asked the Minister of Health by what criteria the Registrar-General in Somerset House grants and refuses permission for historians and genealogists to consult the census records subsequent to 1851.

Information from these records up to 1921 is supplied only with the consent of the parties concerned or their descendants.

Is my hon. Friend aware that my understanding is that up to and including 1851 these records are available to anybody and that many researchers understood that as soon as a hundred years had passed they would be open to them? The 1861 returns have not yet been revealed, which is an annoyance and an embarrassment, apparently, to many researchers.

There was no pledge of confidentiality, I understand, for censuses up to 1851, but for the succeeding decades such a pledge has been given and the records are available only for specific purposes.

Is that in perpetuity? Does that pledge last for ever?

Not necessarily. I think that perhaps at the end of a hundred years the matter might be considered, but it is a matter for the Public Record Office.

Will my hon. Friend answer a Question about it in a hundred years' time?

I should love to.