a job under one authority and those doing an identical job under another authority. With the tremendous importance that negotiating machinery has in local authority employment nowadays, the number of cases where there are glaring inequalities between one and the other (although I would not go to the length of saying that they have been entirely eliminated) are not so important as to justify at this stage doing something which I think the local authorities would legitimately resent.

LORD DRUMALBYN

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his explanation of this point. Of course, this is no question of the "gentlemen in Whitehall knowing best". It is just a question of the Registrar General in Edinburgh knowing what is happening throughout Scotland because he is, in a sense, responsible for the service throughout Scotland. It seemed not unreasonable to my noble friends and myself that in those circumstances he should be consulted and, indeed, give his consent to arrangements that were made; and I am sure that, with the kind of co-operation we envisage, such consent would be readily forthcoming. The noble Lord has made it clear that the information that the Registrar has available will be tapped in appropriate circumstances. I think this is what we mainly thought and, in the circumstances, I do not feel it necessary to press the Amendment.

I would, however, just add this. In talking about setting up a national service I perhaps used the wrong word—I accept that. At the same time, there is no doubt that the service that is being taken over has already a certain national flavour; but because of the arrangements under the old Act there was a feeling that there was not enough uniformity, and there was some sense of unfairness, as between one district and another on the question of remuneration. That being so, it seemed desirable to bring this more into line. The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has answered the spirit of what we put forward, and in those circumstances I am happy to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

LORD HUGHES

This is a drafting Amendment, consequential on Amendments already made. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 5, line 48, at end insert (", and 'appointment under this section' means an appointment under subsection (1) or (8) of this section.").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 7, as amended, agreed to.

5.42 p.m.

LORD BURDEN moved, after Clause 7, to insert the following new clause:

Compensation to officers and servants

"—(1) The Secretary of State shall by regulations provide for the payment by a local registration authority, subject to such exceptions or conditions as may be specified in the regulations, of compensation to or in respect of any officer or servant who under the provisions of section 7 (6) of this Act is an employee of that authority and who suffers loss of employment or loss or diminution of emoluments which is attributable to any provision contained in this Act or in a scheme under section 6 of this Act, or anything done in pursuance of this Act or of any such scheme.

(2) Different regulations may be made under this Section 1n relation to different classes of persons.

(3) Regulations made under this section may include provision as to the manner in which and the persons to whom any claim for compensation by virtue of this Section 1s to be made and for the determination of all questions arising under the regulations.

(4) Regulations made under this section shall be made by statutory instrument and shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament"

The noble Lord said: This Amendment has the support of the National and Local Government Officers' Association, which I need hardly mention is the trade union of the staff concerned. On the Second Reading of the Bill I ventured to mention that the principle of compensation where a Public General enactment may result in detriment to employees is well settled. That point was emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, and by several noble Lords opposite. In the circumstances, bearing in mind that the general principle is accepted, I think there is a strong case for compensation being provided for in this Bill.

It would be tedious to go over too many examples where this has been done, but I will quote just a few, as follows: the Rating (Scotland) Act, 1956, Section 4; the Land Drainage Act, 1961, Section 18 (6); the Transport Act, 1962, Section 81; the Local Government Act, 1963, Section 85; the Water Resources Act, 1961, Section 106. Provision is also made for compensation, whenever it is appropriate, in Orders made under the Water Act, 1945, while similar provision (and this comes right home to Scotland) is made in the first two Orders proposed by the Secretary of State under the Water (Scotland) Act, 1946, that Act being for the regionalisation of waters in Scotland.

In the Second Reading debate the Minister mentioned that he had served for a quarter of a century in local government, and it so happens that I am in the same position. I remember the Local Government Act, 1929, which transferred responsibility for the registration of births, marriages and deaths to the county borough councils and county councils. This Act made express provision for compensation to registration officers for loss of office. It would be presumptuous on my part to suggest that the example of English legislation should, or must, be followed by Scotland, but I think I can fairly say that the Scottish officers would be entitled to ask why their English colleagues in similar circumstances had provision for compensation but it is denied to them.

I think this Amendment meets the objections which the Minister raised on Second Reading with regard to compensation. I agree that he answered the points then made without any previous notification that they would be raised, and I know that since then there have been discussions and that there are some difficulties in regard to this matter: for instance, it is suggested that probably the set-up of the work in Scotland differs from what the position was in England before the 1929 Act. While I would readily agree that in some of the cases brought to my notice there are difficulties, on the other hand, where a member of a staff suffers substantial loss through the changed circumstances, provision for compensation should be made.

This clause has been drafted by Parliamentary agents, but it may not be quite in accord with what the Parliamentary draftsmen may require. If the Minister can tell us whether he is prepared to take the problem as a whole and deal with the anomalies, and then submit to your Lordships provision for compensation where a case has been made out, I shall be grateful. The new clause which I have ventured to put down is a standard form which has been accepted in many cases, but there is a case for variation in the standard form owing to the conditions in Scotland not being precisely on all-fours. Neither the trade union concerned nor your Lordships would be prepared to press that side of it, but we feel that the Minister should be prepared to accept, in principle, the question of compensation where a case has been made out and has been accepted. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— After Clause 7, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Burden.)

LORD CRAIGTON

We on this side support the intention of the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Burden. I felt, in listening to the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, on Second Reading that it was not the whole answer, or any part of an answer, against a compensation clause to use the argument, as he did, that we should trust the local authority. As he knows, we trust the local authorities. Nevertheless, it is our duty to ensure that they have the powers, and that those who may be affected have the rights under an Act of Parliament. If this were not so, there would never have been any justification at all for the many compensation clauses that have been inserted in so many Bills of this type of which the noble Lord, Lord Burden, gave us quite a long list.

On the other hand, I must tell the noble Lord that there is one word in his Amendment which I do not like. The first line of his new clause says: The Secretary of State shall by regulations provide … I do not like the word "shall". I think it should be "may". Otherwise, I have no objection to the whole clause. I do not think the Secretary of State should be obliged to make regulations, whether or not anyone is so seriously affected as to need any protection at all. If we make this a permissive clause we can safely leave it to the Secretary of State, to local authorities, to NALGO, and everyone interested, in other words, to the normal democratic processes, to ensure that appropriate regulations are to be drawn up if they are found to be necessary. I appreciate that what I am saying, and indeed the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Burden, may have to be discussed with the local authorities, though personally I feel they would agree to my "may" more quickly than to the noble Lord's "shall".

We on this side, therefore, have two courses open to us, and I now ask the guidance of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes. We could again, on Report, put down the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Burden, altering that one word as I suggest, or if Lord Hughes could give us an assurance that the matter would be discussed with the local authorities, we on this side could fail to support the noble Lord in his Amendment, which would then fall; but we should do this on the understanding that my honourable and right honourable friends in another place would table the revised Amendment at the appropriate time.

5.53 p.m.

BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD

May I ask one question of the noble Lord before he replies? I support the views which have been expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Burden, and also by my noble friend Lord Craigton. Neither of them has mentioned the fact that a great many of these local registrars are part-time. If you have a compensating clause of this kind, I hope that within this clause would also come not only the full-time but the part-time registrars, since there are a great many more part-time than full-time.

LORD CRAIGTON

Subsection (2) of the Amendment covers that part of it.

LORD DRUMALBYN

May I add a word to what my noble friend Lord Craigton has said on this matter?—because something the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said earlier makes me feel that it is even more important that we adopt the line my noble friend Lord Craigton has indicated. If I understood him correctly, the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said at an earlier stage that it was not possible to forecast what changes in boundaries would be made, or what the scope of these changes would be. It seems all the more important, therefore, that powers should be taken in case those changes should be widespread, and such as to require the sort of compensation that the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Burden, envisages.

LORD HUGHES

It will be recollected that, in withdrawing the previous Amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, said that he looked on this Amendment of my noble friend as being a better one. But, of course, he has since qualified that to the extent that he wishes it to be permissive for the Secretary of State, rather than mandatory on him, to make regulations. I must point out that the Amendment moved by my noble friend goes very much further than the previous one. The previous Amendment, which has been withdrawn, made it possible for compensation to be paid, or required compensation to be considered, only where loss of office or loss of emoluments was suffered as a result of alteration in registration districts. That, after all, could be easily demonstrated and ascertained. But the Amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Burden is designed to cover all officers, whether full-time or part-time, who suffer loss of employment or emoluments attributable to any provision of this Bill.

Apart from alterations in registration districts under Clause 6, it might be very difficult to prove that any of the provisions of this Bill had by themselves led to such loss. However, I have no doubt that the intention of my noble friend was really directed to the already ascertained possibility of the effects of alteration of registration districts. But there is the other possibility of the change of the burden of work as a result of changed procedure. That might be another difficulty.

The Government are very sympathetic to the proposal that compensation could be made, and both my noble friend and noble Lords opposite have drawn attention to the fact that this is a principle which Parliament have accepted on numerous occasions. In this case, however, the whole responsibility for implementing the compensation will fall upon the local authorities, and however sympathetic the Government might be I think it would be agreed—and noble Lords on both sides have indicated that they would expect—that before anything of this kind could be done there would have to be consultation with the local authorities. I may say that the representative of the Registrar General had a very full discussion yesterday with representatives of NALGO, and they are not necessarily going to insist on the exact form of words. For instance, they are not prepared necessarily to argue that it is a reasonable thing to bring into the provision part-time registrars, some of whom might handle only two or three registrations in the course of a year. In addition, of course, there is the frequency with which some of these positions change hands, which is another complication.

I would therefore suggest to noble Lords that the proper course would be for the Amendment to be withdrawn on the assurance, which I readily give, that the Registrar General will take up immediately discussions with the local authority associations on this point, although I must add the qualification that it is most unlikely that these consultations with the local authority associations can produce results while the Bill is still in your Lordships' House. I have no doubt, however, that the assurance which I give will be accepted, and the results which come from that consultation will then be available for consideration in another place. There is no desire on the part of Her Majesty's Government to deprive the servants of registration of benefits which they would have got if they had been employed under the terms of other Bills.

