THE paper trail that leads from the cradle to the grave is coming to an end. The certificates recording the day we utter that first cry, exchange our marriage vows and draw our last breath could be gone within two years.

Instead, the Government intends that the hatch, match and dispatch details of every citizen should be recorded on a computer database.

The old parish registers, with their hidden family histories, will lose their legal standing; no longer will bride and groom sign the great red book during their wedding ceremony; new parents and bereaved relatives will not have to trek to the local register office to report the arrival or departure.

Birth, marriage and death certificates will all be abolished and anyone who wants or needs to know that we are who we say we are — whether genealogist or passport official — will be able to find out by logging on.

The proposed switch to paperless records has been set out in a government consultation document on the way births, marriages and deaths are registered. People will not have to visit their home town registrar in person to record life’s milestones; they will be able to register births and deaths at any convenient office or by telephone or internet.

The changes are being introduced “to make the system more efficient” and to give people more flexibility and choice. But they are already being seen as another plank in the “big brother” edifice, alongside plans for compulsory ID cards and police calls for a national DNA database.

Whitehall sources insisted last night that the registration changes were not linked to David Blunkett’s plans for identity cards, which would require a separate database. But the moves are causing alarm among civil liberties groups. A spokesman for Liberty demanded that the Government be much more open about its intentions and the longer term consequences of information being put on central computers. “The worrying thing is that the Government seems totally committed to getting as much information as it can about us with the intention of setting up national databases. There are always civil liberties issues about the state accumulating more and more information about its citizens.”

There are also concerns that digital information is difficult to authenticate and more easily altered than signed paper records. Librarians point out that paper is always preferred to digital formats because it is guaranteed to last — some documents at the British Library are almost 2,000 years old.

One effect of the proposals 150-year-old tradition of the bridal couple signing the register during a church wedding would die. Instead, they would sign a “schedule” after the ceremony and would then be required to send it to the local registrar for inputting on to the database.

Church leaders who will debate the changes next July are, however, reluctant to abandon a much-loved wedding tradition and are considering introducing Church legislation to force clergy to continue to keep registers of their own, even though they would have no more legal standing than baptismal records.

The review of the civil registration service, which follows publication of a White Paper last year, has been running in parallel with the Church of England’s review of its marriage laws, which could mean an end to the publishing of banns. Couples could be allowed to marry in churches outside their parish and time restrictions for services could be lifted to allow candlelit weddings at midnight.

The consultation document circulated in July also suggests that it should be a legal requirement for couples to assent verbally to the marriage in front of the celebrant and witnesses. This is being debated by the Orthodox Jewish community, where women remain silent in marriages.

The White Paper has already proposed allowing homosexual men and women to register the deaths of their partners — at present only a close relative may register a death — and opened the way for a scheme to register gay partnerships.

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