Cardiff woman calls for death certificates to be issued in Welsh | UK News

A bereaved woman has said her fight to get a death certificate in Welsh following the loss of her husband had been frustrating, emotional and draining.

Afryl Davies, 65, from Cardiff, is calling for the right for birth, marriage and death certificates to be issued in Welsh “in honour” of her husband Aled Glynne Davies.

Cardiff West MP Alex Barros-Curtis is pushing to get a law passed that would also make certificates issued in Wales bilingual by default, as well as giving people in England the choice.

Mrs Davies said the change was important for her and her family, as well as “everybody in Wales or beyond”.

The UK government has been asked to comment.

Mrs Davies was married to her husband for 41 years before his death in December 2022.

The couple were both first language Welsh speakers who worked in Welsh, spoke Welsh at home with their family and registered every significant life event including their wedding and the birth of their children bilingually.

“He was very passionate about taking the Welsh language to everybody in Wales. That was his mission… that the Welsh language belonged to everybody,” she said.

Mrs Davies said she received an English death certificate for her husband after an inquest was heard in Welsh.

She discovered that as the registrar did not speak Welsh and could not understand the Welsh on the coroner’s certificate, they were legally required to issue it in English.

Laws dating to the 1950s and 1960s state births and deaths can be registered in Welsh and English only where the registrar can speak and understand Welsh.

Welsh-only certificates are not currently allowed and registration in England is currently only possible in English.

Mrs Davies said she requested a Welsh certificate, but the General Register Office explained “that they will not or cannot, they said, re-register the death”.

Mrs Davies said the register office had offered to add the Welsh language to the certificate if she raised the issue as an “error”, but that it would be “in a little box at the bottom of Aled’s certificate, which would be so small you could hardly read it”.

She said: “My language is not a clerical error, it’s part of me, it’s my soul. It’s who I am. It’s who Aled was, it’s who our family is, it’s who you relate to and the Welsh language is a massive part of that.

“Why am I having to fight for this in 2025? It’s ridiculous.”

Mrs Davies said she had been stopped in the street by people encouraging her to carry on her work.

“You are battling against people who really don’t understand,” she said.

“It’s just very, very tiring, very exhausting, your emotions are all over the place.”

The fight to get a Welsh language death certificate has taken Mrs Davies all the way to the High Court, as well as turning to her constituency MP for Cardiff West.

He said he was “grateful” to Mrs Davies and her family for “channelling their grief from their really tragic circumstance into this kind of cause for action”.

Barros-Curtis said he was surprised to learn it was not already law to ensure certificates were issued in Welsh.

He said: “In 2025 that just seems completely mad, we should have respect for the Welsh language, for our Welsh customs, and at the very least, the ability for there to be by default, bilingual death, birth, and marriage certificates.”

This week in parliament, the MP made a speech using the 10-minute rule to try and get the law changed, with Mrs Davies watching from the gallery.

In it, he called for certificates where requested, to be issued in Welsh or English only.

• As a backbencher, Ten Minute Bills are one of the two ways to introduce legislation, but just 16 have become law since 1983.
• Under the proposed law, events which have not already been registered bilingually in Wales would be required to be translated into Welsh by the General Register Office.
• Barros-Curtis’ proposals, which are supported by both Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru MPs, go further than previous ones. When birth or death certificates are issued in England, it would allow people the right to receive them in Welsh only, English only or bilingually too, as many people in Wales receive cross-border care.
• Birth certificates would be allowed where either parent named on the certificate is a Welsh speaker, and death certificates where the deceased person lived in Wales, was from Wales, was a Welsh speaker or for similar purposes.

Proposals to change the law around the registration of births and deaths have a long history in Parliament.

They were first passed in the Lords in 1999 by the Plaid Cymru peer Lord Dafydd Elis Thomas, and moved to the House of Commons by the then-Clwyd West Labour MP Gareth Thomas in the same year, but time ran out before they could become law.

Plans to allow the certificates were published in 2002 but legislation was not passed, and Caernarfon’s Plaid Cymru MP Hywel Williams tried and failed again to get the law changed in 2009.

Mrs Davies said she would keep on pushing for a change in the law on behalf of Aled and her family.

“Aled always passionately believed in the underdog and the people who weren’t heard, and he worked quietly and tirelessly for those people,” she said.

“I am doing that now in his name, to honour his name. I know he would be behind me all the way because it’s just something that we feel we should have.

“It’s a right and I feel very passionately about it, and I’ll keep on fighting.”