There is another point, and perhaps this is also not without value in this connection. There is already, South of the Border, a fairly well-established principle on the subject of compensation for loss of office or loss of remuneration which has not yet got a corresponding position in Scotland. It may well be that what needs to be looked at is not just this, but the wider ramifications of this question of compensation. That, however, need not be a deterrent to doing what is considered to be justice in this particular measure. I would therefore suggest to my noble friend that he may feel able to withdraw the Amendment with what I think is a very full assurance of consideration; and I am quite certain that in that consideration the Registrar General, apart from anything else, will test out the reactions of NALGO to a permissive rather than a mandatory clause.

LORD CRAIGTON

From this side I am quite sure we are satisfied about the assurance. But there are two different kinds of part-time registrars, and there are two different possibilities of hardship. If he is part-time on this work or that work and part-time on other local authority work that is one question. But there are other part-time registrars not doing other local authority work. Can the noble Lord give me an assurance that he will look into the problems of both types of part-time registrars before coming to the fair decision that I know will be arrived at in the end?

LORD HUGHES

I think that perhaps the best thing I can say is that, notwithstanding my reference to the difference between full-time and part-time registrars, the discussions with the local authorities will be on the widest possible basis so that there will be No 1njustice done by seeking to exclude from consultation a whole class because some of them may approximate more to full-time than other part-time colleagues do.

LORD BURDEN

I am grateful to my noble friend for his reply. May I take it that the Government accept in principle that compensation in appropriate cases—I emphasise, in appropriate cases—should be provided for and that active negotiations will take place with the local autho- rities on that point, and that acceptance of that principle will be put to the local authorities by the Government? I take it that was the sense of my noble friend's reply.

LORD HUGHES

That is correct.

LORD BURDEN

In those circumstances, and bearing in mind that so many noble Lords on the other side were involved with me in this discussion, for which I am most grateful, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 8:

Registration offices

8.—

(4) Every local registration authority shall cause to be displayed in a conspicuous position on or near the outside of the main entrance to the registration office for each registration district in their area a notice stating the name of the registration district, the name and surname of the district registrar and the hours fixed for attendance at the office under the last foregoing subsection.

6.5 p.m.

LORD CRAIGTON moved, in subsection (4), after "displayed" to insert: in such characters as to be conveniently read by the public and".

The noble Lord said: This subsection, to which we wish to make a minor Amendment, makes it obligatory for a notice to be displayed outside every registration office. There will be nearly 1,000 of these notices. As a result of this Bill many fine, freshly signed, new notices will go up, and the Act will have been complied with at that time. Some of the notices will, in time, become faded and dirty, and they will be obscured by shrubs; and the Bill is silent about the need for maintenance and visibility.

The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, may say that this is a little Amendment which seeks to secure that something should be done which will in any case be done. But the fact is that for many years, until recently, the notice outside Dover House which told the world that there was the Scottish Office was, believe it or not, illegible from the road. Notices are like our wives; we grow old together, and we do not notice the ravages of time. This is a minor and rather grandmotherly Amendment, but it will, I believe, be appreciated by those who have authority over what one might call the public relations side of the service.

When I put this Amendment down I thought to myself, "The noble Lord will give me an assurance and I will withdraw it". But the more I think of it the less do I see any reason for his rejecting it. Why not give some powers to the person who is responsible for public relations to say, "If you do not have this notice repaired you are breaking the law"? I sincerely hope that some of my noble friends on this side will support me, and that the noble Lord opposite, even if he has in his brief that it ought to be rejected, will change his mind and try to accept something that cannot possibly do any harm. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 6, line 22, after ("displayed") insert the said words.—(Lord Craigton.)

BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD

I rise to support this Amendment because I entirely agree with what my noble friend Lord Craigton has said. It is rather a "King Charles's head" in my case, because I am forever trying to get forms written in legible characters and large print that people can read, and I think that this question of a public notice is of tremendous importance. It should be, in my opinion, clearly and properly written, in proper characters so that it is attractive. I entirely agree with Lord Craigton that if the notice is weathered, which happens when some boards are uncovered and out of doors, it should be replaced by a new one that is perfectly legible.

I think a great many of the difficulties arise because people say, "I didn't know; nobody told me", or "I didn't realise this was the regulation". If they are asked, "Didn't you read the notice board?" they say, "No, I never look at it. It never seems to have anything new on it". This Amendment would greatly strengthen the hand of the local registrars, because people would have their attention drawn to a notice that looked attractive, rather than ancient, or weathered and illegible. I beg the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, who is exceedingly helpful in all these matters, and is conducting this Bill with tremendous care and attention to what we are saying on this side, as well as his own side, to accept this simple Amendment. I think it would definitely help him in every way.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I do not think I can equal the blandishments of the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, but just in case the noble Lord requires the smallest extra push over the edge in order to accept the Amendment, may I say that it is fairly well precedented. When I was having a most momentous battle last summer with some of the noble Lord's friends on my noble friend's Trading Stamps Bill the noble Baroness put forward much the same view as to-day, that notices in general ought not only to be put up to be read but maintained so that they can be read. And that Act stipulates that notices must be posted "in such characters as may be conveniently read". It is, I understand, the formula in the Factories Act, 1961, Section 168 (3), so that the noble Lord will find himself in very good company if his Bill does have this small addition to it.

LORD HUGHES

I am almost persuaded, but if there were one thing to put me off it would be the example which the noble Lord, Lord Craigton put. After all, what happened outside Dover House under the previous Administration is no guidance to us today at all. I suggest that it was deliberate—a defence mechanism. I must not hold these briefs up so high, because it looks to me as if the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, can read as well from the other side of the sheet as I can read from the front of it.

This is not a point upon which I think the Government would wish to "die in the last ditch". The argument against the Amendment is purely the question of local authorities' susceptibility. The feeling is that, if we did this, they might consider that we were doing it just to irritate them, and they might say, "Cannot we be trusted to do anything at all?" Apart from that, there is no reason to resist this proposal. The question is whether or not, at the end of the day, we are likely to have a notice board in an unreadable condition. After all, it depends a great deal upon what is meant by in such characters as to be conveniently read by the public. The argument has been mainly that the boards should be in a new condition and left like that, without further attention, for all time. It is said that they should be repainted from time to time, but the Amendment, in fact, does not refer to maintenance: it says "in such characters". So it might well be that a local authority would put up a new notice board right away, and that somebody will say, "I am terribly short-sighted; but I am a member of the general public, and the fact that this notice is not put up in letters 4 inches high makes it a notice which is not convenient to me".

Although it is not important one way or the other, I should like to say that I find it difficult not to accept the Amendment. But I am quite certain that noble Lords would not wish me to get into trouble on such a small matter as this, and if the noble Lord will withdraw this Amendment at this stage, we will have another look at it. Then, on advice, we will either put it down again at the next stage, or suggest another form of words that would be acceptable. Or thirdly—though I frankly admit that this is the most unlikely course—we could come back with a set or arguments which would persuade all of your Lordships.

LORD CRAIGTON

I am obliged to the noble Lord for his reply. I doubt really whether there is a great deal wrong with this wording. It has already been put into two Bills by Parliamentary draftsmen, and I have never known them make the same mistake twice, let alone a third time. I suggest that the object of the exercise in saying in such characters as to be conveniently read by the public is to meet the point that, generally, the characters or the letters on the notice board cannot be read at all. Therefore the wording is perfectly apt to deal with maintenance as well as with putting up something which any reasonable person could read in the first place. However, on what the noble Lord has said, I am willing at this stage to withdraw the Amendment, and I beg leave so to do.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

LORD HUGHES moved, in subsection (4). to leave out ", the name and surname of the district registrar". The noble Lord said: As it stands, the wording of the Bill here includes "the name and surname of the district registrar". We feel that we have made a mistake in allowing that phraseology to continue. It is really a relic of the 1854 Act which, upon further consideration, we feel serves no useful purpose. In small districts where there may be frequent changes it is just a nuisance. I readily admit that it would serve a purpose in keeping these notices reasonably well maintained, but I think it might give rise to another cause for compensation if somebody could not get the notice board repainted. On the whole, I think it is better that we do without these words. The general public are not at all interested in the name of the registrar. They want to get the job done by the registrar; they want to know where he is, where he can be got in touch with, and they do not care whether his name is "John Smith" or "Tom Macpherson". I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 6, line 25, leave out ", the name and surname of the district registrar").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 8, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 9 to 12 agreed to.

Clause 13:

Particulars of births to be registered.

13.—(1) For every registration district there shall be kept by the district registrar—

1. (a) a register of births, and
2. (b) a register of still-births,

containing such particulars as may be prescribed for them respectively; and the prescribed particulars of the birth of every child born in Scotland shall, subject to the following provisions of this Part of this Act, be registered by the registrar in the relevant register kept for the appropriate district, or, if there are two or more appropriate districts, in the relevant register kept for any one of them.

6.17 p.m.

LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (1), to leave out all words after "registered by the registrar" and to insert instead: in the appropriate district in the relevant register kept for that district.

THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES

I would say here that if Amendment No. 22 is passed I shall not call Amendments Nos. 23 and 24.

LORD DRUMALBYN

We come now to an Amendment which, if taken together with many other Amendments, will dispose of quite a large part of this Marshalled List. The Amendments that I think ought to be taken with this Amendment are Nos. 25, 28, 29, 31, 34, 35 and 36. I would also suggest to your Lordships that we should at the same time consider Amendments Nos. 47 to 50, 52 to 55, 57, and 66 and 67, which have to do with the registration of deaths. Here we are concerned with the registration of births.

