Less than £500k to end funeral fees for children
● SNP must end burial charges, campaigning MP tells Sturgeon
An MP whose eight-year-old son died in a road accident has declared the SNP have no excuse not to scrap child burial fees in Scotland due to the minimal cost.
Carolyn Harris, the Labour MP for Swansea East, has written to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon urging her to end the burden on bereaved parents.
Interment fees for children can exceed £800 in Scotland.
Paying the burial fee for every child would cost the Scottish Government well under £500,000 – an amount Ms Harris said was “chicken feed”.
The SNP has no reason not to abolish child burial fees in Scotland, the MP who campaigned to end the practice in England and Wales has said, as figures revealed how little it would cost to ease pressure on bereaved parents.
Carolyn Harris, whose eightyear-old son Martin died in a road accident in 1989, said: “I can’t see how the SNP in Scotland cannot do it, if Labour in Wales can and the Tories in England can.”
Parents in eight local authority areas face being the last in the UK charged an upfront fee in the event of their child’s death.
Interment fees for children can exceed £800 in Scotland, depending on the circumstances, and a postcode lottery in terms of the ages when other councils start applying charges means that parents of children as young as 14 can be asked to pay adult rates. Ms Harris, the Labour MP for Swansea East, has written to Ms Sturgeon asking her to intervene and end the practice.
In 2016, there were 357 recorded deaths of people under the age of 18 in Scotland. At the highest rates, paying the burial fee for every child would cost well under £500,000.
Ms Harris said the figure was “chicken feed”. She added: “In a way, that’s probably the harshest cost, simply because it has to paid before a funeral can be arranged. A lot of funeral directors are finding they have to engage the services of bailiffs because people can’t afford to pay for the funerals they are organising. that’s not because they are having big fancy funerals, it’s because if you’ve got a choice to make between putting shoes on your kids and paying for a funeral, you’re going to put shoes on your kids.”
When Martin died, Ms Harris said her family struggled to meet the costs. Parents are most at risk of funeral poverty “because no one anticipates losing a child”, she said.
“It was an accident, so I certainly didn’t have the money. Had it been a long-term illness, there are so many costs associated with having a child who is terminally ill.
“When I lost Martin, I couldn’t even fill a kettle, let alone fill in a 37-page form, but I wouldn’t have been eligible anyway.”
Ms Harris’ family relied on a collection by neighbours and went to the bank for a loan. “When they came to the house with the money, we didn’t even look at it.
“We just said‘ thank you’ and put it in a drawer.
“It was only when the bill came in that we actually looked at the bill. At the time, it was £1,700... we just didn’t have the money.
“So we opened the envelope and it was £1,000 and then David went to the bank and took out a bank loan [for £700].”
There are few things crueller than the death of a child. It is a loss of such life-altering magnitude that it seems incredible bereaved parents are able to carry on.
Obviously, crucial to a family’s ability to get through this most difficult time is the support of those around them. This support should not come solely from friends and relatives. The state has its part to play, too.
South of the Border, councils have abolished charges for the burials of children. This is a small but important gesture, removing a level of bureaucratic and financial stress from parents already trying to get through the darkest days of their lives.
The Labour MP Carolyn Harris – who had to get a loan to pay for her eight-year-old son Martin’s funeral – has played a leading role in persuading local authorities across England and Wales to waive the cost of burying a child. Now she wants Scotland to follow suit.
Ms Harris has written to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon asking the Scottish Government to step in and cover interment fees which are still charged by eight councils.
We sincerely hope the First Minister is sympathetic to Ms Harris’s request. Around 400 Scottish families lose a child each year and with burial costs reaching as much as £800, many are forced into debt just to see that their son or daughter is laid to rest with dignity.
In the great scheme of thing, the cost to the Scottish Government of covering these charges would be negligible yet the impact would be huge.
Currently, parents may or may not be charged for their child’s interment depending on where in the country they live. The existence of this bleak lottery is not acceptable.
The Scotsman believes that there are debates to be had about the value of universal benefits in a number of areas but common decency says no discussion is required in this instance.
We Scots are fond of telling ourselves – and anyone who cares to listen – that we are a peculiarly compassionate people with an innate sense of right and wrong.
Perhaps this is the view seen in a rose-tinted mirror but if we aspire to see the decent, fair society that we so often say we do, then the case for ending charges for the burial of children is cut and dried.
Nicola Sturgeon has the power to do the right thing. We hope she does just that.