DCSF issues consultation on new rules widening birth registration requirements to both mother and father where they are unmarried and not acting together
The DCSF has published a consultation that seeks to require the unmarried parents of child to provide information so that they are both entered on the birth register. The proposed Registration of Births (Parents Not Married And Not Acting Together) Regulations 2010, to be introduced in the Welfare Reform Bill, will amend the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 to
"set out the detailed processes through which registration takes place in cases where parents who are not married to each other cannot or will not co-operate to jointly register their child's birth, or where the child's paternity is disputed. In particular, they describe:
- How a mother who attends the register office alone complies with the duty to provide information about the child's father;
- The process to be followed by the registrar and the alleged father with the aim of obtaining and recording the father's details on the birth register;
- The special circumstances in which a birth may be registered by the mother alone before the father's details have been obtained;
- The process for allowing a father to request - in advance of registration - that his details be entered on the register, and for his claim to paternity to be verified;
- The processes for allowing either parent to request - once the birth has been registered - that the name of the father be included on the register, and for the father's paternity to be verified; and
- How the results of a paternity test may be used for the purposes of registration."
Dawn Primarolo, the Children's Minister, announcing the changes stated that the Government wanted to
"move away from a separated partner becoming the ‘invisible parent’ in a child’s life and through registering at this key milestone in their child’s life both parents can make a long-term commitment to the child.”