The purpose of the first set of Amendments is to maintain the existing Scottish system of the registration of births in the district of birth, and to add to that a system by which notice of the birth may be given at any registration office, from where it will be transmitted to the office in the district of birth. It is to be compared with the system set out in the Bill, where a departure is made from the present system and provision is made for a choice of registration districts in which the birth can be registered. Under Clause 13 (3) the birth may be registered in the registration district in which it took place; secondly, in any other registration district in which either of the parents of the child was ordinarily resident at the time of the birth; and then there is a third provision, to cover the case where a living infant child is found exposed, or the body of a dead infant child is found.

In considering the relative advantages and disadvantages of the two systems proposed, I think we have to consider, for the official discharge of the purposes of the Bill, which is the better system in the interests of the convenience of the public and of administrative efficiency. I think that the convenience of the public ought to come first; and it seems to me that the convenience of the public demands that there should be a choice of places at which notice may be given. I think that what is between us is whether the place at which the notice is given should be, in fact, the place at which the birth is registered. On the face of it, it may be thought that it is more convenient that the birth should be registered at the place where the notice is given; and for that reason the Bill provides that the birth may be registered either in the district of birth or in the district of residence. That is putting it shortly.

On the other hand, cases may quite often arise where the person does not go back to his normal district of residence. There may also be cases where the registration office which is most convenient for the person concerned is not the registration office in the; district of residence but another registration office. Therefore, it seemed to me that, in view of these two cases, the simplest thing for the convenience of the public was that the registration should take place in the district of birth, so that it would be easier for the public to know where to look for registration; there would not be any doubt about that. Secondly, it should be open to anybody to give notice of the registration wherever he happened to be.

It is the case that the system which we are advocating happens already to be applied in England. It may be that the noble Lord will be able to say that the system in England is not working efficiently. It may be he will be able to tell us of snags in the system in England. When one has a fairly well tried system, it is probably better to adopt that rather than a system which has not yet been tried at all. Therefore, the onus is on the noble Lord to prove that the departure he is advocating in the proposals in the Bill is superior to the practice in other parts of the kingdom. Together with that, one has the fact that there is such a thing as a border, a border that people cross, and many people in the areas concerned actually have children on either side of a border. If one had a system the same as that throughout the United Kingdom it would be for the convenience of the public in certain parts of the kingdom.

I do not want to press the case for this beyond what it can bear, but I feel that the onus lies on the noble Lord to show that the system which is already in practice in other parts of the kingdom is unsuitable for Scotland; that it will give bad results in regard to the keeping of records, and that it would be inconvenient for the public in Scotland. If the noble Lord can convince us that this is so, then he will have won the argument and we will withdraw the Amendment. But that onus lies on him; and my noble friends and I felt that it was a smaller departure from existing practice in Scotland to adopt the proposals which we have put down than to adopt the proposals in the Bill. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 8, line 3, leave out lines 3 to 5 and insert the said words.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I should like to support my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn on this Amendment. I would say, in mitigation of the drafting of the various Amendments, that it is not an easy matter to draft a totally different system into a Bill which is drafted in one particular way. If, therefore, the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has found inelegancies which have distressed him, that is the reason for this sad occurrence. Nevertheless, I believe the principle of a declaratory system for births in this clause, and for deaths in another, has a great deal to recommend it.

I would say at the outset to the noble Lord that I am not dealing with this matter in any doctrinaire way. What one imagines your Lordships' House wishes to achieve is the most satisfactory and foolproof way of dealing with this matter, and the most convenient one for the public. My noble friend Lord Drumalbyn has dealt with the convenience of the public. That is of great importance and I would not in any way minimise the matters of which he spoke when dealing with the system in regard to those who live on the borders. Indeed, I have down an Amendment later which specifically covers that particular point. It would be difficult to deal with it although perhaps not impossible if the system at present in the Bill were adopted for Scotland.

In addition to the convenience of the public, there are other criteria. I mentioned them on Second Reading and do not want to go into them at length again. The fact that all births should be registered for the statistical and other purposes of this operation is also very important. There is something, at any rate, to be said for requiring this registration to take place in one definite district, and one district only. As the Bill is now drafted—and I understand the noble Lord has down Amendments which, if this one is not carried, would reduce the number of places where registration could take place—it could be in three different registers. It will then be the duty of the Registrar General, no doubt, from time to time to plough laboriously through all the registers in all the districts of Scotland to see that there has not been a double registration. The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, shakes his head, but there is specific provision made for corrections to be made in the register where there has been a double entry. I cannot see what there is to prevent a double entry from taking place, at any rate by inadvertence. That would be a waste of time and a tiresome thing to occur.

The other thing that must be borne in mind is that the entries should be accurate, and that in some cases the signature of the person who informed the registrar of the birth or death should be available for inspection in due course. The drafting of the Amendments relating to births, No. 36, and to deaths, No. 37, provides, so far as I am able to devise it, for an accurate transcription of the information to take place. What would occur would be that the registrar in the district where the information was given, if it was not the district of birth, would treat the matter in exactly the same way as he would if it were a matter to be registered in his own register, except that he would put it down on a special form. He would ask all the same questions that he would normally ask and would go through the whole process in exactly the same way. He would have to enter the answers on a separate form and at the bottom of the form I envisage that there would appear a note saying, "I declare that the information given above is correct", with room for a signature and for a date. This document would then be transmitted in the post to the registrar in whose district the birth took place, and he would then put it into his own register and keep the form which was sent by the other registrar. I do not know how it is done in England, but I suppose some such system must be in force. It seems no more complicated than the system now contained in the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said on Second Reading that he was not going to fight to the last ditch for one system or another; and nor am I. I should like to hear what arguments the noble Lord has for preferring the system in the Bill to that which I and my noble friends have suggested. This is a matter where the weight of argument must prevail. At the moment I remain to be convinced that the system in the Bill is better than a declaratory one.

LORD HUGHES

I readily accept what the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, said, that in so far as the Bill is seeking to substitute a new system for one which presently exists and which works (and which is different from a system which exists South of the Border and works), the onus is upon me to persuade the Committee that the proposed new system is better for Scotland than the existing one would be; or would be better for Scotland than substituting, not the English system, but an English system superimposed on the registration of deaths in a way which is not carried out in England at present. There is no declaration system for the registration of deaths in England, and I would suggest that the reason why there is no such system at the present time is that the English authorities have been persuaded, as have been the Scottish authorities, that it is not possible satisfactorily to work a system of declarations in relation to deaths.

I am very deliberately not looking at the brief with which I have been provided—not because it is not excellent, because it is, and it may well be that it can put the case better than I can do myself. I am refraining from looking at it for one reason and one reason only, and that is that when this matter was discussed on Second Reading I said that I had no firm ideas at all on this matter, and I was prepared to look at it strictly on its merits. I left the Chamber, saw the Registrar General and his assistants, and said, "Now I want you to go most fully into this matter. Put to me all the pros and cons of both systems, on the basis that I then want to make up my mind which is the better one to adopt. You must do this on the basis that if you come along with only the arguments in favour of what is in the Bill, and I think you are dealing far too lightly with the arguments in favour of the Amendment suggested, then I will not accept what you say. I will send you back to do the exercise all over again."

The result was that over a period they have spent, I should think, at least the equivalent of a full day in getting this information to me. Having done so, I have no hesitation in recommending to your Lordships that what is in the Bill is an improvement on what we have in Scotland, and is an improvement on what there is in England. I should now like to go on, at not too great length, to say why this is so.

First of all, I think the most important consideration, both in the registration of births and in the registration of deaths, should be the convenience to the general public. I felt before I left the House on Second Reading, from the examination that I had previously made, that I should not need a great deal more persuasion that that was the case, but I did not say that to the officials concerned. What I was far from certain about, from what was said on Second Reading, was whether the security arrangements of the new system would be as satisfactory as those achieved by the system of declaration, which concentrated the actual registration in only one place. I shook my head when the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, conjured up the picture of a great deal of extra work being carried out in order to be sure that double registration did not take place or, of course, the contrary—to ensure against no registration taking place. That was a point upon which I wished to be satisfied, and I am completely satisfied that there is no lack of security and that there is No 1ncreased burden of work.

Take the question of a double declaration. If this should take place it would be picked up in the ordinary course of the work which is being done in Register House at the present time. Not just at the end of a year but throughout the whole year, as I understand it, the work of compiling the indices is going on. If there was a registration of a birth in the registration district for, say, Dundee Royal Infirmary, and there was a registration in the registration district of Forfar, showing that a child had been born at a given hour and day and year at a given place, with a mother with the surname of so-and-so and a maiden surname of something else, and two entries for this appeared, they would be picked up on the indexing system. They would then immediately be investigated, because it would be beyond the bounds of normal coincidence that there could be two children with the same name, their mothers having the same name and the same maiden name and even born in the same place at the same time. There is no need to do any extra work at all in order to find that out. So there is security against double registration. And the same thing, of course, applies to registration of deaths.

LORD DRUMALBYN

While what the noble Lord says is, of course, perfectly true, he will be interested to know that it is not beyond the bounds of coincidence. That coincidence has actually happened, as I know from my own experience in the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance.

LORD HUGHES

The same hour, the same minute?

LORD DRUMALBYN

I do not know about the hour.

LORD HUGHES

Even if there is one factor which is different, then the registrar will point and say, "The extent to which they coincide is extraordinary, but here is one element of difference." Notwithstanding that, he would investigate. In all the millions of cases that have gone through the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, I think the noble Lord would be hard-pressed to find two cases like that. Therefore, if we are going to legislate on the provision that perhaps once in twenty years something may happen, then we are going to take on a very heavy task indeed. I hope I have persuaded noble Lords that there is no security risk, and I can assure your Lordships that the system will not add at all to the volume of work in the Registrar General's office. The entry will be picked up in the course of the work which the registrars normally do.

There is the second point, that if a birth takes place in a hospital or a nursing home—and these are where births most regularly take place away from home—the registrar in the district concerned receives particulars. If the registration takes place in the home, the registrar there passes to the registrar in the place of birth a chit, saying that child so-and-so was born—a form would be laid out—and the registrar at the place of birth then crosses it off his list and has nothing to do with it.

