Delivering vital change
This is the response of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) to the consultation proposing a new civil registration system for England and Wales.
Founded in 1922, The FIEC is an association of 465 churches, 420 of them in England and Wales, with a combined membership of 21,000 and a total attendance at Sunday worship in excess of 30,000.
The paragraph numbers in the text below refer to numbered sections of the consultation document Civil Registration: Delivering Vital Change published by the General Register Office.
1. The method for implementing reform
We are concerned that proposed far-reaching changes to this unique aspect of our national life and order are being introduced by Regulatory Reform Order rather than by Act of Parliament. This conveys the message that the changes envisaged are purely bureaucratic and procedural, whereas in a number of respects they alter fundamentally the relationship between the individual and collective society and the character of our social accountability.
2. The registration of deaths
2.1 Persons eligible to register a death
Under paragraph 2.4.13 it is proposed that a “partner” (opposite sex or same sex) will be permitted to register the death of a person. We have no objection to the extension of the categories of persons permitted to register a death, provided that the enabling of persons within these categories to register a death do not convey, or allow to be presumed, any status or rights in any other connection.
2.2 The investigation of unexplained deaths
Death is a vital part of God’s providence, and we would want to support any step which takes death, and the circumstances of individual deaths, seriously. We look forward to considering the proposals referred to in paragraph 2.4.17 in order to offer support to a strong and reliable system for the investigation of deaths where necessary, and a safe system of certification.
3. The registration of marriages
3.1 The suitability of venues for marriage ceremonies
While we note (paragraph 3.4.30) that religious groups will be enabled to impose their own restrictions on their own appointed celebrants, the abandonment of the present venue-based licensing system (paragraph 3.4.25), and the lack of any definite criteria for judging the suitability of a venue (paragraph 3.4.27) will open the way for frivolous venues to be chosen for wedding ceremonies, thus trivialising marriage. In moving to a celebrant-based licensing system, we do not see why the regulations should not also specify the type of building in which a marriage can take place. This would remove the workload involved with registering individual premises, but would also rule out the option of choosing to marry in bizarre circumstances and environments - contexts which demean marriage and threaten its public esteem.
3.2 The right of individual congregations to appoint celebrants
In paragraph 3.4.26 we note that no reference is made to individual congregations which are independent of any association or denomination. However paragraph 3.4.29 refers to “religious celebrants (belonging) to a group or denomination that could be said to be a religious body, defined as an organised group of people meeting regularly for common religious worship.” We assume that the use of the term “group” in 3.4.29 is intended to refer to an individual congregation and that therefore the minister of that congregation, or the church officers on his behalf, would be able to apply for “celebrant” status in order to officiate at marriages in his church, as is the present practice in Scotland. Any other interpretation of this wording would create a situation which would discriminate unjustly, unnecessarily and inefficiently against independent churches and their members.
3.3 Proposed amendments to the wording to be used within the marriage service
3.3.1 The loss of the declaratory wording
It seems odd to remove the compulsory declaratory words at the same time as an obligation is imposed for the first time on the celebrant to declare a couple to be married. It is odd because if it turns out that one of the parties is not free to marry, and the marriage is void, then the compulsory declaration of the couple as husband and wife will be meaningless.
In order to uphold and strengthen civil and social regard for the integrity of marriage, any new legally-required declaration, pronouncing a couple to be husband and wife, should be backed up by a declaration by each of the parties, of equal status and subject to equal sanction, affirming freedom to marry.
3.3.2 The contracting words
We do not accept that it is appropriate for the contracting words to be a matter of decision between the parties and the celebrant. Although in the overwhelming majority of cases the dignity and suitability of the words used will be protected by the requirement for them to be agreed between the couple and the celebrant, there will be occasions where all the parties are misguided enough to use wording which is flippant, inappropriate or distasteful. Leaving the door open to such abuses would make the dignity of marriage a hostage to fortune, as a tiny exhibitionist minority will deliberately exploit this new-found liberty in order to be the first couple to cross a particular frontier of taste and decency. As such an event will fascinate a tabloid press always seeking novelty, the resulting publicity will further trivialise the institution of marriage itself. We do not think that the regulations should provide for this form of self-indulgence. The consultation document presupposes a desire that “everyone is treated equally” (3.4.74). There is no greater equality, nor any better safeguard, than a prescribed form of words. We recommend that a contemporary rendering of prescribed contracting words is retained.
