How much work do you think is involved in producing the certificate ? Would you do it for that ? Don't forget that the £7 includes postage, which is pretty good for this country, and an absolute bargain for those outside the UK. Can someone remind me - how much do the Americans and Australians charge for their certificates, and do they have a 5 day turnaround ?
No-one is suggesting that all governments do not like to charge family history adicts as much as the passing traffic will bear. However, it is a government law (in all the countries you mention) that births deaths and marriages be registered, so I see no reason why the production of an additional record of this, has to cover the actual cost of the registration. That will happen (and did happen - regardless of how many copies of the certificate have or will be produced.)
In most instances all that is required for our purposes is a photocopy/transcript or scan of the image. Why the law has to treat this as a certified, important and expensive event is beyond me.
In Australia, at least the certificate purchased - also for an exhorbitant amount - contains 10 times the information as is given on an English certificate - for a death, probably 20 times as much - so perhaps it would suit your "customer pays" approach that Australian certificates cost 10 or 20 times more than English ones.
In Australia in many states, it is law that the passage of a will through the courts of the land, requires a death certificate to be included (more money to the BDM registry). The advantage of this to the family historian - for the cost of a photocopy, one can obtain from the archives that have the will, an uncertified death certificate. If one has the time to transcribe it, or the archive has scanning equipment available, the $ cost is zero.
The idea of the petition is to allow access to the registers for other than "certified" information. It may not succeed, but I hope it helps the move towards a change in the law that specifies all copies MUST be certified.
Trish