It may be said that this involves more work. It involves less work than a system of declaration would involve, because at the place of declaration the registrar would have to take all the particulars just as if he were going to enter them into a register. The only difference is that he would not be entering them into a register. He would be passing them on to someone else who would then enter them into a register. So from the point of view of the work that is going to be undertaken, there is less work to be undertaken by two registrars under the system in the Bill, than would be involved in the system of declaration. That is not surprising, because, after all, we are not going to throw our national characteristics overboard on a matter like registration. If we can devise a system where registration can be done at less expense than in England, then, obviously, that is the one we shall use. If it accomplishes the same purpose, then so much the better. I am persuaded that there is less work.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I wonder whether I may ask the noble Lord one other question. Under the noble Lord's system, the registrar in the district where the hospital is situated has a list of the children who were born, or of their parents. When the registrar of another district sends him in a chit, as the noble Lord said, to say, "I have registered this child", the registrar in the birth district crosses it off. What happens if no registrar sends him in a chit? How does he find out in which district the mother lived? Does he have some reference by which he will know which registrar he has to contact? This is a point which I do not understand at the moment.

LORD HUGHES

To endeavour to follow up a birth which has not been registered, he will have the same information at his disposal as he has at the present time. He will therefore be in a position no different from what he is in now, and he would take exactly the same steps as he does at the present time. If in the course of taking these steps he finds that the answer is that his opposite number has omitted to notify him, then he will delete the entry. If there has been no such other registration then he will take exactly the same steps as he does at the present time.

Now we come to the question of the convenience of the public. I do not think it will surprise noble Lords to hear that this proposal arose in the first instance from the representations of registrars. They themselves have been pressed from time to time about the inconvenience of the present system for people who live remote from a hospital, or arrive at a hospital and get the information and then find that the registrar's office is closed and are faced with the possibility of staying overnight in a place where perhaps they have no friends and where they are not in a position to meet the expense of staying overnight, or have to go home and then face the cost of another journey the next day. The declaration would remove that necessity. In so far as declarations of births are concerned, they would meet many of the difficulties of the present system. We come, however, to the registration of deaths, and the declaration system just will not work, for the simple reason that when a person goes along to register a death he wishes to receive the death certificate which is necessary before he can proceed to make his arrangements.

Perhaps I may quote an example of what could take place under the system of declaration. The case is an actual case which arose two years ago when a minister in Strathy on the North coast of Sutherland wrote to the Secretary of State, Mr. Michael Noble, describing some cases of hardship in getting registrations made elsewhere. He mentioned one case of a man whom he took to Inverness, where his mother was dying in hospital. There was a post-mortem after her death and they obtained the medical certificate of death just in time to register the death before the office closed, otherwise they would have had to stay another night in Inverness. Suppose there had been a declaration system in this case. If we assume the man's mother died on Tuesday, the son would go to the registrar at Strathy on the Wednesday and the registrar would post the registration form that same day, on the Wednesday. As the mail in that part of the country is lifted between 8 and 9 o'clock each day it could not proceed upon its way until the Thursday, arriving in Inverness on the afternoon of Thursday and being delivered to the registrar on the Friday. He could not get it on the Thursday because it would have been delayed sufficiently long at Dingwall to prevent that.

The Amendment suggests that the registrar should be given one working day. That is a safeguard because the registrar could not possibly undertake to deal with it the same day. That takes us to Monday. Again because of the postal arrangements there would be the delay of a day and it would not be received in Strathy until the Wednesday—eight days after the death occurred, and they would still be retaining the body.

Under the system embodied in the Bill the son could have registered the death in Strathy on the day after it took place and got the certificate there and then. This is a system which is devised to give the best possible convenience to the public in a country where there are many remote districts. I would be the first to admit that the case I have quoted could be regarded as exaggerated, but I regret to say it could not be treated as an isolated case. There are many other districts in remote parts of Scotland where the period would be as long or even longer. There would be no difficulty in finding scores, hundreds, thousands of cases where the delay would be three, four or five days under a declaration system. Therefore, if we accepted the declaration system we should be failing to fulfil the primary objective of getting a system which provides the maximum of convenience to the general public.

This is something for which people have been waiting for a very long time. I may say that the reply of the previous Secretary of State to the minister from Strathy was that the officers in the registration department had been working for some time on proposals for amending legislation and he had no doubt that when this emerged in final form a situation such as the minister had drawn to his attention would no longer be possible. If we accept the declaration system for deaths the man is no better off, and in order to get the results in the time in which it would be necessary to get them he would have no option but to proceed to Inverness to make the registration of death at the registrar's office there and might be faced with an expense which he would be unable to meet. Noble Lords will notice that the letter started off on the basis that the minister had taken the son to Inverness in his car and they were fortunate to be able to complete the registration on the same day. On that basis, therefore, I beg noble Lords to accept that I have approached this in exactly the same way as they have done, seeking to find which system would provide the best possible results over the whole field.

If we had been arguing on births only I doubt whether there would have been a great deal between us one way or the other. From that point of view I would not wish to say with absolute certainty that what we are doing is necessarily better than what is being accomplished by the declaration system in England and Wales at the present time. I believe it is marginally better, but it is only so marginally better that it might not have justified making the experiment in a field where changes in the law take place only at very infrequent intervals. But when to the fact that at least on births it is as good for the public and from a security point of view as the system in England and Wales, we add that we can give to the public the identical system for deaths, I would suggest to your Lordships that we may well be not only setting the pattern of what happens in Scotland but giving some indications to our friends South of the Border that they may well find, after we have operated it for a number of years, that it is worth their while to look at, because I am quite certain that the registration of deaths presents problems in remote areas of England and Wales just as acute as the problems we have in Scotland.

For these reasons I ask noble Lords most sincerely not to press this series of Amendments, but to accept what is in the Bill as providing the best possible foreseeable results for the people of Scotland, combined with reasonable conditions for the registrars, particularly if we deal with the compensation section, and with no hazard at all to security and no possibility of greater expenditure than under the alternative system.

LORD DRUMALBYN

The noble Lord has met with characteristic reasonableness the arguments which we put up.

He has treated the issue as one in which we should endeavour to find a single system which will work over the whole field. Of course that is something which does not exist in England, and it may be he is right in foreseeing that once we have shown there can be a workable system it will cover the whole field better than having different systems for births and deaths. I would myself have said that, so far as the births are concerned, the advantages did lie with the system that we have been advocating: but, given the argument which the noble Lord has put forward, that this should apply over the whole field; given the fact that we also put forward extending the same proposals to cover deaths; and given, also, the fact that he has shown that the system he is proposing has advantages over the system we have been proposing so far as deaths are concerned, I feel that my noble friends would agree with me that the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has convinced the Committee that the system he is putting forward is the better of the two, taken all round. For that reason, if my noble friends will agree, I would ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

6.51 p.m.

LORD HUGHES had given Notice of an Amendment in subsection (1), to leave out "or more". The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 23 is a drafting Amendment and it is consequent upon a later Amendment, Amendment No. 32, which will be moved in due course by the noble Lord, Lord Balerno. This places me in a bit of a difficulty, because we have a number of Amendments to be moved and accepted, and I do not think I can ask the Committee to accept these without explaining why. If I were to do that, I should be taking away from the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, the right to explain his Amendment. I should prefer it, if it suits the convenience of the Committee, that we should regard these other Amendments as being consequent on No. 32, taking them all together, and that I should resume my seat. Then the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, could explain why he wants us to accept No. 32, and then I would formally move the consequential ones which precede it.

LORD BALERNO

The Bill as it stands allows the registration of a normal birth either in the registration district in which the child is born or where either of the parents is living. It therefore provides for three places. The point that I want to make is that, both for simplicity and to avoid confusion, there should be only two places. The reason is because the mother is the operative person at the moment of the birth and immediately thereafter. In fact, she is the operative person who takes over the major rô le immediately after conception of the child. Now it is right that, for convenience, it should be possible for the alternative place of birth to be where the mother is domiciled, where she goes immediately after the birth of the child, but under the Bill as it now stands it is possible for the father to register the birth.

Now the father may have gone away quite a distance. To take a precise case, the birth might take place in an Edinburgh hospital; the mother might then return to her home in Midlothian; and, shortly after (if, indeed, not earlier), the father might be up in Lerwick. And, regardless of whether he is the father of a legitimate or an illegitimate child, he is put into a position of being able to register the birth and to name the child. He may or may not have seen the child. This may well lead to unwarrantable confusion; and it is for that reason that I have set down my Amendment No. 32.

LORD CRAIGTON

I must thank my noble friend for raising this point and the noble Lord opposite for accepting it. I think this is the most substantial Amendment on the Order Paper, and I am very glad that the Government, at what must be for them a comparatively late hour, have realised that the idea of my noble friend is the right one. His Amendment meets to a considerable extent the point I made on Second Reading, in that the number of districts in which a search may be made will be, by his Amendment, reduced to two. This is a minor objection, which will now be overcome, compared with the probable confusion and duplication that the Amendment set down by the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, will succeed in avoiding; and I am very grateful, again, to the Government for their view.

LORD HUGHES

I think the procedure which I followed indicated that I was going to accept this Amendment. All I want to say is that we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, for raising this point. As soon as he had spoken to it on Second Reading, we were convinced that in fact he was suggesting an improvement of the Bill. I would therefore formally move Amendment No. 23.

