Registers of Births and Deaths Bill

Sarah Jones Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to be here today, and it was a pleasure to hear that the last time the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) was here with a private Member’s Bill was in March 1991, with a Bill on exam results. He will be pleased to know that in March 1991 I was revising for my A-level exams. I am grateful to him for making me feel young today, which does not happen very often.

It is a pleasure to speak in support of the Bill. My husband is from the royal town of Sutton Coldfield and it is my second favourite place in the country—second only to Croydon. My mother-in-law very kindly says to me that she votes Labour, but I suspect she actually votes for the right hon. Member. It is good to be on the same side in this debate.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for his hard work on the Bill. We have worked together on it and I am happy to stand and support it. As he explained, the provision for registering births and deaths is principally governed by the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, the Registration Service Act 1953 and the Registration of Births and Deaths Regulations 1987. Those pieces of legislation are based on laws that have been in place since 1837.

The Bill will modernise the way in which births and deaths are registered. It will, as the right hon. Member explained, remove the duplication of processes that has been in place since 2009, since when all birth and death registrations have been captured electronically as well as on paper. It will also remove the need to do quarterly returns. It will pave the way to changing the way we register births and deaths and bring that process into the modern world. It is good to hear that, contrary to the explanatory notes, the savings will be greater than £20 million—somewhere between £90 million and £170 million over the next 10 years.

I have spoken to the staff at Croydon Council who manage the registration processes, and I understand that they would not require new skills to make the changes in the Bill because they are already familiar with the Registration Online system. That has to be a good thing.

Because of covid and by necessity, we have seen different systems in place for registering deaths, and we can learn from this period. In Croydon, as in other areas, the decision was taken that, for a temporary period during the covid pandemic, the registration of deaths should move online, under the Registration Online—or RON—system, or via the telephone. I have spoken to the team in Croydon—they are wonderful and I thank them for what they do—and they say that the system has worked well. Indeed, they do not want to go back to the old system. In fact, they had been innovating before covid and had set up an office at our local hospital, Croydon University Hospital, where people could go to register deaths. The plan before covid kicked in had been to extend that service to the registration of births in the hospital as well.

As we know, the registration of births is far more likely to lead to fraud than the registration of deaths. That is the issue that concerns local registrars. If the registration of births moves online or by telephone, how can we ensure that the system is not susceptible to fraud? That is not at all to say that it cannot be done, but the question to the Minister and the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield is how we can ensure that we avoid an increase in identity fraud. How can an online system be sufficiently secure that there is no risk of records being lost were the system’s security to be compromised? RON, the Registration Online system, has been notoriously unreliable in the past. That could cause significant issues. We recommend that the platform is reviewed and any risks mitigated.

Can we ensure in the Bill that councils do not lose resources in the course of implementing the legislation? Although funds will be saved, as the right hon. Member has said, it is possible that, at a later date, the proposals could impact on income for local authority register offices. If the General Register Office issues copy certificates and takes the income from that, does that mean the local authority does not have the ability to undertake this role? It would be good if we could look into that, please. Will a move to online records in any way risk a lack of accessibility for those who may struggle to access the internet? I was pleased to hear from the right hon. Member that people would still be able to register in person. That is good to hear and we need to make sure that continues.

I want to be brief, so I will conclude by saying again that this Bill deserves the support of the House. It will bring up to date the antiquated process for registering births and deaths, and it will save a lot of paper.