Commentary on provisions of Act Section 1: Marriage Registration
Subsection 1(1) empowers the Secretary of State to make regulations which amend the Marriage Act 1949 (the 1949 Act) for a system under which details relating to marriages in England and Wales will be recorded in documents used in marriage procedures and be entered onto an electronically accessible central register.
	Subsection (2) sets out amendments that the regulations may, in particular, make to the 1949 Act:
	Paragraph (a) enables the replacement of the existing superintendent registrar’s certificates for marriage (which serve as the authority for the marriage to proceed after civil preliminaries) with a marriage "schedule", which will function not only as the authority for the marriage, but also as the document the parties sign at the solemnization (instead of a register book) and which records the particulars to be registered.
	Paragraph (b) makes similar provision for marriages following ecclesiastical preliminaries, providing for a document that will form the basis of the registration of (although not the authority for) a marriage conducted according to the rites of the Church of England or Church in Wales.
	Paragraphs (c), (d) and (f) enable the amendments to provide for the signing of the above-mentioned documents, their delivery to a registrar, and the registration of the particulars they contain.
	Paragraph (e) enables amendments to be made to require the Registrar General to maintain a marriage register, which will replace the bound marriage register books currently held in register offices but also in some 30,000 churches and other religious buildings.
	Paragraph (g) enables the regulations to amend the 1949 Act to remove provisions in the 1949 Act which are no longer required under the new system of marriage registration.
	Subsection (3) empowers the Secretary of State to amend the 1949 Act to create a specific criminal offence, aimed at enforcing the registration of marriages. This offence is to be modelled on section 24(2)(e) of the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977. If a signed schedule or marriage document is not delivered to the registrar to be registered within a certain timescale, the registrar may require a party to the marriage to attend personally at the register office for the purpose of delivering the signed document. Subsection (3) enables the regulations to provide that failure to attend constitutes a criminal offence. The maximum penalty (a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale, currently £1000) is specified in the Act.
	Subsection (4) empowers the Secretary of State to sub-delegate certain administrative aspects of the registration provisions to regulations made by the Registrar General under section 74(1) of the 1949 Act with the approval of the Secretary of State. The provisions that may be delegated are:
	The power to prescribe the form and content of documents including the marriage schedule and marriage document. These documents will include the particulars to be registered in respect of each marriage. This power is also likely to be used to prescribe notices to be given by the registrar to the parties to the marriage in the event that a signed marriage schedule or document is not delivered for registration.
	The power to make provision in relation to corrections to, or the re-issue of a marriage schedule or marriage document before the marriage is solemnized. Such provision will be necessary to enable the re-issue of documents that have been lost or damaged, or to enable corrections in case of error or where a party's details have changed, for example.
	The power to make provision in relation to the keeping of a signed marriage schedule or document after the particulars set out in it have been entered in the marriage register. It is likely that the signed documents will be retained either by the Registrar General (as is the case for civil partnerships) or by superintendent registrars.
	The power to make provision in relation to corrections to entries in the marriage register or a pre-commencement marriage register book.
	The power to make provision in relation to the keeping of pre-commencement register books, for example whether they should remain in the custody of those who currently hold them (such as members of the clergy and persons authorised by other religious groups).
	The power to make provision in relation to the keeping in a church or chapel of records of marriages solemnized according to the rites of the Church of England.
	Subsection (5) clarifies that provision in relation to the keeping of books, documents or other records (such as signed marriage schedules, or records held by the Church of England) may specify who may keep them and how they must be stored, and the circumstances in which the book, document or other record must be annotated. This might be used to require pre-commencement marriage register books to be marked to show that they are no longer in use. Subsection (5)(c) also enables the regulations to require books, documents or other records to be sent to the Registrar General or a superintendent registrar.
	Subsection (6) places a time limit on the Secretary of State’s use of the power to amend primary legislation to a period of three years beginning on the day the regulations are first made.
	The content in subsection (7) is self-explanatory.