Amendment moved— Page 8, line 4, leave out ("or more").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 8, line 5, leave out ("any one") and insert ("either").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 8, line 9, leave out ("or more").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 8, line 10, leave out ("any one") and insert "either").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

This is a drafting Amendment. It is desirable because the reference back is appropriate—and, indeed, necessary—to subsection (1) as well as to subsection (2). I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 8, line 16, leave out ("last foregoing subsection") and insert ("foregoing subsections").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD BALERNO

I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 8, line 21, leave out ("either of the parents") and insert ("the mother").—(Lord Balerno.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS moved to add to Clause 13: () Where a child is born (whether within or out of Scotland) in a ship, aircraft or land vehicle in the course of a journey, and that child is brought by such ship, aircraft or land vehicle to any place in Scotland, the birth shall, unless the Registrar General otherwise directs, be deemed for the purposes of this section to have occurred at that place.")

The noble Viscount said: I think that the point covered here must be an omission from the Bill. There is a provision later on that where somebody dies (as it were) in transit, the place where he is deemed to have died is, for the purposes of registration, where he ends up, so long as that place is in Scotland. I think there must be equivalent occasions when people are born in transit, and there should be something in the nature of my Amendment to deal with the situation. I therefore beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 8, line 28, at end insert the said subsection.—(Viscount Colville of Culross.)

LORD HUGHES

I am quite happy to accept the Amendment.

Clause 13, as amended, agreed to.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

This Amendment is on a slightly different point; it deals with double registration, and I think it is very little more than a drafting point. At line 10 on page 9 of the Bill there is a provision which prevents by law the registration in more than one register of any birth, and I think the provisions in Clause 13 also are apt to suggest that this might occur if it were not for Clause 14 (3). I think there might well be a reference to Clause 13 when we come to the provisions of Clause 14 (3). I do not think it is any more than drafting and I do not suppose it is crucial if I am wrong. But I should like to know whether the noble Lord thinks there is a point here. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 9, line 10, after ("this") insert ("or the foregoing").—(Viscount Colville of Culross.)

LORD HUGHES

This is a drafting Amendment, and I think it helpful to have it in and I am happy to accept it.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

7.2 p.m.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS moved to add to Clause 14: () Where any child is born in England to parents who are at the time of such birth ordinarily resident in Scotland, the mother or father or any person qualified to give information concerning such birth by virtue of this section may give such information to and sign a declaration in the presence of the registrar for any registration district in Scotland in accordance with the provisions of subsection () of this section, and the registrar shall forthwith send the information and declaration to the registrar for the sub-district in England in which the birth took place, and such information and declaration together shall be deemed to be a declaration within the meaning of section 9 of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 and shall be dealt with and have effect accordingly.

The noble Viscount said: This is a point about which I mind a little, and I hope the noble Lord can give assistance on it. Tf this Bill goes through, as I now think it is going to, not on a declaratory system for Scotland but one where the birth may be registered either at the place of birth or in the mother's district of residence, it will be possible, quite conveniently, to register a birth in Scotland; and it will be possible, quite conveniently, to register a birth in England because there you would have the declaratory system whereby you could go to any register office in any sub-district and tell the registrar about it and he would transmit the information to the registrar of the place of birth. The people who are going to be squeezed between the upper and nether millstones are those who live on the Borders and have children in a different country from that in which they would normally be resident. I understand that neither the English Act of 1953 nor this Bill will cover these unfortunate people.

As we are, after all, as the noble Lord has said, dealing chiefly with the public convenience, I wonder whether some such suggestion as I have made in this Amendment might be useful to deal with what must be an obvious inconvenience. It cannot be in the form of this Amendment, clearly, because this was dependent on the general form of my previous drafting of Amendment 36. Nevertheless, I think it would not be impossible to devise something to get over this difficulty, something which would—and this would be suitable for a Scottish Bill—allow a person normally resident in Scotland but whose child is born in England to tell the registrar at the place of residence, where the mother normally lives, the details that are required, and for that registrar to pass it on to his English colleague over the Border; and for the matter then to be dealt with under English law as if a declaration had been made in some other English sub-district. I hope it is not too complicated. There must be cases of this sort and we ought to take some account of the tiresome differences between Scottish and English law and see whether something can be done to overcome them. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 9, line 17, at end insert the said subsection.—(Viscount Colville of Culross.)

BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD

May I support this Amendment? I live near the Border; and these cases of children with Scottish parents being born either in Newcastle or in Carlisle do happen, and I think it would be very much to the convenience and desire of the parents that there should not be this difficulty if you are born in England although you are Scottish. I hope the noble Lord will do something in this connection.

LORD DRUMALBYN

This was also a point that I mentioned in my Second Reading speech. We have found in looking into it that it would be difficult for us in this Bill to help those English parents whose children are born in Scotland. While that may be so, we are primarily concerned with those children born in England with Scottish parents; and it seems to me that because we cannot help English parents we should not stop trying to help those Scottish parents whose children are born in England. I think the balance is rather greater. I was at one time a Member for Dumfries and I was aware that a great many of my constituents had children born in Carlisle. So it would be desirable if we could have some arrangement of this kind to prevent Scottish parents from having to go quite a considerable distance, sometimes to Carlisle, to make a registration. As we are introducing a system which is designed to help primarily those people who live in Scotland, I think we should try to do something of this character, even if it may cause a little inconvenience to another place.

LORD HUGHES

I should have liked to accept this Amendment; but I cannot because of the administrative difficulties. I think it would be an exaggeration to say "administrative impossibilities", but there are very extreme administrative difficulties that it would cause. There are a comparatively small number of people involved. We have taken up the figures. There were only 65 children born to Berwickshire parents in Berwick-on-Tweed in 1963. This is the last year for which we can give up-to-date figures. The number in Dumfriesshire born in Carlisle is probably much smaller—though we do not have the figures—as there is a maternity hospital at Dumfries. When one remembers that there are over 100,000 births in Scotland and over 800,000 in England and Wales, this, of course, is a minute number by comparison.

Let us look at what we should have to do if the Amendment were accepted. We cannot say this would be applicable only to parents living in Berwickshire or Dumfriesshire. There could be a variety of other circumstances in which it might well be possible for somebody who lived in the Shetlands and who had a child born across the Border and wished to have this declaration system applied. In order to make it possible of implementation we must make declaration forms available to every one of the registration districts throughout the whole of Scotland—and there are 950 of these. It would be very confusing to them, because many of them would have these forms and would have no occasion to use them from one decade to another. In the odd case, when somebody wanted one of them, they would not know where to find the "blasted" thing. I suppose that was an unparliamentary expression; but, there, I have made history!

There are 1,500 registration districts on the English side of the Border, and each of these would require instructions to accept a declaration form from Scotland, which would not necessarily be the same as the forms they have (though it might be possible to make them the same). Copies would have to be kept in every one of the 1,500 registration districts, and the arrangement would require statutory authority covering both countries. The two Registrars General have been in consultation about this proposal and they are of the view that this would be a matter for legislation in England and Wales because the births have taken place in England and will be registered there.

I must confess that, of all that has been said about this question, this argument has convinced me least of all; because if we can make the most complicated alterations in law and then stick on one clause and fourteen Schedules to make it applicable to Scotland, it does not seem to me that to do the reverse process, for once in a while, need necessarily be regarded as obstructive.

But there is more to it than just being awkward about it; and it is critical here that the legislative provisions would require an amendment of English law—which, of course, we are not really in a position to do—unless it were accepted that we were to do it in this particular way. I rest my case, not on the impossibility of altering English law in this Bill of our own (because while it may not be the best way to do it, it can be done), but on the fact that we should have to go through all this cumbersome procedure in order to deal with something like 100 cases in the course of a year. Even though the number is so small, I should not have resisted it if it could be accomplished with any sort of reasonable machinery, but to go to all this extraordinary bother for this comparatively small number and in an area where the districts are not very difficult is the reverse of reasonable. It would involve the Registrar General and myself starting a battle with the Registrar General in England in order to get his agreement, which would mean his enlisting on his side the English cohorts, and I do not think the game is worth the candle.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I am grateful to the noble Lord for the trouble he has taken to look into this problem. It is apparent that there would be a great deal of trouble involved. However, may I throw out one suggestion? This will go on for ever. If, eventually, an English Bill were introduced which would produce a system precisely the same as that in the present Bill, we should then discover that it was not possible in that Bill to do anything about making reciprocal arrangements with Scotland, because there was not a Scottish Bill before the House, notwithstanding the fact that at that stage the same forms would be used in both countries. Would it not be possible to take power in this Bill, by regulation if necessary, to allow the Secretary of State to put into operation some reciprocal arrangement at a suitable time? I think that would save a great deal of extra trouble. I believe that there is a lack of machinery for dealing with matters that fall half in England and half in Scotland. If we took the trouble to do something about it in this Bill, it would be taking a step forward to providing us with a solution to the difficulty.

LORD HUGHES

The noble Lord has been so reasonable all along that I should be less than fair if I did not say that I would look at this. I think it is something that ought to be looked at. If there is a way of removing hardship for a remnant of the 100, then we should do what we can and not accept the situation that there is no remedy for them this side of time.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 14, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 15 agreed to.

Clause 16 [Registrar's power to require information concerning birth to be given]:

On Question, whether Clause 16 shall stand part of the Bill?

LORD DRUMALBYN

I am not certain that this raises any new point, but I should be grateful if I could have an explanation of what exactly happens. It could easily happen that, the mother or father not having given notice, the people mentioned in Clause 14 (2) would then be called upon by the registrar in the district of birth to give the information required and to attend at the office of the registrar in the district of birth. These people may have to come a long way—for instance, from Lerwick, which the noble Lord mentioned.

Under Clause 16 (3), if the person who was invited to attend the registry office does not do so, then the registrar may apply to the sheriff, and if the person invited to attend does not do so without reasonable cause, the sheriff may make an order ordering him to attend. I should like to be satisfied that an opportunity to state that "reasonable cause" is given by the registrar, when he invites one of the people mentioned in Clause 14 (2) to attend. For instance, he may invite somebody who, although a relative or perhaps the owner of the premises, in fact had no knowledge of the birth.

