Registration of Marriage Bill [HL]

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 26th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I have pleasure in supporting the Registration of Marriage Bill and hope that it receives a smooth passage through Parliament. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for initiating the Bill and particularly for his clear exposition of the case. As he mentioned genealogists, I should perhaps declare my interest as a fully paid-up member of findmypast.com.

I speak as an outsider. I was married in Peckham register office and have no direct experience of the process that the right reverend Prelate described. I am not a member of a church and, if civil partnerships had been available to heterosexual couples, that would have been my personal preference.

It is fair to say that preparing for this debate has been a complete education for me—both fascinating and exasperating. How can it take so long to do anything in this country? I was fantasising that, if we had given the job of sorting the bureaucracy surrounding marriage to the Brexiteers, it would have kept them out of mischief for a decade.

I see that there have been noble attempts in the recent past to change things. They have all failed, probably because of a combination of too little parliamentary time and too little priority, and possibly because it has been in the “too difficult” in-tray. We have an opportunity to simplify a procedure, hopefully before the 200th anniversary of the legislation in 2037. As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, let us use the 100th anniversary of votes for women to make the change and add both parents’ names to the marriage certificate. I had to do a double-take when I saw that mothers’ names were not included, and most people whom I have spoken to were not aware of that either. I understand that, as has been said, in Victorian Britain the father would be seen as the head of the household, but in this day and age that is becoming extraordinary.

I understand that there are draft regulations, but so far I have not been able to access them. When she replies, will the Minister give an assurance that they will be available before Committee? The Explanatory Notes and impact assessment, as well as the Library note, were extremely useful, and I have now become best friends with RON, otherwise known as Registration Online. I understand that it is proposed to put “parent” on the form, rather than “mother” or “father”. Just as there are guidelines at present on the definition of “father”, I am reassured that there will be careful definitions covering all aspects of the description of “parent”.

One anxiety that I had and which has already been expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, was about the transfer of responsibility to register the marriage to the married couple, with the possibility of fines being imposed for failing to carry out their responsibility. The right reverend Prelate’s office very kindly checked with the GRO, which said that in Scotland, where this system exists, the penalty for failing to register has not yet had to be used. I do not have any information about Northern Ireland, where the system also exists, but I imagine that the same is the case there.

As I said, we have the opportunity to simplify a procedure, save on costs and improve security. At present, criminal gangs obtain access to blank documentation and use it to provide false evidence of a marriage taking place. The fact that there is one robbery every month should be an important incentive to remove the requirement for blank registers and certificate stock to be held in churches and religious buildings. Although changes to the content of the register entry could be made by secondary legislation, as has already been said, any change would necessitate replacement of all 84,000 marriage register books currently in use in 30,000 religious buildings. The change to an electronic system will enable the form and content of the marriage register entry to be easily amended to include, for example, the details of both parents of the couple without having to replace all marriage register books. That is why this primary legislation is so necessary. Similar Bills have had support from various Ministers and the Fawcett Society has said it would be “another step forward”.

I understand that the Church of England is not the only institution which will be affected by the passing of the Bill but, as long as it is the established Church, surely Parliament has an obligation to facilitate a long overdue improvement. I wish the Bill all speed.