Council nets permission from judge to register birth of child against fundamental philosophical opposition of father

A London borough has secured permission from a High Court judge to register the birth of a child, in the face of the father’s fundamental philosophical opposition.

The issue of registering the child’s birth arose in T (A child), Re [2019] EWHC 1572 (Fam) during case management. The child T, born in the Spring of 2019, is the subject of care proceedings. There is an interim care order in favour of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

Mr Justice Hayden said the child and parents are presently subject to a Residential Assessment, under the aegis of Section 38 (6) Children Act 1989.

The birth of T had not been registered. The judge said: “It is important to clarify that this is not by omission but by design. F is fundamentally opposed to registration…. The position of M, as explained by her counsel, Mr Clark, is that whilst she is not prepared to register T's birth herself, she is not opposed to somebody else registering it on her behalf. F is philosophically opposed in principle.”

The father’s opposition is based on his strong beliefs surrounding the concept of "sovereignty".

Mr Justice Hayden said: “This is a very particular concept for him. It has nothing at all to do with contemporary debate. It is essentially a personal ideology. F believes that central to the concept is the power and writ of the individual. 'We are each…', he says, 'our own sovereign. We come from the Earth, we are the creations of the universe. We are governed by a Common Law but only to the extent that we depart from three principles. These three imperatives are: to do no harm; to cause no loss; to inflict no injury.' In circumstances where they are proved to have occurred, to the criminal standard of proof, F asserts that what he calls the Common Law is then triggered.”

The father placed great emphasis on The Cestui Cue Vie Act 1666, the judge said.

“In the 1666 Act Section 1, F tells me, there are provisions which state 'that if a title or living being does not prove themselves alive after 7 years they are considered lost at sea. This is the means for government to take control of the dead entity's property.' F believes this to be the route by which the government 'help themselves to money and property.' We are in such circumstances considered 'dead entity in the eyes of the law.'

“In a graphic and powerful metaphor F states to me that we 'come to life and are temporarily risen from the dead when summonsed to court'. The requirement to 'all rise' when the judge enters the court is symbolic of rising for the resurrection. These views may sound unusual and somewhat eccentric. They are, however, genuinely held and I have done my best to summarise them.”

Mr Justice Hayden continued: “It is in this context that when a birth is registered, F considers this to be the equivalent of an 'entry into a ship's manifest', in which the child becomes 'an asset to the country which has boarded a vessel to sail on the high seas.' This facet of admiralty and maritime law is pervasive in F's thinking. The essence of F's objection is his belief that registration will cause his son to become controlled by a State which he perceives to be authoritarian and capricious.”

The judge said T had been given a name and surname but F strenuously resisted registration. “This is notwithstanding that a failure to do so is, in a variety of practical ways, likely to serve as an impediment to the promotion of T's welfare as well as to have an adverse impact on F's own legal status.”

In this case, the forty-two-day period for registration had ended. It was manifestly in T's best interest for his birth to be registered, in order that he might be recognised as a citizen and entitled to the benefits of such citizenship, Mr Justice Hayden said.

“It is also in his interests that his father should, especially during the course of these proceedings, have Parental Responsibility for him. F's previous behaviour towards HHJ Atkinson resulted in both he and his partner receiving a custodial sentence. This does not prevent him from obtaining Parental Responsibility, it is an order that reflects T's rights.”

The judge said he was “satisfied that the Local Authority may intervene to assert its own Parental Responsibility as a 'qualified informant' to register the birth and that the Interim Care Order embraces them as 'any person having charge of a child within the meaning of s.1 (D) of Birth and Deaths Registration Act 1953’. In these circumstances the Local Authority is the institutional parent.

Counsel for Tower Hamlets suggested that the Court may wish 'to augment this' by making an order authorising the local authority to register the birth under Section 100 of the Children Act 1989. He suggested that this "may in effect be a 'safety net' if the above reasoning is in doubt in some way.”

However, Mr Justice Hayden said it required to be stated that “such an order is inconsistent with my conclusion that Section 33 (3) CA 1989 is apt to address the requirement for registration”.

The judge had earlier in his ruling noted that it was “axiomatic that the effect of the making of a care order or interim care order, pursuant to section 33(3) CA 1989, grants a Local Authority Parental Responsibility.”

Section 33(3)(b) goes further, the judge said, “as it not only allows a local authority to share Parental Responsibility with a parent, but, additionally, gives it the power to:

"determine the extent to which a parent may meet his parental responsibility for the child."