Again, is it open to a person who is summoned to attend in this way to give as a reasonable cause the expense of so doing? If that is regarded as a reasonable cause, would it not be desirable to specify it in the Bill? These are practical points which I think it would be as well to explore from the point of view of the convenience of citizens who may not be closely connected with the birth, but may be the informants which the registrar happens to choose as the source of information, in default of the parents giving that information.

LORD HUGHES

I am sure that the noble Lord will not expect me to provide him with answers to these points at this time. I have my own ideas on what they may be, but I could land on the wrong ones. With the permission of the noble Lord and of the Committee, I will make inquiries and write to the noble Lord in ample time to allow him, if he does not feel that the answers meet his points fully, the opportunity of putting down Amendments at a later stage.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I imagine that the same would apply to deaths and that the noble Lord will consider the points in that regard.

LORD HUGHES

Exactly.

LORD DRUMALBYN

I am grateful to the noble Lord and will await his explanation.

On Question, Clause 16 agreed to.

Clause 17 agreed to.

Clause 18. [Births of Illegitimate Children.]

LORD HUGHES

This is a drafting Amendment. "Name" standing by itself, is defined in Clause 55 as "Christian name or forename". A clear distinction between "name" and "surname" is necessary here for the sake of clarity, particularly as this distinction is made in other parts of the Bill. Such a distinction is essential for the provisions relating to changes of names and surnames as set out in Clause 43. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 11, line 9, after ("name") insert ("and surname").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

7.20 p.m.

LORD HUGHES moved in subsection (1) (b) (i) to leave out "statutory". The noble Lord said: I would suggest that the next Amendment and Nos. 42 and 43 hang together. Their purpose is to simplify the procedure to be followed by the mother when registering the birth of an illegitimate child. It is neither necessary nor desirable to subject the mother to the trouble of making a statutory declaration because her declaration is only of value if it is supported by a statutory declaration made by the person whom she claims to be the father of her child. Instead of requiring a statutory declaration, it is proposed to prescribe a form, for completion by the mother before the district registrar, incorporating a solemn declaration about the paternity of the child. This declaration would normally be made by the mother when she attended at the registrar's office to have the birth registered. In essence, the declaration would be on similar lines to that to be made by the father, except that in the father's case his declaration would be made before a justice of the peace or a notary public in accordance with the provisions of the Statutory Declarations Act, 1835. If I remember rightly, Amendment No. 44 is on the same point.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

Part of the point.

LORD DRUMALBYN

Could the noble Lord make clear why the declaration to be made by the mother is to be different from the declaration to be made by the father?

LORD HUGHES

It is in order that she may be able to do it at the registrar's office with the minimum of inconvenience to herself. The alternative is that the registrar should be entitled to take a statutory declaration. For that purpose, the suggestion of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, who I think is to move the Amendment, is that he should be added to those given in the list under the Statutory Declarations Act. The objection to that is that he would not be included in the statutory list only for the purposes of registration, but if he were added to the list would be entitled to act over the whole field in the same way as everyone else. That is the advice I am given. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 11, line 19, leave out ("statutory").—(Lord Hughes.)

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I am obliged to the noble Lord for going half the way on this, but I am not quite certain that I can go with him even on this half. Perhaps I may deal with his Amendment before coming on to the points under Amendment No. 44. I very much doubt whether in all cases, if there is magic in a statutory declaration by a father that he is the father of the child, there is not also an equal magic in the declaration by the mother that that man is the father which should not be observed as well. I cannot believe that if there is any significance at all—and I imagine there must be—in the distinction between a statutory and a prescribed declaration there is any justification for this difference. I believe that if the mother is going to be put on oath, and the father is going to be put on oath, then there is probably the chance of the truth coming out. But, on the other hand, there is no reason why the mother should be released from her oath. On the contrary, it is probable that in these cases it is essential that they should both be made to swear as secure an oath as possible.

This is precisely what I have proposed should be done in Amendment No.44, and the drafting is probably here at fault. The initial words of the subSection 1 propose to insert are: "For the purposes of this section". This was intended to cover both the provision that the statutory declaration would be taken and received by the registrar, and also his insertion on the list in the 1835 Act. He was only to go on that list for the purposes of this section. It was certainly intended that the drafting should make this clear, and I am sorry it is not so. I wonder whether the noble Lord might not think about this matter a little further, because I consider there is something to be said for their both taking the same sort of oath.

LORD HUGHES

Obviously I must look at the matter again, but, on the basis of the information I have been given, the effect of the Amendment would be that the registrar would appear as one of those authorised to administer oaths, and it would be over the whole field: that there would not appear to be the possibility of putting in registrars for the purposes only of the registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths (Scotland) Act. If it is possible so to put it in in that form, then obviously there is merit in what is suggested, because it will accomplish for the mother precisely what we seek to accomplish. We wanted to meet the noble Viscount's point, and we thought this was a way to deal with it without getting involved in the statutory declaration procedure. As it stands at the moment, it may well be sufficient embarrassment to the mother that she has to disclose this to the registrar, without having to go through the double embarrassment of disclosing it to another party, a justice of the peace or a notary public. We wanted to meet that point and have her do it only once.

The reason why we were not insisting on its being, a statutory declaration was because it is of no value unless a similar statutory declaration is made by the father admitting paternity. We did not see that there was any need to insist on the mother going through the full formality. As I have said, it is of no value unless backed up by the other declaration. But I am prepared to look again at the possibility of its being done in the way suggested by the noble Viscount, if only in the interests of tidiness. I will communicate with the noble Viscount before the next stage of the Bill.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

May I add this to save time? I need not then speak on Amendment No. 44. Although I hold no brief for the putative father of the illegitimate child, I suppose there is something to be said for his not having to go through the process of swearing it before the justice of the peace as well as declaring it to the registrar. I think it would not necessarily be improper to make the registrar, for this purpose only, a person capable of taking an oath; I accent that. When one thinks of the number of people capable of administering oaths, at public inquiries and so on, I think the status of the registrar would be such as to make him suitable to receive a statutory declaration. In those circumstances, the noble Lord might like to consider that, as well.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 11, line 19, after ("declaration") insert ("in the prescribed form").

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 11, line 33. leave out ("statutory").—(Lord Hughes.)

LORD DRUMALBYN

My noble friend Lord Colville of Culross and I have worked together on this; it is my point, and his drafting. May I just say this? I take it that we are agreeing to these Amendments, subject to the reexamination which the noble Lord is to make of the whole subject, and without prejudice to doing what our Amendment was intended to do, and would I think have done if in the last few words it had said, "for the purposes of Section 18" after "the registrar of the registration district in Scotland". Could the noble Lord reassure us on the point that these Amendments are made without prejudice.

LORD HUGHES

Precisely.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

I beg to move Amendment No. 43.

Amendment moved— Page 11, line 33, after ("declaration") insert ("in the prescribed form").—(Lord Hughes)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 18, as amended, agreed to.

[The Sitting was suspended at half-past seven, and resumed at half-past eight]

Clause 19 [Free abbreviated certificate of birth]:

LORD BALERNO moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "an abbreviated" and insert "a". The noble Lord said: The existing situation is that a full and complete certificate of birth is issued free. That is what happens at present. For very good reasons, Scotland some thirty years ago pioneered the way in the matter of an abbreviated certificate, which records only the facts of birth and not the names of the parents. This has been of great value to those persons of illegitimate birth and to those whose conception preceded wedlock. As I see it, the purpose of the Bill as it stands is to increase that value still further by ensuring that the abbreviated certificate becomes normal and not the exception.

I am advised by the Association of Registrars in Scotland that the main object of the introduction of the abbreviated form has already been achieved. It is now used sufficiently by all manner of persons, in a wide variety of circumstances, and in consequence has already lost the unfortunate significance that was at the outset commonly attributed to it. It has in fact already fulfilled the reason for its introduction. On the other hand, surely every child has a primary right to a full certificate, and this should not be dependent upon whether the father can spare the price of a drink at the time he registers the birth. I assure your Lordships, speaking from experience, that the father both merits and requires a drink in such circumstances. Moreover, it is customary in many parts of Scotland for the minister to record on the birth certificate the details of baptism.

In their present form, such certificates are much cherished over many generations. There is also the fact that to the registration service itself the issue of a full certificate is of considerable value as a means of securing complete records of subsequent events, and I am informed by the Association of Registrars that the production of the full certificate greatly facilitates the completeness of the records of marriage; and this is even more true in the case of death certificates.

I would further draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that, if the Bill is not amended in this way, it will be presumed that one's parents are guilty unless they invest 5s. 3d. to prove their innocence. Surely this cannot be right. The only other case of which I know where the onus is on the accused to prove his innocence, and where he is presumed guilty until he does so, is in the case of the adulteration of milk—in an Act going back, I think, to 1918. Adultery also enters into the point we are presently discussing, and I venture to suggest that if your Lordships leave the Bill as it stands, we shall be guilty of departing from a cardinal freedom of a Scot, that a man is presumed innocent until he is proven otherwise, and surely he ought not to have to pay money in order to prove his innocence. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 12, line 9, leave out ("an abbreviated") and insert ("a").—(Lord Balerno.)

LORD CRAIGTON

There are no half-measures about my noble friend Lord Balerno; he either hits the bullseye or misses the target altogether. He had my wholehearted support in his last Amendment, but I must tell him that on this one, for the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, on Second Reading, he gets from me no support at all.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I must agree with my noble friend Lord Craigton. I think the question of the guilt or innocence of the parents, which was raised by my noble friend Lord Balerno has given away his whole case. If there is any suggestion in his mind that the abbreviated certificate should imply anything even remotely improper as to the birth, then his Amendment is unacceptable and the whole object of the proposal in the Bill is justified up to the hilt. I therefore oppose the Amendment.

LORD HUGHES

What the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, has just said makes me feel that I must be beginning to think as a lawyer, because I was about to use the same words. I will therefore let my objections rest on what has been said and invite your Lordships not to accept the Amendment.

LORD BALERNO

In view of the arguments adduced, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 19 agreed to.