3.4 The recording of the gender of the parties to a marriage
In paragraph 3.4.112, we note the explicit intention to remove the gender of the bride and groom from the information to be recorded (cf. 3.4.93). The only reason for this new omission seems to be to pave the way for marriages involving a party whose birth sex may have been officially altered under the provisions of the proposed Gender Recognition Bill.
If any such arrangement does come about it will make it possible for two people of the same biological sex to marry and end the long period of history in which under the law of England and Wales marriage has been recognised as “the union of one man and one woman.”
We do not recognise that a true change of sex is biologically possible, nor that the legal definition of gender can be logically based on anything other than biological sex. We believe it to be foolhardy for the registration system to attempt to be a party to pretending that it is. Any such connivance is a threat to the reputation, sanctity and meaning of marriage, and we would urge that this section be reconsidered and that the recording of the gender of the two parties to a marriage should be retained.
4. Arrangements for authorising the amendment of records
It seems to us that the proposals for authorising the correction and amendment of records (paragraph 5.3.9), are satisfactory. It is essential that changes are not authorised lightly nor inconsistently. We support a clear definition of what constitutes simple errors and omissions (able to be remedied locally or centrally on the authority of a given grade of officer) and agree that more complex errors, where there may be dispute or sensitivity over fact, should be resolved only centrally. This appears to give due seriousness to the issues likely to be in question.
5. The phasing out of certificates
In 6.4.22 it is envisaged that birth, marriage and death certificates will be phased out. We see this as a step which will greatly damage our national perception of family and society, for the following reasons:
(a) In our view the role of certificates has been a strength to family cohesion and individual certainty and self-identity, the loss of which would be profound. One only has to visit the Family Records Centre in Finsbury Park to realise how great an influence the certificate system has over the definition and understanding of family within our national mores;
(b) Transferring the emphasis from tangible certificates to electronic information will effectively move the bias of information from the individual and family to the State. The government needs information in order to perform its many functions, but it does not require that it should be commonly assumed that the State “owns” all information. Ending the certificate system will deprive society of an important means of affirming identity and relationships at family level, and will encourage the view that information belongs more to the State than to the people.
(c) Ending certificates will remove much of the mystique, uniqueness and dignity associated with the present system - characteristics which strengthen the perceived significance of birth, marriage and death and act as a stabilising influence within society. Logging in, double-clicking and pressing the ‘submit’button will not enhance the wonder of birth nor remotely reflect the impact of bereavement. The proposals create a procedure in which moment is utterly eclipsed by function.
(d) There is no evidence of any great public clamour that the certificate system should be ended. The only motive seems to be the saving of administrative cost, and if that is the single reason then it represents a blinkered attitude to the wider issues involved.
The proposals in the consultation document do reflect the cheapening of life which is characteristic of modern society, but downgrade is neither inescapable nor compulsory. The government should be able to recognise the reality and significance of the intangible losses which will result from the proposals as they stand.
We recommend that while the use of electronic systems for data analysis, statistical and other in-house purposes should be encouraged, the paper certification system should be retained for the benefit it gives to personal and family identity, and to the structure and stability of society.
6. Safeguarding the staff of the registration service
In paragraph 10.1.6 it is envisaged that the staff which operate the new registration system will be employees of local authorities. Depending on the progress of other legislation, there may well soon be circumstances in which an individual employee will have a conscientious objection to taking part in a procedure, such as a civil partnership commitment between two people of the same sex, or marriages involving a transsexual. Nothing is said in the proposals about any arrangement to protect existing registration staff in that event, nor what will apply to newly-recruited staff. It was not difficult to anticipate this as a problem area, and the failure of the consultation document to address this point is a serious omission.
We recommend that the government should give clear guidance to local authorities in this connection, and that this guidance should give full protection to existing and newly-recruited staff where issues of conscience are involved. The guidance should not allow for any discrimination against staff who have a conscientious objection to participating in certain aspects of the registration process. Nor should it give local authorities any discretion over how to handle this type of circumstance.
Submitted by Rod Badams, FIEC Administrator, on behalf of the FIEC Social Issues Team.
FIEC, 3 Church Road, Croydon CR0 1SG. Tel. 020 8681 7422.
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