Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make it his policy to extend the time limits on applications for bereavement allowance.

The time limit for claiming Bereavement Allowance is three months from the date of death, which is consistent with the time limit for other welfare entitlements. We are not considering extending this at this time. We are, however, currently developing the new Bereavement Support Payment due to be implemented for new claims from April 2017, and we will assess the merits of further flexibilities on backdating as part of this work.