Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent progress she has made on bringing forward legislative proposals to allow the mothers of brides and grooms to be recorded on marriage certificates.

There is support across Government for marriage registers to be updated and my Rt.Hon. Friend the Prime Minister stated publically in August 2014 that it was “high time” that a change was made. This is a complex task due to the large numbers of registers in use and the associated costs of replacing them. We are, therefore, investigating options on how this can be achieved as soon as possible.