by STEVE DOUGHTY, Daily Mail

Unmarried fathers are to be given full parental rights, as long as they register the baby's birth jointly with the mother.

A change in the law announced yesterday will mean that, for the first time, they will be automatically entitled to a say in their children's schooling and medical treatment, and will have the right to see them regularly if they part from the mother.

Ministers say this will encourage them to show more commitment to their families.

Until now the rights have been available only to married fathers or those who made a special application for a 'parental responsibility agree-ment' shared with the mothers. Few bothered to apply.

The changes - which the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, has been promising for three years - were slipped into the Adoption and Children Bill now going through the Commons.

The clause will alter the existing law - enshrined in the the 1989 Children Act - and give rights to unmarried fathers who sign the birth register 'without further formality'.

Registration of a child by both an unmarried mother and father has long been considered by Whitehall as a sign that the couple are both committed to their child - an assumption hotly disputed by critics of the Government's family policies.

The change will please some Ministers who have been pressing strongly for parental rights to be extended to remove the importance of marriage.

It will also satisfy the demands of men's pressure groups such as Families Need Fathers which insist that fathers of broken families are too often excluded from the children's lives by mothers.

Lord Chancellor's Department Minister Jane Kennedy said: 'It is only fair that the same rights of parental responsibility should be given automatically to unmarried fathers who sign the birth register as are currently given to the mothers. The commitment to their child clearly needs to be recognised.'

But the move was condemned by critics as another blow against the few remaining privileges of marriage.

There are also concerns that it may be a prelude to laws to give full-scale legal rights to cohabiting couples.

Robert Whelan of the Civitas think tank, which has tracked the collapse of the traditional married family, condemned yesterday's move.

He said: 'There is a drip, drip, drip effect of gradually removing the remaining privileges of marriage and diminishing its status. If there is nothing to be gained by getting married, why marry?'

He added that by including the change in the Adoption Bill, Ministers are likely to frustrate their own bid to speed up the adoption system.

'It adds another parent to the process, and objections by just one parent can delay an adoption for years or encourage social workers to call it off altogether,' Mr Whelan said.

The decision follows figures last week showing that more pregnancies now start outside marriage than inside it.

More than one in five children lives in a single parent family - a growing proportion of whom were born to unmarried live-in couples.

Ministers are also considering giving property rights to unmarried couples who have lived together for a certain period of time.