Clause 20 [Re-registration in certain cases]:

8.37 p.m.

LORD HUGHES

The object of this Amendment is to provide an opportunity, in certain cases, for persons whose birth entry implies that they were foundling children, to have the entry re-registered. Under Clause 15 (2) a foundling child may have a date of birth entered in the birth register if a registered medical practitioner gives a certificate showing an approximate date of birth. If no such certificate has been obtained before the registration of the birth, the birth entry will show only the date on which the child was found. In addition, as Clause 15 (2) applies only to entries made from the date of commencement of the provisions of the Bill, the many entries at present standing in the register showing a date of finding in place of a date of birth will be unaffected. It seems right, therefore, to make it possible for such entries to be re-registered. This may occur, for example, where the mother is subsequently traced and provides the correct particulars relating to the birth, or where a doctor gives a certificate of the type required under Clause 15 (2) after registration has been effected. I think the motive is a good one and I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 12, line 21, at end insert— ("() the entry relating to him in the register of births has been so made as to imply that he was found exposed, or").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to. Clause 20, as amended, agreed to. Clause 21 agreed to.

Clause 22 [Particulars of deaths to be registered]:

LORD HUGHES

This is a drafting Amendment. It is desirable because the reference back is appropriate and necessary to subsection (1) as well as to subsection (2). I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 14, line 22, leave out "(last foregoing subsection") and insert ("foregoing subsections").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question Amendment agreed to.

Clause 22, as amended agreed to.

Clause 23 [Duty to give information of particulars of death]:

LORD CRAIGTON

This Amendment is no more than a simplification in drafting. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 15, line 5, leave out ("the prescribed period") and insert ("eight days, or such other period, not being less than three days, as may be prescribed".—(Lord Craigton.)

LORD HUGHES

I am very happy to accept this Amendment.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD CRAIGTON

This Amendment is a link with Amendment No. 56 and is merely a drafting simplification.

Amendment moved. Page 15, line 15, leave out lines 15 to 17.—(Lord Craigton.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

This Amendment is on the same drafting point that I raised on Clause 14, and I hope that the noble Lord will equally be able to accept it. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 15. line 18, after ("this") insert ("or the last foregoing").—(Viscount Colville of Culross.)

LORD HUGHES

Yes, this is accepted.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 23, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 24 [Certificate of cause of death]:

LORD CRAIGTON

Amendment No. 60 is a drafting Amendment. I will not move it because the noble Lord has put down an Amendment which is a drafting improvement upon my drafting improvement.

LORD HUGHES

This is a drafting Amendment similar to the other ones, and just keeping the same form of wording as is otherwise used. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 15, line 30, leave out ("the prescribed period") and insert ("seven days, or such other period, not being less than two days, as may be prescribed,").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I beg to move Amendment No. 62.

Amendment moved— Page 15, line 40, leave out lines 40 to 42.—(Viscount Colville of Culross.)

LORD HUGHES

I accept this Amendment.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD CRAIGTON

This is an Amendment which was in the mind of my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn. He is not here, but in saying that I do not wish to move it. I should like on his behalf to leave him free to put it down at another stage, should he wish to do so after further consultation with the noble Lord. The Amendment is not moved.

Clause 24, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 25 [Registrar's power to require information concerning death to be given]:

LORD CRAIGTON

Again, I ask leave not to move Amendment No. 64, because once again the noble Lord has a drafting improvement upon my drafting improvement.

LORD HUGHES

I move this Amendment formally. It is the Amendment to which the noble Lord has referred.

Amendment moved— Page 16, line 9, leave out ("the prescribed period") and insert ("eight days, or such other period, not being less than three days, as may be prescribed,").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 25, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 26 agreed to. Clause 27 agreed to.

Clause 28 [Intimation of certain deaths by registrar to Procurator-Fiscal and vice-versa]:

LORD HUGHES

This is a drafting Amendment in the interests of consistency. The phrase "cause to be made" or phrases of similar import appear elsewhere in the Bill, and it is desirable that we should stick to the same form of words here. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 18, line 1, leave out ("make") and insert ("cause to be made").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

8.45 p.m.

LORD HUGHES moved, in subsection (2), to leave out the words after "the death" down to and including "committed", and insert: the registrar would, if he had knowledge thereof, be required to communicate to him".

The noble Lord said: This is a drafting Amendment but it is rather an interesting one so perhaps I should say a word or two about it. The types of deaths which the registrar, in accordance with directions or instructions given by the Registrar General, reports to the procurator-fiscal, will, generally speaking, be deaths which might be due to unexplained causes, deaths due to accident or violence and deaths in circumstances giving rise to suspicion. The instructions to registrars will, in fact, elaborate on the types of death which are to be reported, and a list of types of deaths to be reported will be agreed between the Registrar General and the Crown Office.

Such deaths, if notified to the procurator fiscal by someone other than the registrar, must be reported by the procurator fiscal to trie registrar under Clause 28 (2), to ensure that the registrar is made aware of the death so that he can take steps to have it registered. It is important to widen the scope of Clause 28 (2) as proposed by this Amendment because, as it stands, the procurator fiscal would not, for example, be obliged to notify the sudden but natural death of a vagrant, with no known place of abode and no known relatives. The registrar is dependent upon the procurator fiscal for information about such deaths in order to ensure the completeness of his register. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 18, line 8, leave out from ("which") to ("he") in line 12, and insert the said new words.—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 28, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 29 to 34 agreed to.

Clause 35 [Reproduction of registers]:

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS moved to add to subsection (1) "for producing a facsimile". The noble Viscount said: This is only a small point, and I think the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, was sympathetic to it when I mentioned it on Second Reading. If the registers are to be taken in from district registrars and kept permanently in the General Register Office, wherever this may be, then it will be important that the copies which go back to the district registries shall be available to the public to inspect, when they have need so to do, in exactly the same form as was the original register. In other words, the entries in those registers should be exact facsimiles of the original entry in the register which will, by that time, be kept in the Register House in Edinburgh, or somewhere else.

The wording of the Bill mentions two processes which would be the result of producing a facsimile, but it also goes on to specify "any other convenient process". That particular wording would not necessarily guarantee that a facsimile was reproduced. It might simply be a carbon copy of a typescript, or might be done in some other way whereby the signature, for example, would not be available for inspection locally. I therefore thought that, as this was the desire of the noble Lord, and as in fact my own idea was exactly the same, the Bill might be improved by the words I suggest in the Amendment. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 21, line 10, at end insert ("for producing a facsimile").—(Viscount Colville of Culross.)

LORD HUGHES

I was anxious to comply with the spirit and the letter of the noble Viscount's point on Second Reading; I encouraged him to do this. However, we have come up against a difficulty. He knows, as do your Lordships, that there is No 1ntention to do other than provide what, for purposes of the present debate, I will call a facsimile. I had better read what I have been told, for I consider it explains it as clearly as it is possible to do. This Amendment is unacceptable for the reason that, while it is the present intention that reproductions of entries under this clause will be exact reproductions, or facsimiles, it is possible that in the future one of the larger authorities might ask the Registrar General for reproductions in microfilm. As a microfilm would not be a facsimile in the sense that it would not by virtue of its size be an exact reproduction, the Amendment might be held to prevent the Registrar General from providing a reasonable service to a local authority that wanted it. An assurance may be given, however, that there is No 1ntention of providing reproductions under this clause which will not show the entry in its original form.

I am quite certain that the noble Viscount would not intend that we should be deprived of the right of using microfilm, and yet it is not just a niggling point to say that a microfilm cannot be held legally to be a facsimile if in fact it is very much reduced in size. So I hope that the noble Viscount will feel able to rest on this assurance, twice written into the Records of your Lordships' House, as being sufficiently binding upon the Registrar General and his successors.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I had No 1dea that I was capable of using language so precise that it would cut out the microfilm. I entirely accept the noble Lord's assurance given a second time. Before I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment, I gather that my noble friend would like to say a word.

LORD BALERNO

I should like to dispute the interpretation of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, in this matter. A facsimile does not refer to the size; it refers to the contents being the same. The word "facsimile" does not necessarily mean that the reproduction must be the same size. I should have thought, with all respect to the advice which the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has received, that the word "facsimile" would include a reproduction that had been either blown up or cut down.

LORD HUGHES

I am sorry, but I am afraid that I must proceed to blow up the noble Lord, because he is not disagreeing with me, he is not disagreeing with my advisers; he is disagreeing with the person who wrote the entry in the dictionary.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 35 agreed to.

Clause 36 agreed to.

THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES

I have to inform the Committee that, if Amendment No. 71 is agreed to, I cannot call No. 72.

Clause 37 [Search of indexes kept by registrars]:

LORD HUGHES

Amendment No. 71 covers the purpose of Amendment No. 72, but in looking at it we have discovered that we can with advantage do a little more than Amendment No. 72 does. The Amendment will make clear that a search may be made for an entry, on behalf of an applicant, by the registrar himself. This is, in fact, what happens in practice in the majority of cases, as the registrar is more adept at searching the indexes, and tracing entries than persons not familiar with the registers. In addition, the registrar receives applications by post, and in such cases has no alternative but to make the search himself. A similar Amendment is proposed in respect of applications made to the General Register Office. I think that is Amendment No. 74. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 21, line 38, leave out subsection (2) and insert— ("() On payment of such fee or fees as may be prescribed, the district registrar shall, at any time when the registration office is open for that purpose—

1. (a) search the said indexes on behalf of any person or permit that person to search the indexes himself, and
2. (b) issue to any person an extract of any entry in the said registers which that person may require.").—(Lord Hughes.)

