Civil Registration (Hansard, 10 November 2003)

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the Registrar General who has been asked to reply.

Letter from the Registrar General, Len Cook, dated 10 November 2003.

As Registrar General for England and Wales, I have been asked to reply to your recent question on the number of copies of the consultation document Civil Registration: Delivering Vital Change provided to the House of Lords Printed Paper Office. (HL5181)

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Prior to publication, it was decided that the General Register Office would assume responsibility for publishing and distributing the consultation document. This would allow us to sell copies on a cost-recovery basis at a price of £10 per copy. It was hoped that, by setting as low a price as possible, the document would be more widely accessible to the many individuals and small groups who have an interest in civil registration issues, thereby encouraging responses to the consultation.

It was an oversight on our part whereby the House of Lords Printed Paper Office did not have sufficient published copies of Civil Registration: Delivering Vital Change. Once my officials were made aware of this problem it was arranged that, as a temporary measure, photocopies of the web version would be made available for Members of the House. Arrangements were made for a further supply of the published version to be placed in the Printed Paper Office during the final week of October.

This was the first time we have worked with the regulatory reform process, and we did not have a documented procedure for this stage of it. I apologise for this.