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12.17 am
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mrs. Angela Knight): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Hawkins) on obtaining a debate on this serious case. Just as he was surprised to
find that it was a Treasury Minister to whom his debate was addressed, I too, as that Treasury Minister, am surprised that the matter falls within my remit. As for the law, I could not possibly make any comment; as a barrister, no doubt my hon. Friend knows the law better than I do.
I am aware of the background to the case, and I have considerable sympathy with the difficult situation in which my hon. Friend's constituent, Mr. Veale, finds himself. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the assiduous way in which he has pursued the case.
The Registrar-General is responsible for administering the law relating to the registration of births, deaths and marriages in England and Wales, and I have consulted him about this matter. The Registrar-General's office forms part of the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, which is now the Office for National Statistics. I am aware that there are particular complications with this most sensitive and unusual case.
The background legislation governing the handling of Mr. Veale's application is the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, which requires the birth of every child born in England and Wales to be registered by the registrar of births and deaths for the registration sub-district in which the child was born. The information required to be registered in respect of each child is prescribed by regulations made by the Registrar-General. The information is given to the registrar by a qualified informant, who is usually a parent of the child.
If the parents are married, the child's birth may be registered on the sole information of the mother or the father. There is a presumption in common law that a child born to a married woman is a child of the mother and the husband. In those circumstances, the husband would be recorded in the birth register as the father of the child, unless, at the time of registration, it was made clear to the registrar that the husband could not possibly be the father.
A great deal of reliance is therefore placed on the information given to the registrar being accurate and for that reason, every registrar permanently displays a notice referring to the penalties of the Perjury Act 1911 for giving false information. That, of course, does not always deter. Indeed, it would be true to say that, while a birth certificate is certainly evidence of the fact of birth, the same cannot always be said of the person named as the father. That is the nub and heart of this case.
The difficulty arises when one tries to make a correction to an entry contained in a birth register. Such a correction can be made in accordance with the law only if it can be shown that an error was made when the birth was registered. The appropriate section of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 allows an error of fact or substance, which is what we have in this case, to be corrected. That may be done once satisfactory evidence of the facts has been obtained, and on production of a statutory declaration setting out the nature of the error and the true facts of the case made by two qualified informants of the birth.
The people who are qualified to act as informants are defined in legislation, and the mother and father of a child are the primary informants. The Registrar-General therefore looks first for statutory declarations from the people named as the child's parents when a correction is requested. The legislation goes on to state that, in default of a qualified informant, a credible person with
knowledge of the true facts may make the statutory declaration. That person must have personal knowledge of the facts.
My hon. Friend has outlined the circumstances of the birth and the divorce in this case. The birth was registered on information given by the mother as that of the child of herself and her then husband. Application for the father's details to be removed was made by Mr. Veale in February 1993.
Officials of what was then the OPCS were satisfied from the evidence provided that the entry could be corrected by means of statutory declarations by Mr. Veale and the child's mother. Evidence of an error in the entry included a copy of a blood test result to which my hon. Friend referred. It was carried out in 1988 and excluded Mr. Veale from paternity of the child. A copy of an affiliation order made in 1988 naming someone other than Mr. Veale as the father was also submitted, together with an affidavit made by the mother in 1991. However, the child's mother refused to co-operate in making the statutory declaration required by law for the purpose of correcting the birth entry.
In those circumstances, OPCS officials advised that the blood tester would be qualified as an alternative declarant in the capacity of a credible person with knowledge of the facts.
The mother was notified, but it transpired that the blood tester had died, and other doctors who were contacted felt that they were not able to make a declaration based on the tester's original records, as my hon. Friend said. Officials also wrote to the person who had been named as the father, inquiring whether he would be willing to make a statutory declaration. Unfortunately, he declined to be involved in the matter.
I hope that the House will agree that the ONS tried to find someone who could provide the relevant evidence. The declaration from the mother was not made, so one was left with the difficulties that have been described.
To date, Mr. Veale has been unable to find another person who is qualified by law to make the appropriate statutory declaration.
The provisions that govern the correction of errors in civil registration records are tightly drawn by law to prevent abuse. Neither the Registrar-General nor I have the power to exercise any discretion in this matter. The court records and blood tests provide good evidence of the facts, but the legislation still requires the statutory declaration to be made before a birth entry can be corrected.
As a consequence of this type of case, although not this one in particular, the provisions were reviewed in 1988 in a Green Paper. A White Paper was subsequently published, and the result has been a series of proposals that have not yet been brought into law because parliamentary time has not yet allowed it.
The proposals in that White Paper governing this sort of case would broaden the range of persons who could be qualified to make a statutory declaration. Such broadening could be a suitable candidate for the deregulation route. I hold out no promises to my hon. Friend, but I can assure him that we are examining that area, and I will keep in touch with him as far as progress and potential possibilities are concerned.
I can appreciate my hon. Friend's frustration, and particularly Mr. Veale's frustration, but without the co-operation of his former wife or a suitably qualified second person to declare that the blood tests taken were accurate, regrettably there is nothing further that I can offer him, other than considering the matter via the deregulation route to find out whether some of the White Paper's proposals can be brought into force.
I thank my hon. Friend again for bringing this matter forward for consideration, and I am sorry to have had to give him this answer, which is undoubtedly not as positive as he would have liked.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-six minutes past Twelve midnight.
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