LORD CRAIGTON

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for accepting our change in wording, and I appreciate that there are good reasons for the provisions he has added. When we sought to change the phrase "open for the transaction of public business" to the phrase "open for that purpose" we were endeavouring to bring the subSection 1nto line with subsection (2) of Clause 38, which uses the same phrase in a somewhat similar context. As the noble Lord will know, there were considerable worries among the staff in Scotland about the effect of the previous wording, and though this seems a small Amendment here it will give a great deal of pleasure, satisfaction and relief to a great many people. I will, of course, not move my Amendment.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

The purpose of this Amendment is to enable the Registrar General to prescribe a fee or fees which may be charged in any case where a registrar is authorised to search for an entry in his register of still-births, and to issue an extract of the entry. The Amendment brings subsection (3) of Clause 37 into line with subsection (2), under which a fee or fees may be prescribed in respect of searches in the indexes to the registers of births, deaths and marriages and the issue of extracts from such registers. The fees prescribed under subsection (2) may not be the same as those prescribed under subsection (3) I beg to move—

Amendment moved— Page 22, line 3, at end insert (", and on payment of such fee or fees as may be prescribed").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 37, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 38 [Search of indexes kept by Registrar General]:

LORD HUGHES moved to leave out subsection (2) and to insert instead: () On payment of such fee or fees as may be prescribed, the Registrar General shall, at any time when the General Register Office is open for that purpose—

1. (a) cause a search to be made of the said indexes on behalf of any person or permit that person to search the indexes himself, and
2. (b) issue to any person an extract of any entry in the said registers which that person may require, "

The noble Lord said: This is in similar terms to Amendment 71, and is for the same purpose. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 22, line 8, leave out subsection (2) and insert the said new subsection.—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

This Amendment refers back to one a little earlier and is merely to make it perfectly clear that the fees under Clause 38 (3) and Clause 38 (2) are not necessarily the same. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 22, line 13, leave out ("the prescribed fees as aforesaid") and insert ("such fee or fees as may be prescribed").—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 38, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 39 to 42 agreed to.

Clause 43:

Recording of baptismal name or change of name or surname. 1958 c. 5. (7 & 8 Eliz. 2)

43.—

(7) Where an application is made to the Registrar General in respect of the recording of an alternative name, being the English equivalent of a non-English name, in the case of a child under sixteen years of age, by the parent or guardian of that child, in the case of a person over sixteen years of age and under twenty-one years of age, by that person with the consent of his parent or guardian, or in the case of a person over twenty-one years of age, by that person, the Registrar General may record that name as an alternative name by causing an appropriate entry to be made in the Register of Corrections Etc.

8.57 p.m.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS moved to leave out subsection (7). The noble Viscount said: I think there is a simple answer to a point that has been puzzling my noble friend, Lord Drumalbyn, and myself about this subsection. All the same, I consider there is a certain obscurity in it, because it gives the appearance of a sanction in the Bill for a person to have two names officially recorded for his benefit and use in Scotland at the same time. He might have a foreign name and a British name; or he might perhaps have a Gaelic name and a British name, and both would be his legal name which he could enjoy and use as he wished. I think my noble friend agreed with me—and his Amendments were intended to deal with this point—that such a situation would not be very satisfactory. We therefore sought to remove it. I think, however, that this particular subsection refers only to Christian names. But in case I have got this wrong, I should like formally to move this Amendment so that I can hear what the noble Lord opposite has to say and make quite certain that anybody else who has been similarly misled may be put right. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 26, line 13, leave out subsection (7).—(Viscount Colville of Culross.)

LORD HUGHES

The tabling of the Amendments Nos. 77 to 80 is understandable, because one has to keep in mind throughout this Bill that when one talks about a name one means what the Bill describes as a Christian name or forename, and when it is a family name it is specifically called a surname. There is no provision in the Bill for a person to have two surnames registered at one time. If he has a surname which he does not like, or wishes for any reason to change it, he must take advantage of the provisions for change of name.

This clause refers to Christian names and, as Lord Colville of Culross has said, is directed primarily to the Gaelic-speaking parts of the community, where a man may have had his name registered, or a woman may have had her name registered, in its Gaelic form. Subsequently, because of a removal to a non-Gaelic-speaking part of the country, it might be an inconvenience to have a name the pronunciation of which is not obvious to the people among whom he then resides, and he wishes, therefore, to adopt its English equivalent.

At the present time he can do so only by changing his name, and he may not wish to forgo his Gaelic name. This Amendment makes it possible for him to have added to his birth certificate the other name as an alternative. So his certificate could read, for example, "Seamus or James", and he would be equally correct in using either "Seamus" or "James"; or "Domhnall or Donald". The variety is infinite. It applies, also, of course, to quite a number of people who have been in our midst since the last war and whose parents may have been Czech, Polish or Dutch. A great number of them have had children to whom they have given a Czech, Polish or Dutch Christian name, and in their case, similarly, there might be a desire not to abandon the given name but to have added to it its English equivalent. I think it is quite a useful thing that people should be encouraged, if they so wish, to preserve the linguistic links in their names, and that they should not have to make the hard choice between everyday necessity and throwing overboard the less practical but nevertheless valuable association with the other language. I hope that I have been able to persuade the noble Viscount by what I have said.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

I am much obliged to the noble Lord for that explanation. It conjures up to me pictures of trying to discover what is the English equivalent of a Christian name such as "Szdenek", which I gather is common in Czechoslovakia. But I have no doubt that this can be overcome in due course. I am very much obliged to the noble Lord, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 43 agreed to.

Clauses 44 and 45 agreed to.

Clause 46 [Parochial Registers to be transmitted to Registrar General]:

LORD HUGHES moved to insert at the beginning of subsection (1) Subject to the following subsection".

The noble Lord said: This is a drafting Amendment and is consequential upon the new subsection (2) which is proposed under Amendment No. 83—and perhaps it would be convenient if I spoke to No. 83. Amendment No. 83 comes in following the representations of noble Lords opposite during the Second Reading debate about circumstances where it might be undesirable to transfer to the Registrar General records which he is entitled to have but which it may be very difficult or undesirable to take away.

We are proposing two things. We are leaving out the existing subsection (2) because, on consideration, we have come to the conclusion that it is rather harsh in its terms when talking about getting a warrant for seizing the documents, particularly when we discover that this might involve descending on the Church of Scotland Offices in George Street. We thought this was perhaps going a little too far; so we decided we would leave out this rather harsh subsection and then put in a new subsection which provides even more than what the noble Lords opposite asked for in this connection.

What we do in the form of words is that we allow photographic or similar copies of old parochial registers to be made available to the Registrar General instead of the originals. It is considered that at this period of time it is sufficient for the Registrar General to have such copies instead of originals, as these are required principally for the purposes of research. There are two kinds of case where it is inevitable that the Registrar General will have to be content with such copies: one, when the register is inextricable from other manuscript matter—for example, kirk session minutes; and, two, where there may be some legal obstacle to transmission: for example, where the register is deposited in a university or public library or is held by trustees. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 27, line 13, at beginning insert the said words.—(Lord Hughes)

LORD CRAIGTON

I am grateful to the noble Lord for accepting the spirit of our Amendment and improving on its machinery. There are areas, such as Orkney, where the parochial registers are treasured relics which the custodians may wish to retain. Even more difficult is the problem, now so neatly and happily solved, of those parish registers, already in good hands, of which, as the noble Lord has said, only a few pages contain the information that the Registrar General should have. I am sure that I speak for the Church of Scotland authorities, and for the Keeper of the Records, in thanking the noble Lord for the trouble he has taken over this very difficult matter, now so happily solved.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD HUGHES

I beg to move Amendment No. 83.

Amendment moved—

Page 27, line 16, leave out subsection (2) and insert— ("() Where a parochial register forms part of any other record or document or where for any other reason it would be inappropriate so to transmit the register, the duty to do so shall be discharged if there is transmitted to the Registrar General a copy of the register reproduced by photography, xerography or any other process approved by the Registrar General, or if an opportunity so to reproduce the register is afforded to the Registrar General.")—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

9.8 p.m.

LORD HUGHES

The parish registers are much used by genealogical and other researchers. It is therefore convenient for these people that these registers and the post-1855 registers should be kept together so that they can be referred to at one and the same time. Nevertheless, circumstances may arise where a Registrar General in the future may decide that it is no longer necessary for these registers to be kept in his custody. This Amendment is designed to empower him in such circumstances to transmit the parish registers to the custody of the Keeper of the Records. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Page 27, line 20, at end insert— ("() Notwithstanding the provisions of section 3 (2) of this Act, it shall be lawful for the Registrar General to transmit to the Keeper of the Records of Scotland any parochial register or copy of such register, which is in the custody of the Registrar General by virtue of this or any other Act, if in his opinion the retention by him of that register or copy register is no longer necessary."—(Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 46, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 47 to 51 agreed to.

Clause 52 [Offences]:

LORD CRAIGTON

The offences referred to in subsection (3) of this clause are of a type that lead to a considerable amount of work and of administrative inconvenience. The present maximum penalty is £2, which may have been enough when it was laid down, but which, over the passage of the years, has clearly become derisory. In legislation of this type one must look into the future and fix a maximum fine that will stand the erosion of time. Because of the work and trouble these offences may cause and because this Bill may remain unchanged for many years, I feel that a maximum penalty of £20 will better make the punishment fit the crime.

Amendment moved— Page 29, line 24, leave out (" £10") and insert (" £20").—(Lord Craigton.)

LORD HUGHES

I am absolutely certain that if I accept this Amendment I shall not find myself in any difficulty whatever with my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Therefore, I have pleasure in accepting the Amendment.

LORD CRAIGTON

Before the Question is put, as one who has sat on the Benches opposite doing what the noble Lord is doing, I must remind your Lordships that yesterday afternoon the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, spoke on forestry and to-day he first dealt with river pollution and then education in Scotland, and went on to deal with 86 Amendments on this Bill, of which he has accepted, I think, 12 from this side—almost a record. We and, I am sure, the whole House are very grateful to him.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 52, as amended, agreed to.

Remaining Clauses and Schedules agreed to.

House resumed: Bill reported, with Amendments.

House adjourned at twelve minutes past nine o'clock.