Deregulation Bill

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market]

87B: After Clause 78, insert the following new Clause—
“Births, marriages and death registration: historical searches
(none) After section 34 of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, insert—
“34A Historical searches
(1) The Registrar General may provide a copy of an historical record held by him, which need not be a certified copy, to any person who makes a search and requests such a copy.
(2) A copy provided under subsection (1) may not be used in place of a certified copy as proof of an entry in the register.
(3) For the purposes of this section—
(a) an “historical record” means any entry in a register held by the Registrar General which is more than one hundred years old on the date on which such a request is made;(b) a copy of a record which is not a certified copy means a paper, electronic or other duplication as may be prescribed in regulation.(4) The Registrar General may charge such fees as appropriate in relation to making and delivering a copy of a record which is not a certified copy, but such a fee shall be no more than £3.00 per record.””

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

I rise to offer the Government an early Christmas gift, cunningly disguised as Amendment 87B. It is a rare jewel; a genuine piece of deregulation which no one as far as I can tell opposes, which saves money and does not cost anything. I shall explain.

In 1837, a system of civil registration of births, deaths and marriages was introduced into this country. For most of the time since then, it has been a legal requirement to register these events with the district registrar, who issues a certificate. The framework has remained largely unchanged since then. Anyone can order a copy of a certificate from the General Register Office, which is currently set at a cost of £9.25. Because possession of a certificate does not confer identity, these certificates could be used for any purpose and many of us at some point or other may have used this service to order a copy certificate.

The one group of people in this country who could really use this service much more extensively are those, like me, who are researching their family history. Should noble Lords think this is a minority pursuit, one website alone, Ancestry, has 2.7 million global subscribers. The success of programmes such as, “Who Do You Think You Are?”, along with the relative ease of internet searching, has led to an explosion of interest in genealogy. This will almost certainly increase this year as the result of the wonderful coverage of the centenary of World War I.

Genealogists from across the globe can trace their ancestors back to these islands. The Irish and Scottish Governments have been much quicker than the English and Welsh Governments to appreciate the great tourist value in people looking for their roots. For genealogists, the information on general registration certificates is invaluable. Birth certificates contain the father’s name and occupation and the mother’s maiden name. A marriage certificate will record both the father’s name and occupation, so in theory you could use the general registration to trace ancestors back for well over 200 years. An ancestor dying in 1837 at the start of registration might well have been born in the 1750s.

Sometimes, the GRO is the only way of resolving the matter by distinguishing between individuals of the same name on census and parish records, but this valuable resource is nothing like as well used as it could be because the only form in which it is legally allowed to be given is by ordering and paying £9.75 for the full certificate. That is not the case in many jurisdictions. In Ireland, for example, the essential information is provided for €4. In Scotland, an extract can be ordered online through the authorised provider, ScotlandsPeople Centre. The General Register Office issues many thousands of historic copies every year. Even at £9.75 it does not make a profit from them. As I will explain in a moment, it would almost certainly be happy to find a less onerous way of doing this kind of historic business. It would also fit in very well with the Government’s deregulation agenda and the drive to digitise public services.

Turning to my amendment, I recognise and say at the outset that my limited expertise will not have produced an amendment that the Government would accept in its current form. But the fundamental point, aimed at allowing the GRO to change the regime for historic events of more than 100 years ago, is one that I hope the Government will take away for consideration. It would mean that for a much reduced fee—I have suggested £3—the data could be sent by e-mail, rather than be issued in a long-form certificate. One hundred years simply reflects the period after which census data are made public and was the period chosen in the 2002 White Paper. A different time could be chosen, or differentials between births, marriages and deaths established.

This issue has been discussed since 1990. A public consultation in 1999 showed overwhelming support for such a change. The GRO itself proposed similar changes in a 2005 regulatory reform order. Ironically I was a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee at the time, but sadly the GRO proposed a whole package of measures rather than simply this specific change. Had there been this change only, it probably would have been successful, but unfortunately the package was considered far too wide ranging for a regulatory reform order.

I caution the Government against putting off making this modest reform until a wider package of measures can be drawn up in their own Bill. The reality is that GRO reform is always unlikely to be a priority in the legislative programme of any new Government. The fact that the GRO has been unable to get a Bill in three terms of the Labour Government and one term of the coalition Government says it all. As I said, this is a probing amendment only, which I hope the Government will take away and consider. I recognise that the GRO will need time to consult on changes and draw up the details, but this can be done by secondary legislation. The important thing is to get this change into this Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

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 proposed new clause refers to,

“Births, marriages and death registration”,

but the 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 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 we offer an invitation to meet and discuss it further. On that basis, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and certainly look forward to having a meeting to see how we can progress this further. I have been trying to talk to somebody about this for about five months now, so I hope that even at this late stage it is not too late to bring something forward for the next stage of the Bill, because this is a very important issue for people researching family history. As I have already said, there are many millions of such people. The point about local offices is, of course, valid, but the fact is that most people who order copy certificates would do so through the website of the national GRO. That particularly applies to people from abroad. We should be doing everything we can to open up our records where appropriate to people resident both here and abroad who look to us as their historic homeland. I look forward to having meetings as soon as possible and perhaps taking this further. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 87B withdrawn.