Registers of Births and Deaths Bill

Tom Randall Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 26th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of this Bill. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti) on bringing this Bill to the House this afternoon. I also offer my belated congratulations on his becoming a father again and bringing those experiences to the Floor of the House today.

[Saqib Bhatti]

My wife is a very patient woman. It was remiss of me not to mention in my speech that she was in the Lobby with our child. I accept the congratulations of everyone who has given them and everyone who will. I thank my hon. Friend for that.

[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.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I was not going to speak and am sort of in favour of possibly supporting this Bill, but my hon. Friend’s speech is making me doubt it. Surely having a paper record is a safeguard if someone hacks into the digital one. He is making a good point, and I think he is persuading me to vote against the Bill.

[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.

[Lia Nici]

I have been pondering my hon. Friend’s thoughts around glamour. He has mentioned “The Day of the Jackal” and perhaps that is where he gets his glamour from. Even though we will, I hope, become digital if the Bill, which I wholeheartedly support, passes, I feel as a glamourous person himself my hon. Friend will be able to continue with the glamour while doing digital work in serving his constituents.

[Tom Randall]

My hon. Friend is too kind.

As we get our civil servants to return to the computer terminal, rather than the ledger, this Bill will do a lot of good by helping to make things much easier for those in a difficult period in their lives. For that, my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden is to be commended on introducing the Bill and I look forward to seeing it progress to the statute book.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Tom Randall]

Let us return to the subject of the debate, which is the births and deaths register. The two systems have been running in parallel since 2009; does my hon. Friend have any evidence to adduce that there has ever been any mistake that would have been corrected had there been a paper record rather than an electronic one?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I do not have any evidence on that either way. The whole purpose of the 2009 regulations was that we would still have the hard-copy back-up system. Now, having put those regulations through on the basis that there would be a hard-copy back-up system, the Government say 11 or 12 years later that we do not need one, and can rely on the electronic system. That, I think, is playing fast and loose with the House. Why did the Government introduce regulations in 2009 to amend the system while still assuring the House that hard-copy records would be retained, and why, all these years later, are they seeking to abandon them? I am very concerned about that, but let me now finish the story about my constituent.

As I said earlier, I received a reply on 26 November saying that if my constituent required the return of his documents urgently he could submit a request, but I had already submitted a request for the return of his documents to the Home Office on his behalf. The letter made no reference at all to the fact that while this delay continues, and this muddle continues unresolved, he is unable to work. It is outrageous.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) said that this was just one example. I do not want to detain the House with a whole lot of other examples, but we do know that the hacking of computer records is prolific. It is widespread. It has led to large public companies, and indeed Government Departments, suffering severe fines, penalties and reprimands because of their inability to keep accurate data and protect themselves against hacking processes.

Even in the corridor just outside my office in this wonderful building, there is a great big poster—I think it is the only poster up there—about how we in this place are under continuous cyber-attack. If we are indeed under continuous cyber-attack, why are some of my colleagues so relaxed about it? I see no grounds whatever for being relaxed, and I think we should be very vigilant and protective of our paper record system.