Legislative Reform (Overseas Registration of Births and Deaths) Order 2014

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this legislative reform order concerns a minor amendment to legislation that would allow the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to centralise and modernise one of the consular functions it offers to British nationals overseas. It would allow a minor change to Section 41 of the British Nationality Act 1981, which would in turn allow the FCO to amend its own regulations in order to centralise in the UK the registration of births and deaths of British nationals which occur abroad.

Consular birth and death registration is not a legal requirement. It is an optional service available to those born overseas who could have an entitlement to British nationality at birth and to British nationals who die overseas. There is no UK legal requirement for a consular birth or death registration. Consular birth or death registration does not confer British nationality.

To go into greater detail, Section 41 of the British Nationality Act limits the regulation-making power in such a way that, in nearly all cases, the registration must be done overseas. Once both the British Nationality Act and the FCO’s regulations have been amended, the FCO will be able to establish a central consular birth and death registration unit in the UK, responsible for registering all consular births and deaths for British nationals overseas.

The draft legislative reform order was laid on 5 December 2013 by the FCO. It is proposed to be made under Sections 1 and 2 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. This allows a Minister to make provision by order for removing or reducing any burden resulting directly or indirectly from legislation, and for improving the delivery of a service.

The FCO conducted a 12-week public consultation, from July to October 2013, which was sent directly to 18 expatriate organisations around the world and was promoted both on the gov.uk website and on the FCO’s travel advice Twitter account, which has more than 47,000 followers. There were seven responses to the consultation; only three of these completed the survey’s online questionnaire, all responding that they supported the proposed centralisation of the service. Some respondents did ask practical questions about how the new system would operate. The low response rate reflects the fact that this is a relatively low-volume and non-essential service. Following the consultation, the FCO decided to proceed with its plans. It concluded that, although the change may mean that a few expatriates may incur slightly greater costs in the short term because of the need to post original documents to the UK, the majority will benefit from not having to travel to an embassy or a high commission to submit an application.

The FCO intends to reduce fees for this service once the new central unit is up and running. The unit will provide a more consistent customer service, be more effective in determining complicated nationality decisions and provide a more modern online application and payment system, in line with the Government’s digital by default strategy. Another determining factor is that centralisation will free up consular staff in the FCO’s overseas network, allowing them to focus more on their primary purpose of assisting British nationals in distress overseas, particularly the most vulnerable. This is completely in line with the FCO’s new consular strategy, which was launched in April 2013.

Following the laying of the LRO in December, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee confirmed its satisfaction that the order meets the tests set out in the 2006 Act. The committee was satisfied that the legislative reform order procedure is an appropriate way to amend the British Nationality Act 1981 and that the affirmative procedure is appropriate for the change proposed. The LRO is required to amend the British Nationality Act 1981 to allow the FCO to register in the UK births and deaths that occur overseas.

The current method of registration is inconvenient for many customers and inefficient for the FCO. This is partly because FCO staff are losing their nationality decision-making expertise overseas since the overseas passport service was transferred to Her Majesty’s Passport Office and centralised in the UK. The FCO plans to centralise this service into a new single-purpose unit by the end of 2014. Centralisation will allow the FCO to make efficiencies, pass on savings to customers through reducing fees once the service is up and running, reduce the risk of making wrong nationality determinations and give greater focus to its primary consular function of assisting vulnerable British nationals in distress overseas.

Consular birth and death registration is not, I repeat, a legal requirement. It is an optional service taken advantage of by a small number of people, but it is available to those born overseas who could have an entitlement to British nationality at birth and to British nationals who die overseas. Consular birth registration is a separate service from passports and immigration. It does not confer nationality and does not necessarily lead to the issuing of a British passport. It is solely an optional means of recording a local birth overseas with an official English-language document. To manage customer expectations of the value of a consular birth certificate, the FCO will include a disclaimer to explain that the registration is not a UK birth certificate, does not replace the original birth certificate issued by the authorities in the country where the birth took place, is not a certificate of identity and that the holder does not acquire British nationality through the registration.

Moving to an online system, with a common online application and payment procedure, will provide a more efficient and convenient procedure for customers. The IT will be ready and tested ahead of rolling-out centralisation from April. It will be a simple upgrade to the FCO’s existing Compass system, which has been in use for many years. The FCO aims to be fully centralised by the end of 2014. If a customer has no internet access then the application may be made at the appropriate overseas post. As registrations are optional and rarely time sensitive, the FCO anticipates providing this assistance in only a small number of cases. It may help if I remark that in 2012 the UK registered some 6,200 births and some 550 deaths overseas; this is a small number.

In conclusion, I stress once again that the proposed amendment to legislation is a minor one that will help the FCO to modernise and make more efficient the consular service that it offers to British nationals overseas. This will help the FCO to reach its major goal of streamlining non-essential services and helping our most vulnerable citizens in trouble overseas.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, in respect of the legislative reform order, I have a few brief comments. The present regulations oblige the FCO to register births and deaths overseas of qualifying British nationals when asked. These procedures are different, depending on where the events took place. I accept that it is a complex process which needs trained and qualified staff to undertake this work.

I understand that the passport issuing service has been centralised from around the globe back to the UK some time ago. I can see the merits of setting up a similar procedure back in the UK, with a unit of trained staff which can develop real expertise in this area of work. Can the noble Lord assure me that this is genuinely seen as a sensible efficiency measure and not some sort of back-door reduction in services? Can he tell the Grand Committee that he is confident that, in all cases, this new system will be better and that at no point will a British citizen living abroad be disadvantaged by moving to this new system?

Whether it is the joyous occasion of a new life being brought into the world or the death of a loved one, the official processes that have to be gone through should be done as simply and quickly as possible. In the case of deaths overseas, there will also be conditions from the country in which the death occurred that will need to be complied with. From the points that the noble Lord made, he has assured us that in no case would getting a body back from abroad be more difficult with the adoption of the legislative reform order. In respect of births and death, is this purely an optional process that people and families can use, or not, as they decide? If that is the case, I have no further points to make on this order.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord touched on a number of wider issues. On British citizens resident abroad, we are in a different world from 50 or 100 years ago. That is part of why we need to adjust. After all, communications are now infinitely more rapid and easy than they were even 50 years ago. My wife spent five years working in Florence, and we spent some time talking to the British consul-general in Florence, who used to play a large role in the days when a relatively small number of rich British people lived in Italy, out of touch with Britain and needing the help of the local consul. Now that they fly whenever they like from Florence airport to Gatwick, there are instant communications and we are all within the European Union—and long may that last—we do not need consular services of that type.

Part of what has shifted has been that we are therefore operating on a different level. The numbers of British citizens living abroad and, even more, the number of British visitors abroad has mushroomed on an astonishing scale over the past 50 years. I find it quite surprising how small the number of registered births and deaths from abroad has been, given that I have this image—partly from my elderly parents’ stories of holidays in Spain and Portugal—that lots of elderly people go on holiday to those countries and do not quite make it back afterwards. Obviously, this is not a wide-scale activity.

I would argue that this is a sensible efficiency measure, which allows for careful checks of people’s backgrounds and allows the local staff to concentrate on those who are vulnerable—including, of course, those who fall ill while abroad—those who are charged with crimes or indeed imprisoned while abroad and the families of those who die while abroad.