Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many families with children they estimate will receive Bereavement Support Payments in the fiscal years (1) 2017–2018, (2) 2018–2019, (3) 2019–2020, (4) 2020–2021, (5) 2021–2022, and (6) 2022–2023.

The Benefit Expenditure and Caseload Tables are published by the department after each fiscal event and contain outturn and forecast expenditure for all Bereavement Related Benefits including Widow’s Pension (WP), Widowed Mother’s Allowance (WMA), Bereavement Allowance (BA), Widowed Parent’s Allowance (WPA) and Bereavement Support Payment (BSP). Table 1 shows expenditure on Bereavement Related Benefits for the requested years from the latest release of these tables published after Spring Statement 2018. Table 2 shows forecast expenditure on Bereavement Support Payments, also from the same source.

Table 1: Outturn Expenditure, £m 2018/19 prices

Table 2: Forecast Expenditure, £m, 2018/19 prices

The department publishes caseload information on Bereavement Benefits and Widow’s Benefits recipients on on-line via Stat Xplore. These can be broken down by benefit type to show which claims have dependent children. Table 3 below shows caseload data from November of the requested years from Stat Xplore. The caseload is the number of claims in payment during the month in question.

Table 3: Caseload

The forecast volume of claimants for Bereavement Support Payment, broken down by whether the claim is Standard Rate or Higher Rate is shown in Table 4. Claimants with dependent children and entitled to Child Benefit, or who were pregnant, when their husband, wife or civil partner died will get the higher rate. These forecasts are consistent with the caseload forecasts published in the Spring Statement 2018 Benefit Expenditure and Caseload Tables, and represent average caseloads over the full financial year.

Table 4: Bereavement Support Payment Forecast Caseload