Children’s Funeral Fund

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Edward Argar)]

I am pleased to see you in the Chair, Mr Speaker, as it highlights the importance of this debate and—I say this having known you before you were Speaker—your interest in this area.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this hugely important debate. It gives me the opportunity to update the House and to reaffirm the commitment made by the Prime Minister on something of huge importance not only to this House but across our country.

Before I begin, I want to take the opportunity to pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her tireless campaigning on this important issue, which, as she says, sadly touches the lives of many families. As she has so incredibly movingly reminded us today, she has herself suffered the tragic loss of a child—her son, Martin, who I appreciate will always be her little boy—and I feel deeply for her.

It is to the hon. Lady’s outstanding credit that she has been willing and able to draw on that most painful of experiences to press for so positive and important a measure. Her constituents and this House should be incredibly proud to have someone such as her representing them and as a Member of our legislature. I am very proud to say that, having got to know her since I have been in this House, but particularly since last year when I took up ministerial office, I can begin to call her a friend as well.

I know that many hon. Members across this House have supported the hon. Lady in her endeavour. It is right that I mention my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who is now also the junior Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions with responsibility for this area—jointly with us in the Ministry of Justice. When it comes to delivering this, I hope she will accept that she would struggle to find two junior Ministers more determined and willing to deliver for her, both because it is the right thing to do for our country and because it is the right thing to do for her and for many other parents across the country. I pay tribute to the work of a number of campaigners and organisations across the country, and to bereaved parents who, like the hon. Lady, have summoned up the courage—however hard that is—to speak up and join this campaign.

The commitment to develop a children’s funeral fund for England was announced by the Prime Minister at Easter last year. As she said in that announcement, no parent should ever have to endure the unbearable loss of a child. Although nothing can ever truly heal the pain of such a loss, as the hon. Lady has shown, we must recognise that, as the Prime Minister said, in the darkest moment of any parent’s life there can still be a little light if there is the support and care that they need. The Government are committed to ensuring that that support exists for those who lose a child. I have known this Prime Minister for a very long time, and while she has many priorities, there are some that are particularly important and personal to her, which run through everything she tries to do, and I think that her personal commitment on this issue is very much there.

The children’s funeral fund is being established in recognition of the fact that it cannot be right for grieving parents to have to worry about meeting the cost of burying or cremating their child. It is in memory of the hon. Lady’s son Martin, and in support and memory of all parents who experience this most painful and tragic of losses, that the Prime Minister made the commitment to establish this scheme. Under the scheme, parents will no longer have to meet the costs of burial or cremation. These will instead be met by Government funding, meaning that parents will no longer be subject to the sometimes significant variation in charges across the country. The hon. Lady also highlighted the elements that she considers the basic essentials that need to be covered: the fees from the local authority and others, and the coffin. I share her view.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I echo everything that everybody has said. I also consider the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) a friend. She has dealt with this campaign with what we Welsh would call hwyl, and she is to be congratulated on that. When these final decisions are being taken, may I just urge the Minister to bear in mind the phraseology that the hon. Lady used—that this is the last gift of a parent to a dead child? It is not just a pounds, shillings and pence coffin and headstone; it is the whole emotional issue. If we keep that in mind, we will get the right outcome.

[Edward Argar]

As ever, my hon. Friend puts his point simply but eloquently, and he is absolutely right about the prism through which we should be looking at this matter.

The scheme that we are envisaging will not just bring England into line with broadly comparable arrangements in Wales and Scotland. I am keen that we go a bit beyond that where we can. The children’s funeral fund will complement other measures to support grieving parents, including the social fund funeral expenses payment scheme and the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018, which was enacted last September. But I do understand that, alongside the welcome for the fund across both sides of this House, hon. Members and others clearly and rightly want to see the scheme in place as soon as possible, and to be reassured of the continued commitment to and progress towards that.

As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said on 6 February at Prime Minister’s questions, it is important that we get this right. We have therefore been working hard across Government to identify the most effective way to deliver the fund. For all the clear simplicity of what it seeks to do, it is none the less a complex and challenging policy legislatively and in delivery on the ground, bringing together a number of Government Departments, but it is a challenge that the Government and I have willingly accepted.