My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness very much. In listening to her, I was remembering that I discovered a new third cousin 10 days ago when the political adviser to someone in the Government in the Emirates got in touch with me. I recognised his unusual name, which happens to be my mother’s maiden name. In inviting him, I asked him to bring the names of his great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather. He arrived with an A3 family tree and the comment from his uncle that the missing bit was a group who had moved away from Somerset, which is where this uncommon local name comes from, and were alleged to have set up as fishmongers in Leicester. That was my grandfather. I now have a new third cousin and quite a useful set of additions to our family tree. I also have a strong desire to visit Australia where the third cousins who have made good live. They are apparently very generous to their visitors. I should also say that this summer my wife and I were in north Yorkshire looking for her family and we spent a very enjoyable and constructive time in the local history section of Stockton library. The local historians were extremely helpful and provided us with a number of useful bits of family history, including some birth certificates for nothing. The local dimension is as important as the national one.
I can reassure the noble Baroness that officials in the Home Office who lead on this issue will be very happy to meet her soon to discuss the issue further. There are, however, a number of technical issues which mean that the Government cannot accept the amendment as it stands for reasons that I will summarise. The proposed new clause would enable copies of historic births, deaths and marriage records aged 100 years or more to be provided in formats other than a paper certified copy or certificate. It allows for such copies to be produced on paper, electronically or in another prescribed format with a stipulated cost to the customer of,
“no more than £3 per record”.
The amendment seeks to address restrictions laid out in primary legislation that currently prescribe that the only way to access information from a civil registration record, regardless of age, is to purchase a certificate either from the GRO or from the register office where the event was registered, at a standard cost of £9.25 or £10 respectively. While recognising that allowing historic civil registration records to be treated differently from modern records may support government objectives around transparency of data and digitisation, there are some aspects of the clause that make it unworkable in its current form.
For example, the proposed new clause limits the amount that can be charged for an historic record to £3, but further work would be needed to ensure that this allows for compliance with Treasury rules regarding the management of public money—such as rules about full cost recovery. Of course, specifying the fee cap within the clause hinders a regular review of fee levels, as any resultant changes would require further amendment to primary legislation.
The title of the amendment refers to,
“Births, marriages and death registration”,
but the draft clause seeks to amend only the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, which does not provide for the issuing of marriage certificates. We would expect any amendment that provides for a change to the issuing of marriage certificates to be included in the separate marriage legislation, which is the Marriage Act 1949. In addition, the clause applies the same definition of “historic” to all types of records, but this is not aligned—as the noble Baroness has suggested—with the systems of civil registration in place in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which operate under separate legislation. The legislation in place in Scotland and Northern Ireland provides for records to be defined as historic at 100, 75 or 50 years respectively, depending on whether the information relates to a birth, marriage or death, which goes further than the proposed clause suggests.
The clause makes no changes to the information available from the register office where the event was registered, meaning that while the GRO could make historic records available more cheaply centrally, local register offices would have to continue to provide any information from a record, regardless of its age, in the form of a certificate. The impact on the local registration service of introducing a legal distinction between modern and historic records needs further consideration: the amendment as it stands would disadvantage local authorities, which would continue to be legally obliged to maintain the original historic records but would see the demand for information from them decrease as customers chose a cheaper, centrally provided service.
The Government therefore cannot accept the proposed amendment as drafted on the grounds that a number of aspects would prove problematic in practice. In addition, by defining all records as “historic” at 100 years, rather than following the precedent of Scotland and Northern Ireland, and preventing the change to be applied to marriage records by failing to amend the Marriage Act 1949, the clause as it is currently drafted fails overall to achieve the intended aim of opening up as wide a range of records as possible to greater public access. We therefore express sympathy with the aim but reservations about the clause as currently drafted; and offer an invitation to meet and discuss further. On that basis, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.