"My sister-in-law needed no ID, no evidence that she had recently been pregnant, nothing. She could have got any of her friends to take Noah up to the town hall and register him for her."

Nope. On two counts.

Firstly, there is a paperwork hurdle: the health official (either at the hospital, or the midwife who deals with you at home or whatever) who deals with the baby as it is born fills out two forms. One is submitted direct to the registrar and one is given to the parents or whoever. You have to provide this form when you register the baby. Which is why no ID is necessary - all the key details - notably the names of the baby's parents - are already known and cannot be changed at the point of registration.

The paperwork is very specific: a friend of mine was turned away from the Chelsea and Westminster because they said she wasn't in productive labour (we suspect that the labour suite was full...) and ended up giving birth on her kitchen floor. Net result, baby had to be registered at Hammersmith Town hall, not Fulham, because the baby was ACTUALLY born on the other side of the borough boundary.

Secondly, you don't need the baby. The mother or father can just pitch up with the relevant form. Pitch up with a baby about which the registrar knows nothing and there are going to be some awkward social services questions about why said baby has not been checked, given its Vitamin K jab (within seconds of birth) or any of the other good things that happen immediately a baby is born.

Hmm. OK, I shall check some of this.

This friend of yours, by the way... she gave birth on her kitchen floor with a health official present, who filled out two forms? Even if she did, I'm sure there are those who don't. We regularly read in the news about women giving birth in the backs of taxis, on boats, in remote cottages cut off in the middle of snowstorms, etc. Which means that "There was no health official present to fill out the forms" is a perfectly valid and believable lie.


> Which is why no ID is necessary - all the key details - notably the names of the baby's parents - are already known and cannot be changed at the point of registration.

Surely the point isn't whether the registrar knows the name of the parent; it is whether the person registering the baby is that person. I don't see what security measure is served by a bureaucrat having a piece of paper with the name "Simon Smith" on it and my saying to them "Why, yes, I am Simon Smith," if they don't ask me for proof of ID. I could be lying.

OK, I've checked with my wife, who went with my sister-in-law, and she confirms what shocked them and what prompted me to blog: absolutely nothing was needed. They didn't need to hand over any sort of form. She just turned up and said "I am Squander Two's sister-in-law and I want to name this baby Noah."

Hmmm...

A couple of minor things: the health official being present "at the birth": you get the gist - a doctor or midwife needs to deal with the thing pretty sharpish (i.e. not "roughly within a day or two" - like NOW/within hours kind of stuff) - if a baby has been delivered other than by a midwife/doctor/ambulance crew the balloon really goes up.

We can check with Tom Reynolds or Doctor C the exact process. Which deals with the paperwork already being at the registrar.

The other side of it is, I agree, something else. But I'm sure (three times, three different registrars) that we brought our copy of the midwife's forms.

you only have a month (in Scotland, it's a bit longer in England, but you can't then change the name, which you can in Scotland until the baby is 6 months old) to register the birth.

So for your fraud to work, you have to be able to get to the registrar before the real parents. You then have to keep your head down when the real parents turn up - fairly soon afterwards - and find out that their child has already been - fraudulently - registered. At which point the fraudulent birth certificate can presumably be cancelled.

One would hope (yeah right) that the passport office would be able to check that the paper certificate is valid by checking against a computer record of the registration, at which point it would be clear that a second crime had been committed, and we would have either the actual person (because he has turned up in person to the passport office) or his address (whence he expects the -fraudulent - passport to be delivered).

Job done. Assuming, of course, that the authorities are a) diligent and b) competent.

Perhaps you have a point...

> I'm sure (three times, three different registrars) that we brought our copy of the midwife's forms.

Could be different in Northern Ireland, I suppose. Or, more likely, they were supposed to ask for my sister-in-law's form but didn't bother. There's no security you can introduce that individual employees can't fuck up.

Just to put this in context, a couple tried to steal a five-day-old baby round here a few days ago. The woman posed as a health visitor to get access to the house and the mother actually handed the baby over to her before she got suspicious and asked for ID. They've not been caught.

At five days old, it's a good bet the kid hadn't been registered. And the would-be kidnappers knew the mother's name and address and that she'd just given birth. As far as I can see the system is secure as long as (a) the kidnapper doesn't have supposedly private information and (b) the kidnapper doesn't have the brazen confidence to just walk into the town hall and act like everything's OK. This team had both.

Do they take a picture of the baby's ears? Because the ear windlings are as unique as a fingerprint and I don't *think* they change from zero to five years.

Not as such, no: while the ears are no doubt in the photo, they're only pictured from the front, so no use for ID.