§ Mr. HunterTo ask the Secretary of State for Health whether he has any proposals on the future of the registration service in England and Wales; and if he will make a statement;
§ Mr. Simon BurnsTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will place in the Vote Office a copy of the White Paper he has published on the future of the registration service in England and Wales; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. FreemanYes, the White Paper entitled "Registration: proposals for change", Cm 939, makes recommendations for reforming the system for registering births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales on lines already canvassed in a Green Paper and widely welcomed in consultation.
The White Paper proposes a clear management structure for the registration service, under which its day-to-day running will be squarely in local authority hands while the Registrar General retains responsibility for setting national standards of performance. An end will be made to the legal restrictions on the duties of registrars which at present lessen its cost-effectiveness and the quality of service it can offer to the public. Alongside these structural changes there are proposals which will allow people to marry in any registration district in England and Wales and offer a new choice over the buildings in which civil marriages may take place. The standard period of notice which must be given for a marriage will come down 353W from 21 days to 15, but a notice which is given longer in advance will remain valid for six months, rather than three as at present.
There will also be changes in all registration procedures to improve the statistical information which is then obtained. Still birth registrations will be aligned more closely with the procedures for registering deaths, in accordance with the wishes of the parents concerned. A new system will be introduced for notifying deaths which will save informants having always to travel to the district where the death took place in order to register it. There will be short certificates available for death or still birth, alongside the existing short birth certificate. And there will be an extension of the arrangements whereby Welsh speakers can obtain bilingual certificates of birth and death, so that these are no longer confined to events taking place in Wales.
Finally, the White Paper proposes a distinction between historic registration records—those at least 75 years old—and more recent ones. Although access to all records will be maintained through a right to buy non-official copies of them, there will be new rules governing the purchase of certified copies of recent records for use for official purposes. These will help to curb an abuse which has arisen. By contrast, it is intended that information from the older registration records will be entirely within the public domain. It will be possible to buy either certified or non-official copies of certificates of events which occurred 75 years ago or longer, and it is also proposed that an agency outside the Government should hold copies of these records and provide the browsing facilities which are sought by genealogists, researchers and historians.
Response to the earlier Green Paper shows there will be a widespread welcome for the White Paper proposals. They will modernise and improve the registration service by giving it a new flexibility to respond to public wishes, while at the same time so improving its efficiency as to secure a reduction in its net cost locally and centrally. Nearly all of the changes envisaged will require legislation for their implementation, and the Government hope to introduce this at an early date. Meanwhile, I commend them most strongly to the House.