Business of the House

John Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

It is a delusion of Whiggish modernists that they know the worst of mankind has been consigned to the past. Cicero said, “Know thyself,” and in our time in this place, some local authorities are holding what have been dubbed “Dickensian” paupers’ funerals. The relatives of the deceased are banned from them. They are even prohibited from receiving their loved ones’ remains. Will the Leader of the House ask a Minister to come to make an urgent statement confirming that statutory guidance will be issued assuring that all those who grieve are treated with decency and dignity? You know, Mr Speaker, that when Mozart died, his body was cast into a mass paupers’ grave. If his work was the rhythm of heaven, these paupers’ funerals are now the rhyme of hell.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My right hon. Friend raises a very serious issue. He will be aware that every local authority in the UK has a statutory duty to make arrangements for these so-called paupers’ funerals, when a person has died in circumstances where the family cannot be traced or when no funeral arrangements have been made for that person. He is right to point out that these are no frills funerals and there are limitations to the involvement of families, unless the families get involved in arranging, for example, for a religious minister or a civil celebrant to be present at the funeral. I encourage my right hon. Friend to seek an Adjournment debate so that he can ask Ministers directly about what more could be done.