The Registrar General must continue to maintain in the General Register Office a register, to be called the Adopted Children Register.

The Adopted Children Register is not to be open to public inspection or search.

A certified copy of an entry in the Adopted Children Register, if purporting to be sealed or stamped with the seal of the General Register Office, is to be received as evidence of the adoption to which it relates without further or other proof.

Schedule 1 (registration of adoptions and the amendment of adoption orders) is to have effect.

The Registrar General must continue to maintain at the General Register Office an index of the Adopted Children Register.

But a person is not entitled to have a certified copy of an entry in the Adopted Children Register relating to an adopted person who has not attained the age of 18 years unless the applicant has provided the Registrar General with the prescribed particulars.

The Registrar General must make traceable the connection between any entry in the registers of live-births or other records which has been marked “Adopted” and any corresponding entry in the Adopted Children Register.

Information kept by the Registrar General for the purposes of subsection (1) is not to be open to public inspection or search.

Any such information, and any other information which would enable an adopted person to obtain a certified copy of the record of his birth, may only be disclosed by the Registrar General in accordance with this section.

In relation to a person adopted before the appointed day the court may, in exceptional circumstances, order the Registrar General to give any information mentioned in subsection (3) to a person.

On an application made in the prescribed manner by the appropriate adoption agency in respect of an adopted person a record of whose birth is kept by the Registrar General, the Registrar General must give the agency any information relating to the adopted person which is mentioned in subsection (3).

In relation to a person adopted before the appointed day, Schedule 2 applies instead of subsection (5).

Before the Registrar General gives any information by virtue of this section, any prescribed fee which he has demanded must be paid.

In this section—

• “appointed day” means the day appointed for the commencement of sections 56 to 65,

• “prescribed” means prescribed by regulations made by the Registrar General with the approval of F6the Secretary of State.

The Registrar General must continue to maintain at the General Register Office in accordance with regulations a register in two Parts to be called the Adoption Contact Register.

Part 1 of the register is to contain the prescribed information about adopted persons who have given the prescribed notice expressing their wishes as to making contact with their relatives.

Part 2 of the register is to contain the prescribed information about persons who have given the prescribed notice expressing their wishes, as relatives of adopted persons, as to making contact with those persons.

The Adoption Contact Register is not to be open to public inspection or search.

In section 80, “relative”, in relation to an adopted person, means any person who (but for his adoption) would be related to him by blood (including half-blood) F4, marriage or civil partnership.

The Registrar General must not give any information entered in the register to any person except in accordance with subsection (6)(a) of that section or regulations made by virtue of section 64(4)(b).

In section 80, “regulations” means regulations made by the Registrar General with the approval of F7the Secretary of State, and “prescribed” means prescribed by such regulations.

In this Chapter—

• “records” includes certified copies kept by the Registrar General of entries in any register of births,

• “registers of live-births” means the registers of live-births made under the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 (c. 20).

Any register, record or index maintained under this Chapter may be maintained in any form the Registrar General considers appropriate; and references (however expressed) to entries in such a register, or to their amendment, marking or cancellation, are to be read accordingly.