Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has considered altering the format of birth certificates to enable the parents to decide in which order their names are listed.

The Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, and associated regulations, prescribe the information to be recorded in a birth entry in England and Wales and a birth certificate is a certified copy of that entry. The order in which the parents’ details are recorded on a register page does not give either parent precedence or greater significance, and there are currently no plans to redesign the birth register format or the birth certificate.