Registers of Births and Deaths Bill

Suzanne Webb Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 26th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I rise in support of this Bill. It is a pleasure to speak in this debate to support my fellow west midlander, my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti), and to continue the work done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). This Bill offers a very straightforward—[Interruption.] Do you know, I changed my glasses because I could not actually read what I was saying, and I am struggling now. Excuse me, Madam Deputy Speaker.

This Bill offers a very straightforward, uncontroversial solution that I hope can command support across the House. It is a measure that both saves money for the taxpayer and removes bureaucracy. As we have heard, the Bill corrects a duplication of processes that has been going on for over a decade. There is now no need for a paper-based system for births and deaths registration, and we can move effectively, efficiently and securely to doing so digitally, as indeed we have been doing for 10 years.

The digitalisation of records has generally been a great success and continues to evolve in accuracy and efficiency as our technology does. As an example, we can take our great archives here in Parliament. The archives can be traced back to as early as 1497, when the Clerk of the House in the other place, Richard Hatton, took the very unusual decision to retain 16 Acts after they had been used to compile the Parliament Roll for the Chancery.

In this House, we were a little slow to start, or perhaps we just had more to do. We can trace the beginning of records here to around 50 years later, when journals and records were preserved. Records continued to accumulate for hundreds of years. Tragically, though, in 1834 a great fire badly affected the archives, particularly in the House of Commons. That brief history lesson aside, the Parliamentary Archives continue to look after the records of both Houses. For some time now, they have been digitalising records and documents, and that is how we should continue.

If covid has highlighted anything, it is the need to offer the public alternative ways to access services, including registering births and deaths. As Members will be aware, the Coronavirus Act 2020 included easements that have enabled registrars to register deaths by telephone and avoid non-essential face-to-face contact. However, the Act was time-limited because of a sunset clause that would take effect in March 2022. The ability to register deaths by telephone has worked very well over the last 18 months, and it has been beneficial for registration officers, the public and the funeral industry in providing a more streamlined service. It has allowed the public to make their funeral arrangements and access relevant services much more quickly at a very difficult moment in their lives.

The Bill has untold benefits, increasing access, improving and enhancing research opportunities and aiding in preservation. I hope that Members across the House agree that we should be looking to reduce bureaucracy and save money for the taxpayer in any way we can, especially right now. The Bill could save the taxpayer £20 million over 10 years, I believe, and that is equivalent to more than £150,000 every month for a decade. This simple Bill will facilitate a registration system that is more modern, more secure, more efficient and cheaper than what we have had to date, and I am happy to offer my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden my support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Randall]

I am happy to give my hon. Friend the opportunity not to get into trouble with Mrs Bhatti later.

I have to admit that I first approached this Bill with a slight degree of trepidation. As I was reading the letter from the Minister on the Bill, I saw that dreaded word “modernise”. It is not one I always look on favourably. I have a slightly romantic view of records as bound volumes on shelves that will be there forever for historians to pore over in future. I had a worry that with the Bill coming forward, there was a chance that in that drive for modernity—that desire to make progress—we were going to lose something of our history and of our past.

[Suzanne Webb]

We are in a terrific time of digitisation. Does my hon. Friend not agree that even this great House, this mother of all Parliaments, has to move forward with the times and move transformationally to a period of digitisation?

[Tom Randall]

Grudgingly so.

[Tom Randall]

I hope that as I develop my argument, I will begin to show my hon. Friend the error of his ways and how I have convinced myself that my Tory instincts are, on this occasion, perhaps not entirely right.

As I have read further into this matter, I have come to realise that what we have had for so long is not some handsome bound volumes on a shelf to be admired in libraries for years to come, but essentially computer printouts, as I understand it. We have not been recording history beautifully; we have just been duplicating a process—printing out what is really part of a spreadsheet almost and putting it in a loose-leaf binder that is then stored in some secure box in some office somewhere. I am intrigued to know what happens to that secure room in a sub-district departmental office somewhere, perhaps forgotten or secured to some rather dreary out-of-town facility. The glamour and the romance I thought we perhaps had with the way we recorded this important information is a completely inaccurate picture. For that reason, I now realise the error of my ways and I hope the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) will also come to realise that progress, digitisation and computerisation are things to which we will all, reluctantly, have to subscribe.

This issue speaks to one of the core functions of government: record-keeping of births and deaths, and knowing who is in the country. The circumstances of where people have been born and where they have died is one of the very core functions of government. Therefore, getting the Bill on the statute book in the right way may not be glamorous, but it is important to get it right and done as accurately as possible.

The other point that doubters perhaps need to hear is that we have a duplication system. It is not the case that we have bound volumes that are the record. The paper copies we have at the moment are already redundant. It appears that we have an electronic system, which is really the primary system, and the paper copies are an adjunct. They are already redundant. One might ask why we have them at this point anyway, as they have already been proven to be beyond their use. I have not had the experience of registering a birth and I am very fortunate that, so far, I have never had to register a death, but the important point has been made, and I can very well imagine and sympathise, that those experiences can be very emotional and traumatic. They happen at a time when we have 1,001 things that we need to do, and making a trip to do something very bureaucratic and burdensome is something an ordinary person could really do without. We have to remember that government is supposed to work for people, certainly at very emotionally difficult periods of their life.

[Suzanne Webb]

Does my hon. Friend agree, for the very reasons he has just set out, that that is the most important thing? We are Members of Parliament serving our constituents and we need to simplify the process for them. That is why the Bill is so important: it will make access for registering births and deaths so much easier for our constituents.

[Tom Randall]

My hon. Friend is completely right. Funnily enough, what we will agree today might have a more direct effect and a bigger impact on people’s everyday lives than a lot of the other stuff we debate. It will enable people to get on and it will make their lives easier, and that is, presumably, ultimately what we are for.

I have one final plea for computerisation. We heard about hacking and defaults in the paper system. Maybe I am wrong, but I think the “Day of the Jackal” fraud that used to be perpetrated—I am sure everyone has seen the film or read the novel—has been ended by computerisation, because the birth and death registers are now linked up. I suspect that that is one example of where the computerised system is far superior to the paper-based system. We do not all want to assassinate Charles de Gaulle, but other sorts of fraud can happen with a susceptible system. I am sure that the computerised system will be more secure and it is the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The point is that there was an inaccurate translation. When he got his citizenship certificate, somebody mistransposed the full names and put just one surname on his certificate rather than two surnames. That is an example of what happens when we rely on electronic records rather than the actual records, because he is now having to prove to the Home Office—and it is taking a long time, as I have been explaining—that his name is as it is set out on his driving licence and in his Ghanaian passport. He is fortunate that he still had his original records, which we assume have not been lost in the post.

[Suzanne Webb]

That is just one example; I would like to see far more examples of digitalisation having gone wrong in computer records. As someone who spent more than 29 years in a business that was very technology-driven—I started in 1989 in a company that was all about technology and computerisation—I assure you that such instances are few and far between. I can guarantee you that it is more than likely that an error would be made in a handwritten record, not through digitalisation.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, you have a lot to answer for.

Handwritten errors can be identified and corrected. If there is fraud in handwriting, that can be subject to prosecution under the Forgery Act; if a digital record is inaccurate, either through accident or by design, it is very difficult to prosecute under the Forgery Act—in fact, I am not aware of any way in which it could be.