§ Mrs. LawrenceTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if the Registrar General has reported his findings of the outcome of consultation following the publication of "Registration: Modernising a Vital Service", on 8 September 1999; and if he will make a statement. [110893]
§ Miss Melanie JohnsonThe consultation period for "Registration: Modernising a Vital Service" ended on 6 December 1999. Over 3,500 copies of the consultation paper and 25,000 summary leaflets were distributed. The consultation paper was also available on the Office for National Statistics web-site.
There were around 1,000 responses to the consultation paper from a wide variety of organisations, local authorities, members of the public and registration officers. There was widespread support for providing registration services in new ways, for better integration with other public services, for improving the use of technology to capture, store and share registration information and for determining national standards. These findings support the Government's commitment to the modernisation of public services in extending the scope of services and information available from civil registration and invoking better use of technology to share information in order, for example, to counter fraud.
I have asked the Registrar General to open discussions to take forward the modernisation of civil registration. Plans for such reforms will be published by the Government in a policy document.