Be it enacted by the King’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows :-

1.-(I) Any person shall, on payment of a fee of sixpence and on furnishing the prescribed particulars, be entitled to obtain from the Registrar General, a superintendent registrar or a registrar a certificate in the prescribed form of the birth of any person compiled from the records and registers in the custody of the Registrar General, or from the registers in the custody of that superintendent registrar or registrar, as the case may be.

(2) The power conferred by section forty-four of the Births and Deaths Registration Act, 1874, on the Minister of Health, or the Registrar General with the consent of the Minister of Health, to make regulations shall include power to make regulations prescribing the forms of certificate to be issued under this section, the particulars to be furnished by applicants for certificates thereunder, the manner in which those certificates are to be compiled, and the particulars which are to be contained therein, so, however, that no certificate issued under this section shall include any particulars except the name, surname, sex and date of birth and such other particulars, if any, as may be prescribed, not being particulars relating to parentage or adoption.

2.-(I) This Act may be cited as the Births and Deaths Registration Act, 1947, and shall be construed as one with the Births and Deaths Registration Acts, 1836 to 1929, and those Acts and this Act may be cited together as the Births and Deaths Registration Acts, 1836 to 1947.

(2) This Act shall come into force on the first day of January, nineteen hundred and forty-eight, or such earlier date as His Majesty may by Order in Council appoint.

(3) This Act shall not extend to Scotland or Northern Ireland