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Joint Birth Registration: promoting parental responsibility. Response to DWP consultation
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September 2007
Download the full response below
Introduction
1. This consultation on proposals to require joint birth registration is premature. The Department has commissioned important research from the National Centre for Social Research looking at the attitudes of unmarried parents to birth registration, interviewing both sole and joint registrants. The consultation document can only draw on "preliminary analysis of a partial data set" for its findings. The consultation document also draws on an unpublished analysis of the Millenium Cohort Study to describe the characteristics of unmarried mothers who register births solely. Those invited to comment on the Government's proposals have had no access to the research cited, and which -- in the case of the research by NatCen - has not yet been completed. US evidence cited in support of compulsory joint registration of births is, in fact, far less conclusive than the consultation document suggests. Overall, we have concluded that there is insufficient evidence at present to support the case for a legal requirement that births be jointly registered.
2. Behind these proposals lies a real and important issue: how to persuade fathers - particularly young fathers - to acknowledge their role as parents, and to participate in their children's upbringing. However, we consider that a system, which could potentially fine some fathers who fail to register paternity and require mothers to name the father to a Registrar or explain why not, is a heavy-handed approach which is unlikely to achieve the intended purpose, whilst leading to a diminution of trust between parents and Registrars.
3. It has been suggested to us that legislative change by itself would "send a signal," by itself promoting cultural change; and that a "light-touch" would be applied in practice to enforce the rules. We are against using Parliamentary time to pass a law which is merely intended as a gesture and where there is no intention to enforce it. Rather, we would like to see time, effort and investment go into active engagement with new and prospective parents - particularly fathers - to persuade them positively of the case for parental involvement. Joint registration, rather than being seen as an end in itself, thus becomes part of a larger continuing engagement.
4. Only a small proportion of births outside marriage are not jointly registered. That proportion has risen from 40 per cent in 1964 to 84 per cent in 2005 - and the trend is upwards. It was only in December 2003 that unmarried fathers who were named on the birth certificate acquired automatic parental responsibility. This is likely to increase the proportion of jointly registered births in future years. Only seven per cent of all births are registered by one parent alone. This is a small and diminishing issue.
Download the reply to the questions posed by the consultation exercise below.
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