Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the annual cost has been for the Bereavement Support Payment over the last five years, including regional breakdown, and the percentage of those eligible who claim this.

Official statistics for Bereavement Support Payment (BSP) can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/benefit-expenditure-and-caseload-tables-2025

Table 1: Annual cost for Bereavement Support Payment for the last five financial years rounded to the nearest million pounds

Further annual expenditure figures can be found in the outturn and forecast tables, in the ‘Bereavement_benefits’ sheet:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/694931a672075a1d4a5089d9/outturn-and-forecast-tables-autumn-budget-2025.ods

A regional breakdown of BSP alone is not available, but a regional breakdown for bereavement benefits as a whole can be found in the benefit expenditure by country and region, in the ‘BBWB’ sheet:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6940017ac72b0f8ccf33d78f/benefit-expenditure-by-country-and-region-2024-25.ods

It is not possible to accurately measure take-up of BSP, out of those who are eligible, as this would require monthly data on deaths by age, marital status, cohabitee status, dependent children and National Insurance contributions.