A cross-party collection of peers has called on the government to rethink a cut to bereaved parents’ benefits, which comes into force on Thursday, saying ministers must accept they have made a mistake.
Ros Altmann, a Conservative peer, asked a question on the issue in the Lords, and is among a group who have signed a letter to the pensions secretary, Damian Green, asking that he reconsider the changes. The letter was also signed by the bishop of Peterborough, Donald Allister.
Theresa May has defended the cuts, under which parents with school-age children who lose a spouse will be given payments for just 18 months as against the previous system, where the payments continued until the youngest child left full-time education.
The changes will result in an increase to a lump sum payment received after the death, from £2,000 to £3,500, and ministers argue this is the time when extra money is most needed.
However, while previously the bereaved parent would get a taxable benefit of about £112 a week while they had children in education, for those who die after midnight on Wednesday, the payments will be cut to £350 a month, with a limit of 18 months.
A 51-year-old man with terminal cancer has described to the Guardian how the changes could potentially lead to his family losing more than £50,000 in benefits, given that his children are 10 and 14.
Speaking in the Lords, Lady Altmann said the old system needed modernising and its replacement had some advantages.
She continued: “But these reforms are designed to cut £100m from welfare spending for bereavement. And within that reduced budget, bereaved partners without children will get more at the expense of significantly reduced support for those with young children, which will stop completely after just 18 months.
“My lords, what is our national insurance welfare state for, if not to support families properly in such tragic circumstances?”
Lord Henley, a junior minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, said he would relay her concerns to Green, but stressed that the changes had been consulted on twice and would be reviewed again.
Maeve Sherlock, a Labour peer with a background in child poverty and welfare reform who also signed the letter to Green, told Henley that ministers should think again.
“There is genuine feeling from around the house that the government has made a mistake on this,” she said.
Henley said he rejected her characterisation of the changes as cuts. “There will be no initial savings to the taxpayer in the first two years. Thereafter, as was made clear in the impact assessment, there will be some savings,” he said.
Stuart Polak, another Tory peer who signed the letter, argued that bereavement benefits were a “tiny” element of social security, comprising just 0.32% of all benefits.
“I totally support the government in the need to cut the welfare bill,” he said. “But my lords, not here. If children are bereaved, there’s no fraud, you can’t fake it or even abuse the system. My lords, I fear we are targeting the wrong area.”
Allister said the government was mistaken in front-loading the benefits and then cutting them off, arguing that if a mother or father died the surviving parent often needed to give several years of extra time and attention to their children, which could involve working part-time.
The letter to Green, also signed by the Liberal Democrat peer Cathy Bakewell, said media coverage of the changes had “starkly highlighted for the general public the impact of these reforms and the anguish caused to terminally ill parents, who discover their surviving partner will lose ongoing support payments after just 18 months regardless of the age of the children or their dependency”.
The letter states: “As a cross-party group we would urgently request that the government think again and consider extending the payments for widowed parents with dependent children for up to 10 years, rather than stopping after 18 months.
“This would allow those parents, at such a difficult point in their lives, a more reasonable amount of time to deal with their own grief, as well as that of their children.”
The peers said they understood the aim to simplify bereavement support, “but that does not necessitate cutting benefits at the same time”.
It ends: “We all believe the public at large would find it difficult to understand why the government is redistributing bereavement support payments away from families with dependent children, towards those without.”
