Children’s Funeral Fund

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Carolyn Harris]

Thank you.

On the wall of my office, there are invites for meetings, receptions and dinners—mostly to remind me where I need to be, and when. Among all that sits a letter, which has probably been pinned up longer than anything else. That letter is on Downing Street headed notepaper, signed by the Prime Minister and dated 10 April 2018. In that letter, the Prime Minister promises that she will introduce a children’s funeral fund. It hurts me greatly that more than a year after I received the letter, it still hangs on my wall as unfinished business.

I do not need to tell Members my story, because they have all heard it many times before.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has been a sturdy campaigner for this cause for a long time. I am glad the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) recognises what a great champion she has been for such a great cause. I wish her every success in future.

[Carolyn Harris]

Thank you.

What I will tell the House is that nothing prepares you for the loss of a child. The devastation is unimaginable for anyone who has not experienced it. It almost destroyed me, and if it were not for the fact that Martin’s brother, Stuart, who is now a strapping 34-year-old, still needed his mam to look after him, who knows where my life would have ended. It is almost certain that my passion, my determination and my absolute desire to help those in vulnerable positions have somehow been born out of my grief.

It was not easy standing in the Chamber and sharing my own heartbreak, but it was something that I knew I had to do. Thirteen months ago, the Prime Minister finally announced that she would be introducing a children’s funeral fund in memory of Martin, and I felt like my pain would at least benefit other people, so it saddens me to stand here today, more than a year after that announcement, to ask again for this fund to be put in place.

There are others in the Chamber who will understand the pain that I speak about; in particular, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) will be able to relate to what I have said. I know that, regardless of political loyalty, he sees the children’s funeral fund as a desperately needed emergency provision.