Draft Bereavement Support Payment Regulations 2017

Debate between Caroline Flint and Caroline Nokes

Monday 27th February 2017 General Committees

[Caroline Nokes]

Which indeed is a point that the hon. Gentleman could have made back in 2013 when we debated the 2014 Act. As I said, it is a long-established principle of that Act that contributory benefits are based on the concept of legal marriage or civil partnership, and this Committee cannot change that.

The draft regulations will make no changes to conditionality. Like the bereavement benefits that they replace, bereavement support payments have no work-related conditions; any obligation to participate in any work-related activity will come from claiming other benefits. Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, it is well known that long periods out of work can have a negative effect on an individual’s prospect of future employment. The Government therefore think it important that people are encouraged to maintain a link with the labour market. Recipients of the bereavement support payment who also receive universal credit, jobseeker’s allowance or employment and support allowance will be able to access Jobcentre Plus on a voluntary basis from three months after bereavement and will not be subject to conditionality for a further three months. Those exemptions can apply even when there is no entitlement to bereavement support benefit. At the end of the six months, advisers will use their discretion to ensure that individuals’ capabilities and requirements are taken into account, as the hon. Member for Stockton North and I have discussed.

The hon. Gentleman raised uprating. Bereavement benefits are uprated by annual social security benefits uprating orders. The basic component—bereavement allowance and widowed parent’s allowance—must be uprated annually at least in line with price inflation, but there is no requirement to uprate the bereavement payment, which has been frozen since 2001. Bereavement support payment is a grant paid in instalments rather than an income replacement benefit, so it is treated in a similar way to the current bereavement payment: it is reviewed annually on a discretionary basis. Section 150 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 provides for the rate of bereavement support payment to be reviewed annually. Regular review would allow the value of the benefit to be increased if that is considered necessary. Any decisions on future changes will be taken as part of the annual fiscal process in the context of wider public finances.

The Government have already committed to reviewing the 2013 impact assessment. We will do so when sufficient evidence is available to assess all aspects of the policy, including its effectiveness.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

Since the regulations were laid before the House in January, what consideration have the Minister and her colleagues given to developing cost-neutral proposals that could spread the payments over three years to those with dependent children? The suggestion was made by the Childhood Bereavement Network as a way to work with the grain of the Government’s proposals while allowing families to receive the benefits for a longer period.

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank the right hon. Lady for that suggestion. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Lewes, and for Thornbury and Yate, who wrote to me on behalf of their constituents Heather Smith and Sarah Metcalfe to make exactly that point. I am conscious that the suggestion comes from the Childhood Bereavement Network, which has been in touch with me personally over the last few weeks.

When we considered the proposals, as I said originally, we considered making a one-off grant at the outset, but that was rejected by both the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee. They suggested a period of 18 months, on which we consulted the Childhood Bereavement Network. I can see the merit in considering changing it to three years, but that would halve the monthly payments in the first 18 months. We did not think that gave families the best chance of lessening the fiscal impact of losing a spouse’s income. We considered it, but we came to the view that we should adopt the Work and Pensions Committee’s suggestion of 18 months.