Local Plans (Burial Space) Bill [HL]

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, tomorrow, we will commemorate 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, which established the United States as a republic—it is still, as far as I am aware, supposed to be a republic. I mention that because one of its founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, as the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, alluded to, was famous for having said that there are only two things in life that are certain: death and taxes. This is a Bill about death, or more particularly about where our dead bodies are put to rest.

Throughout human history, the way we deal with our dead bodies has a great deal to say about our humanity. I read recently that there is now archaeological evidence that the Neanderthals had burial practices, and of course we know a great deal about civilizations such as the Egyptians and the Chinese. More recently, HS2 unearthed a great deal of knowledge about the way in which people were buried in the 17th century, when the line was built through central London.

This is a Bill that the House should very much take seriously, even if it is not everybody’s cup of tea. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, for sponsoring the Bill. He was kind enough to draw it to my attention, for which I thank him, and he adroitly made his case for the Bill today. I congratulated him on having been successful in the lottery for Private Members’ Bills. As someone who has myself piloted a Private Member’s Bill through on to the statute book, I wish him every success.

If you read the Bill carefully, you will find several references to the cultural practices of communities. I will return to this aspect later, because the Bill tackles issues of growing concern to people of all communities. Reference has already been made to the recent Law Commission report of March this year on burial and cremation, which concluded not only that the last serious survey of burial spaces is already 20 years old and out of date but that the burial space in Church of England and local authority burial grounds might run out within the coming decades. I rather regret the fact that the Bishops’ Bench is not contributing to today’s debate.

It may be a short debate, and I am sure we will hear some very interesting speeches, but before I say a bit more about the Bill itself, I hope the House will allow me to make a few general comments, because the Bill is best approached with some understanding of the recent history of burial in this country.

Suppose we were holding this debate 200 years ago today. What would it be about? There was widespread concern about body-snatching. It is 200 years since the great private cemeteries of London were being planned: Kensal Green, Nunhead, West Norwood, Highgate and so on. They were built by joint-stock companies, and their whole design was about security. It is no coincidence that they were built with high walls and imposing gates, because the whole point of them was to provide the emerging middle class with a safe and secure burial environment. Planned in the 1820s—literally 200 years ago now—and built in the 1830s, they were known as the “magnificent seven”. Incidentally, they no longer felt obliged to bury in the Christian east-west orientation of sunrise to sunset; they could be planned according to a more elaborate layout, hence you see the beautiful cemeteries that we have today.

Of course, on the whole, the aristocracy had provision for their burials in their own vaults and lands, but the poorest in society, by contrast, were most vulnerable to body-snatching, which was a very successful business that fulfilled a need for medical colleges as well as providing a lucrative living for the body snatchers. People were murdered for body-snatching and their bodies were sold to the anatomy schools. In the infamous case of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh, they murdered 16 people in the 1820s. That provided the impetus for Parliament to pass the Anatomy Act 1832. The murders raised public awareness of the need for bodies for medical research and contributed to the passing of the Act. Intervening in that way, Parliament sought to deal with the body-snatching problem.

Incidentally, that Bill made its way through Parliament at the same time as the Great Reform Bill. It was known as the “midnight Bill”, because it passed late at night when people were not as interested. The main business of Parliament, carried on during the day, became the Great Reform Act 1832, which most of us learn about in history at school. The Anatomy Act provided sufficient bodies for medical schools, and the pauper institutions were used as a means of furnishing the dead bodies required for them. Basically, if you qualified for a pauper funeral, you certainly qualified for dissection.

Other developments in the 19th century included the creation of Brookwood Cemetery. Some Members may know it. It was designed to deal with the rapidly expanding population of London. A special train service was set up, which ran from London Necropolis station in Waterloo and transported the bodies down to the cemetery near Woking. Bombing in the Second World War blew up the station; otherwise, you would still be able to see it today.

Cremation, as a means of dealing with death, started to appear only in the 1890s and began to take off after the Great War—perhaps, and this is only a guess, because the colossal death toll of that war and a natural fear of decomposition changed people in the Christian community’s perceptions of burial.

But the fact is that the growing trend towards cremation in the Christian community did not erode the pressures on burial space. Over the decades, churches and local authorities have had to make increasing provision for burial space. By the way, there is quite a market in burial spaces. One colleague in this House told me a couple of days ago that the going price for a space in his particular hoped-for cemetery is £24,000. That is not inconsiderable.

Perhaps this is a good moment to declare that a few years ago I was part of an Opposed Private Bill Committee. There are not many of them; they are something of a specialism. I am not sure whether many Members here have ever had experience of one, but I am glad to say that we have some clerks in this House who are great specialists. It was a Bill promoted by Bishop’s Stortford Town Council—known, I am sure, to my noble friend the Minister—which sought permission to reuse burial space in its cemetery because space was running out. Proposals such as these can arouse great emotion and depth of feeling. The proceedings were quasi-judicial and eventually the House granted permission for the proposal to proceed. I believe it was the first such Bill to succeed outside London.

The point I am making is that the pressure for increased burial space is growing, and the issues we are discussing today, whether or not this particular Bill succeeds, will not be going away, so we may as well tackle the underlying issues head on. No London borough could possibly afford burial space within its boundaries at the moment. It may be that my noble friend the Minister will agree that there is a real issue here and tell the House that it must be addressed but that perhaps this Bill is not the vehicle to do it. But the Bill seeks to meet those needs in the context of local authority planning, and we should closely debate what effects this may have up and down the country when we reach Committee.

Before we reach the Minister’s speech, I return to the phrase

“all faith and cultural communities”,

which appears in the Bill. Different communities have different burial traditions. For example, as has been mentioned, Jewish and Muslim communities have a strong preference for burial as soon as possible. That is hardly surprising as those religions originated in the Middle East when a quick burial was a health necessity. It is fair to observe that both communities still broadly prefer burial to cremation, although that is a generalisation, but some communities prefer an individual grave and dislike multiple graves, and people are entitled to have their own views. The effect of changing times on our many and varied communities is producing an explicit demand for more burial space.

I have run out of time. I need hardly add that I am very much looking forward to hearing what my noble friend the Minister has to say and, whatever approach the Government take to the Bill, to taking part in further proceedings on it.